Cap rate on acquisition in lease up

How do you determine a cap rate for an acquisition of a mf property currently in lease up (14% leased)? Should you derive an NOI from annualized current income based on 100% of units and use stabilized expenses and debt?

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Two metrics. 
 

1) untrended return on cost. Let’s say the market cap rate is 5%. Developers will aim to built to a 6.5%. This is a lease up, so while risky, not quite as risky as development. So maybe your purchase price is a stabilized untrended return on cost of 6%-6.25%. Therefore, you’re making 100-125 bps for taking the risk. 
 

Method 2: what’s a 5 and 10 year unlevered IRR? Speak with the brokerage community. See what buyers are underwriting to. (In a nutshell, this is the inverse of your discount rate for NPV). Are you happy with a market unlevered IRR (or hopefully it’s a good deal and doing better). The reason I say to look at unlevered IRR is because everyone gets different debt quotes. If you always look at unlevered IRR, you are looking at a deal apples to apples each time. 

 

100-125 BPS seems like a hefty spread, I'm not sure just a lease-up is risky enough to warrant that high of a spread.  Developers often look for 150-200 BPs of spread for entire projects, which can include entitlements, design, construction, AND lease-up. LMK if I'm off base here but that's the way I see it. 

 

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