Cap Rates and Debt

Hi All - would love to hear everyone’s thoughts - beginning to see many operators purchasing deals where financing today for their bridge loan is 5.25% (plus or minus) but they are still assuming they can sell in 36-60 months at a 4.75-5.0% exit cap. Curious - how is everyone looking at exit caps today? Of course in the above example, stabilized financing should theoretically price inside of the exit cap, but maybe it won’t, who knows. How is everyone look at their exit caps today in regards to interest rates and financing? 

15 Comments
 
CREnadian

Our perspective is that interest rates come back down to somewhere in between their lows and today's/expected end of year rates in the next 2-4 years.

We are underwriting higher exit caps than current market, but typically only 25bps.

Interesting. Cap rates have already gapped at least 25 bps across multiple sectors and markets 

 

I guess the argument would be (a) that less volatility will lead to spreads coming in, and (b) the real risk of a recession means that we'll see interest rates tighten over the coming 12-18 months.

Personally I think it's crazy to underwrite that way, but if you have to get money out the door in order to pay overhead, then I guess you grasp at anything you can if you are already going under.

 

I'd also add c) inflation causes rents to spike which offsets increases in interest rates as why firms can get comfortable with rising interest rates or underwriting to lower interest rates. 

For reasons why Cap Rates remain low:

1) Not much else to invest in that doesn't carry more considerable risk 2) CRE is inflation hedged to an extent 3) Borrowing less money isn't necessarily a bad thing when trying to de-risk 

 
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