Switch to Industrial RE

My company announced a new area of real estate we will be investing in - Industrial, with a focus on distribution centers with single tenant leases in place.  100% of my experience is in MF so I have practically no knowledge of the industrial segment.  My question is what are the best educational resources available to bring me up to speed?  How will modeling differ besides Argus?  Has anyone here made the switch from residential to industrial?  What'd you like/dislike?  How would you compare the two?

 
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I made the pivot.  Worked in MF AM, current role is in Industrial Acquisitions. 

Not sure I have any resources to recommend, most of my knowledge just came from on the job learning past few years.    

I frankly found multifamily a bit boring but that was probably due to being on the AM side of things.  Industrial can be pretty interesting, you get to see a wide variety of businesses and some of them will blow your mind.  Recently did a tour where some guys had a giant silo on the property that had rice husks in it, they were converting rice husks into cutting tools.  Granted that will generally be on the manufacturing/light assembly side of things, warehouses probably won't be the most exciting to tour.  

Unless you are buying Class A Big Box, there is definitely more complexity than initially meets the eye. 

Some things to be mindful of:

  • Understand lease types - most will be NNN but you will come across gross, M Gross, NN, Absolute Net, etc.  Recoverable expenses are vital to accurate underwriting, e.g. you buy a building will a bunch of modified gross leases, you are planning on converting to NNN  and projecting a 20-30% Mark to Market on rents.   Does the price you paid push you above market on OpEx (tax increase) if tenants are NNN?  Likely will need to adjust your mark to market on rents in that case. Do tenants reimburse management fees?  Lot of times small time owner/operators don't even charge one so until you can modify the lease you'll be out of pocket on that.  
  • Building Specs -  Primary things to look for are Clear Height, Roof Age, Sprinkler System, Dock Doors.   Modern Industrial is building built at 32' or higher for warehousing, lower clear buildings can still be good but will target different users (manufacturing, storage that doesn't use racking, etc.)   Sub 20' is when it makes leasing tough (depending on the market) .   Roofs are your major CapEx in industrial.  Once you are getting close to 20 years on a roof you will need to include some near term capital for that.   Sprinkler and docks are more tenant dependent but most modern warehouses will have ESFR and 1 dock per 10k SF (that is moving close to 8k nowadays).   So getting a good idea of what current specs vs what future tenancy might demand plays a big role in underwriting TI and future CapEx. 
  • Macro/Micro of each market -  Obvious factors come in to play: population growth for last mile, port volumes, truck traffic, highway proximity, Supply/Demand, etc. Some municipalities/states strongly incentivize certain industries so some sleepy towns have surprisingly strong industrial bases.  Get an idea of what kind of infrastructure is being put in, new large manufacturing projects,  corporate relocations etc.

There's a lot more I could touch on but I'll leave it there for now.  Market is hot but still some opportunity to make money unless you are just allocating to brand new Class A product.  

 

Thank you.  This is very helpful.  I think it might be something like Class A big box centers w/ big name tenants.  What are cap rate and returns like for those assets?  Also, what are debt terms like?  Term, IO, LTV, rate/spread, etc.?

Knowing my principals they will likely want to model long hold periods (>10 years) with a refi down the line and I am worried about getting the capex/TIs modeled reasonably correct in the outer years

 

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