Yield on Cost

Curious how everyone looks at yield on cost..do you look at unlevered yield on cost, levered yield on cost? Both? 
 

Also, would love to hear what people include in the yield on cost calculation. For example, if you have a 10 year deal, and your projections show you can pay general capex and/or capital reserves via cash flow, does that go into your yield on cost calc? 
 

I’ve seen it done every which way to Sunday and thought I would see what everyone else does. 

33 Comments
 

Can you explain this? Does trended yield on cost not equal your stabilized cap rate in the year of stabilization? Would appreciate the help

 
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Untrended yield on cost assumes what the yield would be today. Let’s say you buy an apartment building for $100. NOI is $5. After investing $10 into the building, the NOI is $7.15. So it’s a 6.5% YOC. 
 

Trended is, let’s say it’ll take two years to do the work and market rent growth is 3% per year. So instead, the NOI due to market rent growth is $7.58. (For ease of this example I grew $7.15 by 3%, twice). So the trended yield on cost is 6.89%. 
 

By you saying the stabilized cap rate I ask back - should I include capital costs? Or is cap rate on purchase price only? Yield on cost implies purchase price plus capital costs. 

 

Have been at 3-4 different shops both public/private and all of them were stabilized untrended NOI/true project costs to achieve C of O (inclusive of financing costs for construction loan, but no capex/no refi financing costs). A lot of developers got squeezed on the spread to spot exit cap rates pre-COVID, but especially in the multi/industrial sectors, cap rate are now compressing so much that we are back up in the 200 bps range in many cases.

 

I'm talking generally about YOC on ground up development deals. On those, the only carry costs that are factored into the capitalized budget for purposes of total cost basis calculation is a small operating deficit for the negative CF balance you run the first ~6 months during lease-up. It would be interesting, but is just not typical, to include cost of carry on equity or something like that as a project expense.

 

This.  Especially in established/hot markets.  Centrally located class A multi is so so hard to find yield on nowadays.  Whether development or acquisitions.  

 

We look at it as NOI / (Total Project or Acquisition Costs + Additional Equity Injected) - the additional equity injected excludes principal paydown on financing, just hard cash equity needed to fund capital improvements. CAPEX is funded first through operating cash flow, then any deficit is covered by calling additional equity. We do not account for any portion paid by operating CFs in RoC.

So our stabilized RoC would be NOI/Project Costs on a new development, but we look at it on an annualized basis from there on out if there's a planned hold period, so any future operating deficit funded by equity increases the denominator in the relevant year and any year thereafter.

 

should not be NOI / total equity.  that is incredibly confusing for the inexperienced guys reading this.  should be NOI / (total debt&equity) 

 

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