Tiho Brkan Profile picture
Jul 26, 2019 18 tweets 4 min read
1/ When people talk about real estate they usually discuss buying a unit / house & holding it as it appreciates in value while earning a rental income.

They compare this strategy to index funds, due to the passive nature of both & conclude that property isn't attractive.
2/ Personally, I would never invest in a finished product which was a) already renovated, b) recently built and/or c) off the plan for a future build.

Buying this kind of property means someone else already bought them low, renovated them or built them from the ground up...
3/ ... which means you will be paying a premium to them. Let me explain in a simplified story so you can understand better.

Imagine a developer buys a new plot of land to build an apartment build with X number of units from the ground up. Firstly, he will have to purchase...
4/ ...this land site from the owner, who of course only wants to sell at a premium for profit. This means the developer has already been outsmarted, so he will have to factor that into the final selling price.

Secondly, to do this project, the developer will have to go out...
5/ ...and get project financing approved. There might be some senior debt, which could cost him anywhere from 5 to 10%; some mezzanine debt which might cost him between 15% plus; & some preferred equity which might cost over 20%.

The developer will also have to pay the...
6/ ... the contracting company which does the work. They too will be charging high prices to make a profit, meaning the developer has to overpay once more. Architects will also charge a premium, too.

The land site, planning costs, construction costs, financing costs all come...
7/ ...at a premium, meaning they're all profiting on the developer's back. The developer is also taking big risks running the deal with leverage & might also have to give a personal guarantee.

Obviously, he wants to be compensated properly for a huge profit.
8/ Who will be paying for all of this?

All of the costs the developer incurred, from the original landowner to the final cost to finish the project will be transferred to the final customer — the buyer.
9/ So the next time you are "investing" into a renovated property or off-the-plan purchase thinking "it's a good deal" the answer is yes, just not for you.

It's a good deal for the developer & his co-investors. You are just a customer, who is overpaying at a premium.
10/ These why investors utilize many different strategies in the real estate market so that it makes actual sense when investing. Here is a list of some of them:

1. Logistics facilities
2. Retirement living
3. Data centres
4. Self Storage facilities
5. Healthcare
6. Hotels
11/ 7. Serviced apartments
8. Airbnb
9. Co-living
10. Student accommodation
11. Science parks
12. CBD offices
13. Parking
14. Retail shops
15. Industrial & warehouse

These strategies, and many others, help investor realize a bigger return relative to basic buy-to-let condos.
12/ Property strategies which I favor personally might not suit you as an investor. There are many ways to skin the cat, so you got to find your own niche and create your own advantages in the game of real estate.
13/ grew up in a family business which focuses on building and importing of high quality, expensive materials used in single-family luxury renovations or ground up builds.

I'm a lot more familiar with this area then many others and one could say it is my bread & butter.
14/ Therefore, I would almost never buy a finished product because I know how much cheaper it is possible for me to find an old, run down unit in a great location and turn it into a desired piece of property which can fetch a premium on the market, through a value add renovation.
15/ You might know a little bit about that, but a whole lot more about student accommodation or retiring living / aged care properties.

These are also heavily favoured by my clients and me due to great secular fundamentals, especially the aged care sector.
16/ I’ve met, read about and follow real estate investors who were at the top of their game in fields like multi-family in Florida & Texas, self-storage in Hong Kong, student accomodation in Manchester (UK), ground up beach front developments in Queensland (AUS), etc etc.
17/ Find your niche and master your sub-sector. Create great connections which will help you along the way including: real estate agents, mortgage brokers, architects, contractors & builders, appraisal, project management and as many others as you might need.
18/ Real estate might not be your thing. Don’t force it if you aren’t passionate about it & it doesn’t excite you.

Of course, trading crypto currency, picking the next small cap that turns into Amazon or running high Sharpe ratio portfolios is just so much sexier (on Twitter).

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More from @TihoBrkan

Feb 19
US residential real estate:

• mortgage rates spiking; market discounting Fed's hikes; could go higher if QT

• oversupply is coming; 1.54m homes under construction (single & multi); most since 1973

• median house prices seem to have peaked already

@PPGMacro charts
We are on record saying that 2021 was probably the worst time to be overly bullish while following the crowd — buying that which was popular:

• tech & growth stocks
• residential real estate
• venture capital

We are also on record for saying that US housing shortages are a false narrative.

We saw only a temporary shortage created by artificial monetary policy.

When the cheap money punch bowl is taken away, demand will collapse and oversupply will remain.

Read 4 tweets
Feb 15
What is risky?

Few simplistic tweets: risk means different things to different investors.

A widely overused and subjective term: something can be risky to group A, but not to group B.

Perception of risk (foresight) vs realized risk (hindsight). These are not the same thing.
Institutions look at risk as volatility. We don't.

And Wall Street throws uncertainty with risk into the same bucket. Once again, we don't.

When an American, Brit, or Aussie tells us Emerging Markets are very risky, we partly agree but partly smile at the Home Country bias.
We believe when something has fallen in price due to uncertainty — but not due to quality and its fundamental prospects in the future — there is an opportunity at hand.

"We want to buy them when they're on the operating table," said Warren Buffett famously.
Read 5 tweets
Feb 12
In Feb 2021 I returned back to @MikeBoyd's podcast with the plan to discuss mezzanine finance in the RE sector.

However, before discussing moving parts of mezz debt, due diligence & monitoring process, Mike asked my opinion on the state of stocks markets?

Valuable thread. 👇
Firstly, those interested, you can listen to the podcast here: businessoffamily.net/tiho-brkan-2

There was a lot covered in hindsight, but those who follow financial markets would have probably found the first part of the podcast either very interesting or too contrarian for their liking.
Here are two key quotes from the podcast, as I was taken in awe of the speculation frenzy in the tech & growth sectors:

"While it's easy to make money today and everything seems to be working, the question for very smart investors is to anticipate what's around the corner?"
Read 18 tweets
Feb 7
Wisdom is often invisible in life and investing because we want to remove or subtract undesired outcomes.

“I have used all my life a wonderfully simple heuristic: charlatans are recognizable in that they will give you positive advice, and only positive advice.” — Nassim Taleb
I don't tweet often about wonderful ideas we will throw our hard-earned capital into because the majority of the opportunities are not wonderful.

Instead, we try to subtract actions that we are more certain are wrong or undesired, instead of adding actions we think are right.
To paraphrase Einstein, geniuses attempt to solve complicated problems, while the wise avoid them.

Let's face it: there is nothing more complicated than predicting the future in the world of investment.

Charlatans have all of the answers: what to buy & where to invest.
Read 6 tweets
Feb 1
Netflix’s -50% crash lured me to do a deep dive, which on the surface doesn’t look great. Classic valuations also too high (for me).

However, after I got past some fancy accounting, Netflix seems to have more FCF & NI than it reports (tax optimisation & reinvestment like $AMZN).
Some DM questions, so I'll add additional points. My view is:

• they are probably claiming a lot more in content expenses to reduce their tax bill than originally noticed at first glance

• cashflow statement shows "other operating activity" running at 17.3 billion
• filings show 8.9 billion was predetermined liabilities they had to spend under contract (pay actors & the sets in their own production)

• there is content spending that is needed to maintain the current business, then there is spending which drives future growth
Read 4 tweets
Jan 22
It has become quite clear that the growth stock bubble witnessed over the last 12-18 months, with an orgy of speculation has now popped and results are and might continue to be extremely painful.

$PLTR $FSLY $TDOC $PINS
$SHOP $SQ $MELI $SE
$NFLX $BABA $PYPL $ZM
Read 13 tweets

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