The real estate developer’s recipe for success

Conservative borrowing seems to distinguish the surviving developers

BY DAVID W. MEYER Bullivant, Houser, Bailey PC

It may be odd to talk about how one might approach development activity when we are in the depths of a real estate market abyss, unless we discuss the issues for purposes of enabling a company to better prepare itself for times like these in the future.

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The Federal Reserve is engaging in such proactive preventative measures, proposing now to adopt rules cracking down on shady lending practices in an attempt to prevent a future mass mortgage crisis.

Never mind the hypocrisy of the Fed’s recent liberalization of its own lending practices that will certainly cost all taxpayers dearly in years to come – bailing out investment firms, Freddie Mac and other institutions … but enough about the Fed.

Real estate developers can, to a degree, determine their own fate. I asked an officer of a successful residential development company how the company is doing amid the current slowdown, and he replied, “Better than most of our competitors. We should survive – we’ve made it a policy to never borrow our equity.”

You might ask, “What did he mean by that?” In essence, he meant that they project realistic end-product sales prices for their proposed projects or lots, determine realistic land acquisition and construction/development costs and having determined the prospect for profit margin between the realistic sales price and realistic costs, they limit their borrowing to the costs – or less.

They do not, as some foundering contractors and developers may have done, build a “reasonable profit” component into the loans they obtain similarly to the way a residential lot owner’s loan for construction of his own house would include funds for the reasonable profit of his hired builder.

Successful developers do not see the bank loan as their end game, disbursing funds from it for new Cadillac Escalades for each of their family members and counting on 100 percent lot sales to pay off the bank before the loan matures. Their end game is the sale or lease of the developed property for profit – profit being the amount of money they take in from sales over and above their loans and other costs.

Projecting sales and profit takes real skill, planning, and self-control. It is more than pitching a project’s value to a bank at the project’s maximum potential value based on escalating lot prices in an upswinging market, borrowing the maximum amount possible and assuming the debt will be covered by prompt sales – which in manic times appear infinite. Project pro formas should not be substituted by blind trust that the bank’s crystal ball is accurately forecasting the project’s successful payoff of the debt.

There are various methods for evaluating a proposed development and limiting risks. It is conservative borrowing, however, that seems to distinguish the surviving developers – not superior salesmanship to a banker who may, himself, be running to the Fed for a loan, having guessed wrong on projects before.

David W. Meyer is an of-counsel attorney with of Bullivant Houser Bailey PC. Meyer can be reached at 360-737-2301 or david.meyer@bullivant.com.

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