The Rise of Cap Rates, or NOT?

The Rise of Cap Rates, or NOT?

by: Dion Huey

Over the past few weeks, I have seen many social media posts mentioning cap rates are going to rise and thus commercial property values are going to fall due to interest rate hikes; or “ we are going to see the bottom drop out like in 2008,” or the other extreme, “property values are going to continue increasing due to current supply and demand factors.”??There is so much noise in the media and “new real estate economists” that I figured I would take a glance at the academic literature to see what researchers have found regarding the relationship between cap rates and their economic drivers.?Before I began, I made a list of variables I thought may have a direct effect on cap rates, although in no particular order of importance, as follows:

·????????market interest rates (cost of money)

·????????quantity of money allocated to multifamily assets

·????????supply and demand of multifamily properties

·????????rent growth

·????????affordability of single-family homes (substitutes)

·????????inflation

Driving me to look further was a post I saw quoting research done by Marcus & Millichap which stated, “Cap Rates and Interest Rates Don’t Move in Lockstep” and showed the below chart graphing the average cap rate across all commercial real estate asset types and the 10-year treasury bond rates from 1990 to 2020.?Visually, it’s clear that the two variables do not move in tandem, and according to the graph, while the 10-year treasury rate fell between 2018 and 2020, cap rates remained flat.

Source: Marcus & Millichap

The summary data provided by Marcus & Millichap seemed counterintuitive if we simply examine it using the cap rate calculation as:

Ct = NOIt / Pt ??(1)

Where formula (1) is the typical cap rate (Ct) calculation for a particular property at time (t) calculated by taking the net operating income (NOIt) divided by the price(Pt).?Investors may choose to use trailing (t-1), or forward (t+1) NOI and price; however, the point here is the fundamentals of the calculation is the same.?

If we consider the NOI of the property is what is available to cover debt service, then we can calculate an upper limit on property price assuming 100 percent financing using debt.?Therefore, as interest rates increase (decrease) the cost of debt is going to increase (decrease), then there would be a constraint on just how much we could afford to pay for the property, and in turn affecting the cap rate.

Example 1:

NOI: $70,000

Cost of Debt: 3.5%

Amortization Period: 25 years

Max Loan Amount based on NOI: $1,165,000

Cap Rate: 6.01%

Example 2:

NOI: $70,000

Cost of Debt: 6.5%

Amortization Period: 25 years

Max Loan Amount based on NOI: $863,932

Cap Rate: 8.1%

Assuming the max loan amount based on the NOI produced by the property represents the intrinsic market value of the property, the higher interest rate places greater constraint on the amount an investor would be able to pay based on existing property operating performance.?Keep in mind that this is simply for illustrative purposes only to understand some basic mathematical relationships.?I deliberately left out equity.

What says the Academic Literature?

I read through quite a few academic and industry research on the relationship between economic variables and cap rates, which I will summarize and cite as follows; however, before doing so, I would like to point out a recurring mathematical relationship found in the literature.

C = r – g?????????(2)

Equation (2) states that the cap rate is derived from a rate of return less a growth rate (Corgel 2003).?Upon initial examination, I wasn’t entirely sure about this until thinking of this in the context of the Gordon Constant Growth model, which assumes both the rate of return and growth remain constant forever in the future.?This model is commonly studied in finance and is used to value corporate stock.?Applying the same concept to the above cap rate formula would have the following formula:

C = NOI / P = r-g???(3)

or

Pt = NOI/r-g???(4)

Formula (3) breaks out the cap rate formula into its component parts and formula (4) gives us the textbook formula for the Gordon Constant Growth model.?Essentially stating the value of a property is dependent on a constant rate of return less growth factor.?This identity was confirmed in a study done by (An & Deng 2009).?Therefore, based on academic literature, cap rates should change with changes in required return and rent growth rates.?Drilling deeper, the required return is made up of several critical factors including, inflation premium, risk premium, risk-free rate, default risk, and liquidity premium.?We would imagine that changes in interest rates should bring about changes in the cap rate.?Anecdotally, we have seen this relationship hold especially as cap rates have continued to compress across the country, return expectations have fallen, and growth in rents have soared into double-digits hitting 11.3 percent last year according to the Washington Post. ??Yet, clearly, there is something wrong with this basic calculation when it comes to understanding and predicting cap rates; required rates of return and growth rates are dynamic, not static, which makes the above formula not very suitable for predicting cap rate movements.

Chandrashekaran and Young (2000) sought to determine whether macroeconomic variables could be suitable predictors of current and future cap rates, and they improved upon research methods in the past by using actual property operating data to calculate the cap rates; therefore, maintaining consistency of calculation of the cap rate.?They used five macroeconomic variables as the independent variable and the cap rate as the dependent:

·????????S&P 500 return (proxy for required return on equity)

·????????unexpected inflation

·????????change in expected inflation

·????????change in default spread

·????????change in term spread

Their study looked at both aggregate CRE data and disaggregated by property type between 1984 and 1999.?The result is the macroeconomic variables were unable to predict cap rate changes during the observed period.?One observation they did find was that lagged cap rates have greater explanatory power than macroeconomic variables (Chandrashekaran and Young 2000).?Another finding was that unexpected inflation and change in expected inflation were significant as a predictor of cap rates for apartments using both four-quarter and two-quarter cap rates; however, the predictive power was substantially weak.

There were two major challenges with a lot of the studies already done: (1) they used cap rates as reported without knowing how the cap rate was derived, meaning the transaction cap rate was based on either trailing, forward, or stabilized NOI, and (2) they failed to recognize the component parts of the cap rate are dynamic.?

Chandrashekaran and Young addressed the first issue but did not address the second issue, which was addressed by An and Deng 2009 in their research report titled, “A Structural Model for Capitalization Rate.”?In their research, they created a dynamic model for estimating the parts of a cap rate to arrive at a predicted value of a cap rate.?Also, rather than using single- point values, they used multi-period expected returns and rent growth values as this better represents time variation and no longer considers ‘r’ and ‘g’ static variables.?They also place weights on both return and growth variables, which better represent changes in investor expectations at different periods.?Finally, their model views cap rates as mean-reverting, which was also evident in a report done by Cornerstone Real Estate Advisors LLC where they found cap rates, while they vary over time, they do not deviate too far from their long-run average of 7.6 percent, which they found by analyzing data provided by NCREIF Appraisal and Transaction Cap Rates between 1979 and 2009. In the (An and Deng 2009) model, they use observations for both ex-post cap rate and ex-ante cap rate from NCREIF and RERC respectively.?They concluded that there is a significant relationship between future return expectations and growth and investors must consider both variables together and not independently to avoid bias conclusions.?

They set the independent variables as follows:

·????????cap rate lag

·????????property return lag

·????????risk-free rate lag

·????????NOI growth lag

·????????occupancy rate lag

·????????constant

The dependent variables and adjusted R- square found were:

·????????risk-free rate – 95.69%

·????????cap rate – 94.55%

·????????occupancy rate – 61.27%

·????????NOI growth – 55.67%

·????????property return – 49.37%

?

Lingering Questions and Areas for Additional Research

All of the research reports I have read so far view the real estate market as a national U.S. market; however, we know that is further from the truth.?Sub-markets within the greater national U.S. real estate market are at varying points of the market cycle, hence affecting the proportionate weights of statistically significant variables on the value estimate of a cap rate. For example, if we were to apply An and Deng’s dynamic cap rate model to the Atlanta market, it may not have as much predictive value for that particular use as the data used to construct the model was national data.?Therefore, if considering predicting cap rate movement for a particular submarket, we may need to perform a similar study using single-MSA or aggregating data across MSAs that exhibit similar economic behavior within a region.?

The second lingering question I have is related to the quantity of money going into CRE assets and the relationship to cap rates.?Anecdotally speaking, through multiple podcast interviews and numerous conversations with other real estate syndicators, there seems to be a significant amount of institutional money competing for CRE assets, a lot more than in the past. ?While I have yet to research an estimate for an aggregate number, there have been multiple reports of large foreign institutional investors such as pension funds, and sovereign wealth funds purchasing commercial real estate.?According to the Wall Street Journal, foreign investors spent $70.8 billion on U.S. commercial real estate in 2021.?I have heard stories from syndicators that were outbid by institutional investors for multifamily assets by as much as $1 million, but they couldn’t seem to figure out how the buyer can hit returns at their purchase price.?Further, with the massive injection of nearly $5 trillion into the U.S. economy during the pandemic, I would be interested in seeing what the explanatory power, if any, does the money supply, and amount of investment into CRE assets have on cap rates.

Last, it is increasingly well-known that our country is facing an affordable housing shortage and developers are unable to keep up leaving us with an estimated potential shortage of around 3 million units by 2030.?If performing a local market study, how do vacancy, multifamily housing stock, completion and absorption rates affect sub-market cap rates.

?What are you thoughts? Please share them in the comments of this article. I would love to hear differing perspectives and to develop additional ideas for areas to research.

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?Sources

An, Xudong; Deng, Yongheng. (2009), “A Structural Model for Capitalization Rate,” Real Estate Research Institute

Chandrashekaran, V.; Young, Michael S. (2000), “The Predictability of Real Estate Capitalization Rates.”

Clayton, Jim; Glass Dorsey, Lisa. (2009), “Cap Rates & Real Estate Cycles: A Historical Perspective with a Look to the Future,” Cornerstone Real Estate Advisors LLC

Corgel, John B. (2003), “Real Estate Capitalization Rate Interpretations through the Cycle,” Cornell Real Estate Journal (June): 11-18

Grant, Peter. (2022, February 8). “Foreign Investment in U.S. Commercial Property Exceeds Pre-Pandemic Levels”?The Wall Street Journal

https://www.wsj.com/articles/foreign-investment-in-u-s-commercial-property-exceeds-pre-pandemic-levels-11644325201

About the Author:

Dion holds a Master of Science in Finance degree from Northeastern University and has fifteen years of real estate and business experience in the U.S. and China. He is currently the head of economics and business educational programs for the international department of a prestigious high school in China, where he oversees a team that designs curriculum. He has coached teams that have competed in competitions such as Business Pioneer Case Challenge by Harvard Business School and Harvard Business Publishing, and the International Economics Olympiad.?In 2022, he became a Member of the Board of the GOBNework.com, which is a non-profit commercial real estate education, networking and resources platform that helps average people access institutional quality real estate investments..??He founded Delta Bridge Capital, an Ohio-based multifamily real estate investment company, and he hosted the “Multifamily Investor Situation Room Podcast.”? Dion worked as a senior financial analyst and advisor for a real estate private equity group on a $1 billion+ real estate acquisition deal in New York City.?He also served as a financial analyst for a Boston-based opportunistic private equity search fund involved in business syndications having deal value upward of $30 million.?Dion previously held professional real estate licenses in three states where he worked in residential and commercial brokerage with a focus on investors.?He managed a team of six agents and personally closed $10 million in transactions.

Connect with Dion:

1. www.DionHuey.com
2. https://www.GOBNetwork.com/