Free Tools for Commercial Real Estate Brokers

Contact Winston Rowe and Associates

248-246-2243

Check out these free tools for commercial real estate brokers, they are not affiliate links.

Yes, they are all free no credit card needed.

Compstak Exchange

Free for brokers, appraisers and researchers, CompStak Exchange is a platform for real estate professionals to exchange lease comps in an efficient manner. Exchange comp information you have to get credits and redeem those credits for comps you need, when you need them. Simple.

LeaseMatrix Office Space Calculator

Quickly calculate how much office space you need by inputting the quantity of each type of space you need within your office. You’ll enter the number of private offices, cubicles, meeting rooms, receptions areas, and kitchens. There’re default dimensions for each type of space, but these can be changed. After your data is entered, you’ll see your total usable area and total rentable area.

LoopNet Trends

This widget from LoopNet allows you to get customized market trend graphs based on location and property type. You can get the code and use it to paste these graphs on your website or blog to show how current prices and rents compare to historical data. All you have to do to get access is sign up for a free LoopNet account.

The News Funnel

The News Funnel is a news aggregator and content platform for the real estate industry. You can sign up for a free customized news feed so that you see the real estate news relevant to you.

Customize your feed by filtering for market, industry segment, areas of interest, or keywords. It’s also a great distribution platform for real estate companies to upload and showcase their press releases, videos, blogs, and market research.

PRLog

You can set up your own press room for free and issue multiple free press releases monthly. PRLog has distribution to all of the major search engines with numerous RSS feeds. You can also distribute to your own RSS feeds. It integrates well with all of the social sharing and media platforms.

Valuate

This is a web-based CRE tool that will help you expedite asset valuation and investment analysis. You can use it on its own, or with your existing Excel, but they have plenty of reasons listed on their site why you should use Valuate over Excel.

You can try it out without creating an account and interact with the slick interface to edit Cap Rate, Square Footage, Holding period and more. You can also create a free account to get even more access, all without a credit card.

Waterstone Defeasance

This company specializes in the defeasance process when you’re selling a property or refinancing a loan. The free calculator available on their website can give you a quick estimate of your defeasance costs by entering a handful of data related to the loan.

Commercial Property Loan Calculator

This tool figures payments on a commercial property, offering payment amounts for P & I, Interest-Only and Balloon repayments — along with providing a monthly amortization schedule. This calculator automatically figures the balloon payment based on the entered loan amortization period.

Commercial Property Balloon Loan Calculator

This tool figures a loan’s monthly and balloon payments, based on the amount borrowed, the loan term and the annual interest rate. Then, once you have calculated the monthly payment, click on the “Create Amortization Schedule” button to create a report you can print out. This calculator automatically figures the loan amortization period based on the desired balloon payment.

The USDA Business and Industries (B and I) Loan for Commercial Property in Small Towns

Net Income Multiplier For Business Valuation Winston Rowe and Associates

Real Estate Investing

The strength of this calculation is in its simplicity, because it requires only two pieces of data to compare properties or extrapolate comparable property values.

The net income multiplier (NIM) is the reciprocal of the capitalization rate.

As with the cap rate, you use this to express the relationship between a commercial property’s value and its net operating income (NOI) for the current of the coming year.

The NIM represents the amount that a typical commercial property investor would pay of each dollar.

First, you want to establish the prevailing cap rate for similar commercial properties in your market area.

Second, you find the reciprocal of that rate, the result is the NIM.

Finally, when you see the NOI of a prospective commercial property investment, you multiply the NOI by the NIM to get a quick reading of the commercial property’s value.

How to calculate the NOI:

To calculate the net income multiplier (NIM), take the prevailing, market driven cap rate and find it’s reciprocal.

Net Income Multiplier = 1  /  Capitalization Rate

To us the NIM to estimate a property’s value, multiply by the net operating income (NOI).

Present Value = Net Income Multiplier  X  Net Operating Income

Winston Rowe & Associates, prepared this knowledge based article. They are a no upfront fee commercial real estate advisory and due diligence firm that specializes in financing of commercial real estate transactions.

They can be contacted at 248-246-2243 or visit them online at http://www.winstonrowe.com

Net Income Multiplier For Business Valuation

The strength of this calculation is in its simplicity, because it requires only two pieces of data to compare properties or extrapolate comparable property values.

The net income multiplier (NIM) is the reciprocal of the capitalization rate. As with the cap rate, you use this to express the relationship between a commercial property’s value and its net operating income (NOI) for the current of the coming year.

The NIM represents the amount that a typical commercial property investor would pay of each dollar.

First, you want to establish the prevailing cap rate for similar commercial properties in your market area.

Second, you find the reciprocal of that rate, the result is the NIM.

Finally, when you see the NOI of a prospective commercial property investment, you multiply the NOI by the NIM to get a quick reading of the commercial property’s value.

How to calculate the NOI:

To calculate the net income multiplier (NIM), take the prevailing, market driven cap rate and find it’s reciprocal.

Net Income Multiplier = 1  /  Capitalization Rate

To us the NIM to estimate a property’s value, multiply by the net operating income (NOI).

Present Value = Net Income Multiplier  X  Net Operating Income

Winston Rowe & Associates, prepared this knowledge based article. They are a no upfront fee commercial real estate advisory and due diligence firm that specializes in financing of commercial real estate transactions.

They can be contacted at 248-246-2243 or visit them online at http://www.winstonrowe.com

Calculating A Commercial Lease Rent Per Square Foot

Typically, commercial space is rented by the square foot, and for this reason, the measurement of commercial space is very important.

A commercial building has an overall size, called the gross building area (GBA).

The GBA represents a building’s total floor area, as measured from the outer surface of exterior walls and windows, and includes elevator shafts, utility rooms and basement space.

The percentage of the building that cannot be rented is called the loss percentage.

Typically, the owner takes a portion of that loss and tacks it onto the usable space to make the net rentable area (NRA).

Usable square footage, (USF) is the actual space contained within a tenant’s or all of the tenant’s premises, tenants are able to occupy and use most of that space.

Rentable square footage (RSF) is the number of square feet on which the tenant’s rent is based.

Ultimately, the RSF is whatever number the landlord and the tenant agree on for purposes of their lease.

Definitions of Square Foot Calculations:

Gross Building Area = Total area of all floors, including basement

Usable Square Footage = Actual space occupied by a tenant; for an entire building. Gross Building Area less Common Area

Rentable Square Feet = Defined by lease, but often the USF + an allocated portion of the Common Area

Loss Ratio = Common Area  /  Gross Building Area

Formulas for Square Foot Calculations:

Price per Square Foot = Price  /  Gross Building Area or Net Rentable Area

Income per Square Foot = Gross Scheduled Income  /  Gross Building Area or Net Rentable Area

Expenses per Square Foot = Operating Expenses  /  Gross Building Area or Net Rentable Area

To calculate the Gross Scheduled Income:

Gross Scheduled Income (annual) = Total rent payable for that year under existing contracts for occupied space + Total potential rent at market rates for vacant space.

When negotiating the rent for your commercial lease, you want to translate the dollars per square foot into the actual dollar amounts to head off future measurement disputes.

Winston Rowe & Associates prepared this knowledge base article.

They are a commercial real estate advisory and due diligence firm that specializes in financing of commercial real estate transactions.

They can be contacted at 248-246-2243 or visit them online at http://www.winstonrowe.com