Thursday, April 30th, 2009
The advancing agent may at times fill the gap where there is an interest shortfall on the senior notes, or to make a cure advance on a B-note. Another form of financing, a revolving credit facility, may be used to aid the acquisition of assets.
An interest advance may be made by the advancing agent in the event of an interest shortfall on the senior notes if the advance is deemed recoverable.
Such an advance would be reimbursed along with any accrued interest first in the interest waterfall and then with principal proceeds, if interest proves insufficient.
A cure advance may be made by a B-note investor to cover a shortfall in property cash flow and forestall a default. In the CRE CDO structure, such an advance may be made by the advancing agent contingent on approval by the majority of subordinate noteholders, if the portfolio manager believes the advance to be recoverable.
The revolving credit facility (RCF) may be drawn on to fund the acquisition of assets during the investment period and the reinvestment period. The RCF serves to reduce the negative carry effect of retaining a large cash balance in the deal and gives the manager flexibility with the timing of acquisitions. Draws on the credit facility are reimbursed pro rata with Class A interest.
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Thursday, April 23rd, 2009
Value influencing property characteristics can be property-specific or market-wide: the former refers to the spatial, physical and legal attributes of the property itself and the latter refers to the characteristics of the market as a whole or the market sector in which the property operates. Fundamentally, the market value of a property reflects its capacity to fulfil a function. If the property is a shop, for example, then its value will be determined by factors such as trading position, length of frontage, accessibility, planning restrictions and tenure. We shall see later how it is important to be able to quantify financially these value factors as part of the valuation processs (comparison adjustment). This is not an easy task and provides substance to the argument that valuation is as much an art as it is a science.
There are two levels of property value analysis: property-specific and market overview. The value of a property is largely determined by its competitive position in the market in which it operates. Therefore, both property-specific and market-wide factors must be considered to delineate the market by investigating property type features such as (single or multiple) occupancy, use, construction types, design, amenities, geographical extent, available substitutes and complementary land uses.
The built environment cannot be treated like a clinical laboratory and in practice variations in valuations will occur. Rates of inflation will alter, market conditions will change the expected rates of return and unforeseen events will happen. The calculations performed in valuations assume ceteris paribus.
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Sunday, April 19th, 2009
While the Mortgage Broker Practices Act generally prohibits taking a fee upfront, a licensee performing a loan modification may charge fees upfront for services to be provided.
Licensees that charge a fee for loan modification services in advance of the services being provided must obtain a signed fee agreement for loan modification services from the borrower. Any fees paid in advance of services provided must go into the company’s trust account prior to disbursement, or be submitted to an independent escrow or title company to be held until disbursed at the instruction of the parties consistent with the fee agreement. Licensees are prohibited from collecting fees via direct access to a borrower’s bank account or via use of the borrower’s credit card.
A loan modification normally begins with a hardship analysis which is an examination of the borrower’s current mortgage, income, expenses, and ability to repay. The hardship analysis includes meetings or conversations with the borrower(s) and a determination of the borrower’s eligibility for a modification based on the particular lender’s eligibility requirements or the eligibility requirements of a federal modification program. The hardship analysis, sometimes referred to as “Phase I services,” should take no more than five hours to complete. The usual or customary fee for a hardship analysis of an owner-occupied first lien mortgage and second lien, if applicable, is $750 or less.
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Saturday, April 18th, 2009
The simplest business activity tax asks a business to report its value added by activities in a state and pay a small percentage of that (e.g., 0.25%) as state tax. A different approach asks for this payment only if it is larger than what is owed under the corporate income tax. This approach doesn’t change the tax liability of most profitable corporations but provides a minimum tax for corporations experiencing losses and non-corporate business forms such as partnerships.
New Hampshire has such a tax. Nevada has seriously considered one and may have enacted it. The concept had considerable support in Texas in 1997 and probably would have been enacted except for a problem that exists in Texas but doesn’t exist in Tennessee. The Texas Constitution bars any tax based on income, so the Tennessee tax on dividends and interest would be unconstitutional in Texas. As applied to a company selling professional services, the value-added tax base is almost identical to what an income tax base would be. For sure, any Texas business activity tax would have been tied up in court and might have been declared contrary to the state’s constitution.
For more detail on business activity taxes and proposals that some form of this tax be adopted in Tennessee, see the Tennessee Department of Revenue paper, Business Taxes: Current Structure And Options For Change.
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Friday, April 17th, 2009
The easiest way to think of value added by a firm is to subtract the value (cost) of what it buys from other firms from its total revenues. For example, the value added by a car manufacturer is its selling price of a car minus what it pays to the companies that make the axles, sold the paint, transported the cars to the dealers, etc.
Another way to think of value added is as what a company pays out to anyone other than its suppliers. That is the sum of: (1) compensation of its employees and (2) payments to providers of capital including interest and the components of profits or return on equity which are retained earnings and dividends.
Firms differ greatly in the in the percentage of their revenues associated with value added. A huge percentage of the revenues of grocery stores, for example, goes into paying producers of cereal, meats, frozen goods, and its other suppliers. Only a tiny percentage of the revenues of accounting firms goes to pay suppliers of office space and paper clips; most goes to employee salaries.
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Thursday, April 16th, 2009
The concept of taxing value added continues to receive substantial attention at the federal and state levels.
Eliminating the federal corporate income tax and substituting a value added tax for it and perhaps for all or part of the federal individual income tax interests many people for many complex reasons. The most lasting one is economic competition. Nearly all the major industrial nations have value added taxes. This and the provision of the international agreement on trade and tariffs means: (1) when Mercedes sells a German-made car in Germany, the price includes a value added tax of over 10% but when it sells the same car in the U.S. the 10% is subtracted but (2) when Ford sells an American-made car in the U.S. the price includes U.S. and stateq corporate income taxes and when it sells the same car in Germany the corporate income tax
burden cannot be subtracted.
A value added tax was adopted in Michigan several decades ago for a different reason. Most corporate income tax revenue in Michigan came from the production of vehicles, vehicle parts, and capital goods, like machine tools — all subject to business cycles. Some years, nearly all these manufacturers would have losses and with no income to tax would pay no state corporate income taxes, at a time when the state government most needed revenues. In good years, these companies would make large profits and pay large sums to the state. By shifting its tax base from profits to value added, Michigan reduced the volatility of its revenues.
Value added taxes have been seriously considered for other states, such as Louisiana, and have some highly respected advocates such as a prominent former director of the National Association of State Budget Officers. This family of proposals typically involves using a value added tax as a replacement for the corporate income tax and, in some instances, other taxes. Business activity taxes are conceptually similar to value added taxes but are normally discussed as overlays to existing corporate income taxes and in the few states without corporate income taxes.
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