Our 10 Most-Viewed Commercial Real Estate Articles from 2017

Origin Investments is committed to educating individuals on investing in commercial real estate. At the start of 2018, we’re looking back at our most-viewed articles to assess what resonated with readers this year. Here are our ten most viewed commercial real estate investing articles from 2017, in descending order:

10. Small Real Estate Funds Hold Big Edge in Growing Investor Wealth. Size matters when investing in private equity real estate. In this article, we analyzed Preqin’s return on investment data for private equity real estate funds and found that small asset managers outperform big money.

9. What You Need to Know About a Capital Call Fund. When an investor joins an Origin fund, we ask them to keep their money until a later date. In this article, we explain how this “capital call approach” works and why it benefits investors.

8. What Trends Are Driving Profits for Commercial Real Estate Funds? In this article, we predicted how we thought commercial real estate funds would perform in 2017 and identified the most compelling trends we saw in our target markets this year.

7. How is Origin Different than Traditional Crowdfunding Sites? Crowdfunding is a buzzword in the real estate investment industry, but really isn’t anything new. Learn how Origin is very different from traditional crowdfunding sites in this article.

6. The Impact of Leverage on Real Estate Returns. Leverage, or how much debt is used to finance an investment property, is an important metric that investors need to pay close attention to when comparing real estate funds or deals. This article uses a hypothetical example to show the impact to equity when we finance an investment with different leverage amounts.

5. What’s the Best Way to Invest in Commercial Real Estate? Many investors grapple with buying real estate investment properties on their own or with friends or acquaintances versus utilizing a private equity real estate fund. In this article, we share stories from two of our investors who have experience in both managing investment properties on their own and investing in private equity real estate funds, like Origin.

4. How to Use a Private Placement Memorandum (PPM) to Evaluate a Private Equity Real Estate Investment. A PPM is technical, lengthy and filled with legal jargon and disclaimers that would pretty much scare anyone out of investing in a private investment. In this article, we break down the most important components of a PPM and tell you what to look for when evaluating a private investment opportunity.

3. Private REITs vs. Private Equity Real Estate? Buyer Beware. We believe private equity real estate funds are a better alternative to private REITs. One of our partners tackled this topic in his first article for Forbes Real Estate Council. We then expanded on his thoughts in this article, which goes into detail on two negative aspects of private REITs.

2. 6 Ways the New Tax Cuts and Jobs Act Impacts Individual Real Estate Investors. President Trump’s new Tax Cuts and Jobs Act has major ramifications on commercial real estate investments, which we believe will result in greater demand for commercial real estate. In this article, we identify six key parts of the new tax law that will have the greatest impact on individual real estate investors, both positively and negatively.

1. Cap Rate vs. Return on Cost: Valuing Commercial Real Estate. In this article, we share how we think about cap rates and return on cost metrics and how we use these terms to value a real estate investment.

Is There Something You Want to Read About?

If there is a pressing question you have on your mind about investing in commercial real estate as an individual investor, please email investorrelations@origininvestments.com with your ideas and we’ll do our best to write about it.

We look forward to producing more educational articles for you throughout 2018.