Consumer Price Index (CPI): It is the measure of inflation as experienced by urban consumers. CPI is more well-known among senior citizens as their Social Security benefit checks are adjusted to the CPI on January to keep pace with inflation. While most commercial real estate leases have fixed annual rent increases, e.g. 2%, some have annual rent increases based on the CPI. Therefore, knowing what CPI is and how to calculate it is an important factor in making a sound investment decision.

The US Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics collects data about costs of various things from 87 urban areas in the US. The data is published each month and available from the website stats.bls.gov. The CPI varies for different regions: Northeast urban, Midwest urban, South urban, West urban, US city average, as well as 14 major metro areas.

So, knowing which CPI stated in the lease will enable an investor to correctly calculate the rent increase. For example, the CPI for US city average was 190.9 in Oct 2004 and 199.2 in October 2005. This reflects a 4.3% increase for the above period or in another words, the inflation was 4.3% during that period. So if the rent from October 2004 to September 2005 was $1000/month and the lease has CPI-based rent increase, then the new rent from October 2005 to September 2006 would be $1043 a month or 4.3% higher. The CPI fluctuates from time to time. When there is no inflation, the CPI is zero and thus there is no rent increase. It could also be negative during a deflationary period which in turn will translate to rent reduction for the tenant.

Cost of Living Index (COLI): COLI is a number that indicates the relative cost of living in various cities in the US with 100 being the average. Employers often increase an employee’s salary when they relocate the employee to a city with higher COLI. The COLI is weighted according to percent of income spent on groceries (12.49%), housing (29.84%), utilities (9.94%), transportation (10.73%), healthcare (4.07%) and others (32.93%). You could obtain the indexes for various cities from http://www.infoplease.com/business/economy/cost-living-index-us-cities.html.

The website http://www.bankrate.com has a COLI comparison calculator for over 300 US cities which provides the costs of 60 various items in each city. In 2007, the COLI for San Francisco was 169.5 while Dallas was only 91.5. This means you would have had to earn 85% (169.5 minus 91.5 then divide by 91.5) more in San Francisco to maintain the same lifestyle in Dallas. Most of the costs will be higher in San Francisco, e.g. housing is 285% higher (housing index is 278.3 in San Francisco and 72.3 in Dallas), some expenses may be lower, e.g. utilities are 11% cheaper in San Francisco compared to Dallas (utilities index is 88.1 in San Francisco and 98.9 in Dallas).

An investor often reviews demographic data of a city where the property is located and generally prefers to invest in areas that are more affluent. However, looking at data of the Average Household Income (AHI) alone does not give you the whole picture. Let’s assume you are an investor in the San Francisco Bay Area and you want to see how the AHI in Plano (Dallas metro) is compared with San Francisco income. You will have a better perspective if you adjust the AHI in Plano to the Cost of Living Index and then compare with the AHI in the San Francisco Bay Area. For example if the AHI is $100K a year in Plano, it would be equivalent to $185,000 in San Francisco. With this adjusted income, you know that Plano is an upper middle class area.

By: David V. Tran

About the Author:
David V. Tran is the President and Chief Investment Advisor at Transmercial (formerly eFunding, Inc.), a commercial real estate & loan brokerage company in San Jose, CA. His website is http://www.transmercial.com. He may be contacted at (408) 288-5500. Transmercial does business in all 50 states. He is the top 5 US commercial real estate expert author. David currently offers 3 FREE real estate investment seminars:
How to invest in commercial real estate.
How to maximize cash flow with 1031 tax-deferred exchange.
TIC: Fractional ownership in high-value commercial properties.

David’s blog features a daily list of Best Commercial Properties in the US to invest. You are welcome to share this report, unedited and in its entirety, with anyone you like. You may not remove this text. © 2007-2010 Transmercial.

In order to make a successful commercial real estate investment you need to know the right questions to ask and the right way to ask them. Since purchasing commercial real estate is a negotiation between the buyer and the seller (and probably their prospective brokers), it is important that you, as the buyer, are prepared. Asking the right questions could help you avoid owning an underperforming asset.

Remember, both parties are trying their best to get what they want, but their goals are diametrically opposed. The seller is trying his or her best to get the highest possible price, while the buyer is trying just as hard to get the property for the least possible amount of money. There’s an old saying in the business: “All sellers are liars, all buyers are thieves.” While I don’t believe in either scenario as a way to do business, those commercial real estate investors who are able to create a win-win transaction will enjoy huge advantages over their more combative competition. And the key to doing that is in your questioning technique.

Finding and creating these win-win deals isn’t easy, but making them happen is the basis of successful real estate investment. In many ways, finding the best deals boils down to knowing which questions to ask and is one of the most important of all real estate “secrets.”

The key is to ask plenty of open ended questions of either the seller or his agent and to not accept a simple “yes” or “no” answer. If you ask an open ended question and get a yes/no answer, your immediate reaction should be to follow up with additional open ended questions! Obviously, if you keep getting yes/no’s to your questions, it may be time to find a more cooperative and serious seller.

Some of the leading questions smart real estate investors use include:

o What can you tell me about this piece of property?

o What makes this particular property a good investment?

o What is it like dealing with the city?

o Tell me about your tenants … neighbors … city, etc.

o What can you do to help me get into this property?

o What financing are you willing to carry?

o What are your neighbors like? Or “how easy are the adjacent property owners to
deal with?

o How quickly do you need to close? Why?

o Why are you selling the property … now?

o What is the existing financing? How can it be assumed?

o What are the down payment requirements?

While the straightforward approach and strategy generally works the best, many successful real estate investors have also found success at using the “Columbo Technique.” For those of you too young to remember, Columbo was a dumpy-looking fictional detective who always seemed a couple of cents short of a dollar. However, he had this process where he’d get up to leave after seeming to conclude his suspect interviews and would say something like: “Oh, Mr. Jones, one more thing …” And that question would usually catch the perpetrator off guard. I suggest trying it during your discovery process. It can be very enlightening!

You’ll need to develop your own list of questions as you do more transactions and I suggest even rehearsing them or incorporating them into some form of due diligence checklist. The bottom line is that the better you question, the better your deals will be.

By: Craig Higdon

About the Author:
WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR E-ZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include this complete blurb with it: Craig Higdon, “The Mortgage Black Belt,” is a commercial mortgage broker. He publishes the weekly “Investment Property Insider” e-zine and the “Real Estate Secrets Blog” (http://www.RealEstateSecretsBlog.com). Sign up now and get a bonus FREE report at http://www.ExcelsionMortgage.com/CommercialNewsletter