Christian Osgood argues that extreme interest rates like 2.75% debt won't last, and investors should underwrite conservatively by projecting property values seven years out based on today's rents, not optimistic growth. U.S. property values have risen long-term despite short-term swings, with few exceptions like Detroit.
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when you have historically, if you're at any of the extremes, you generally would assume in your math that it's not going to stay extreme. There are a lot of people like 2.75% debt is obviously extremely low. It would have been pretty basic underwriting to say, hey, we shouldn't do our underwriting as the market still being, uh, at 2.5% interest in 5 years. That would be a crazy thing to assume, and a lot of people did assume it. And so that is where you're seeing a lot of people get cooked. Um, the easy way to run this, so there, there are exceptions based on cities. So like Detroit would be an example of a city that had a longer market decrease. But generally, nationally, there are no— like, statistically, there is no time where values did not go up over an 8-year period. Values fluctuate, they go up and down, but they do go up over time. We print more money, we have— there's a lot of drivers behind that. But just supply-demand inflation will drive up pricing over the long term. So long term is generally considered 7+ years. You're in long-term debt if you're buying today. For what it's worth, exactly what the property is worth, I can guarantee you that you will be able to in 7 or more years, it will be worth more if nothing changes at all. That being said, most of the deals we're looking at here, you also have some operating plan where you're going to improve something. So you're where you should be. And this is why we do that intro and exit math is intro math. Where's it at today? In 7 years, where do I conservatively think it's going to be? And then in reality, we don't really factor for a whole lot of like good things happening. It's only like, hey, if I I just get to today's market rent in 7 years. What actually happens is market rent goes up.