New Orleanians always ask why we can’t get businesses to move here. The answer is that people don't move here. Businesses follow population but population comes first. If you want to revitalize areas such as New Orleans East, you need more people to move there and New Orleans businesses to stop leaving. The numbers are backed up by solid research from The Data Center in their publication: New Orleans Population Shifts.
New Orleans has over 150,000 fewer residents than in 2000 and remains at less than 80% of its pre-Katrina population. Jefferson Parish’s population is relatively stagnant, gaining 8,229 residents this past decade but remains just under 15,000 shy of its pre-Katrina total. St. Tammany Parish continues to boom, adding 30,830 residents this last decade after gaining 42,472 between 2000 and 2010.
We need a plan to grow New Orleans. It’s easy to do. We built a tourism economy based on people coming to visit to enjoy our music and food and fun but we aren’t doing what is needed to get them to stay. We just need to do what other cities are doing to attract people and take positive action. If you look at Atlanta, Austin, Houston and Nashville, they are focusing on taxes, crime and education and the results are jobs and population explosion which leads to business growth.
For more information on what businesses are feasible for the new New Orleans, read our article: What Businesses Will Thrive In New Orleans.
A few weeks ago the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics announced inflation rose 7.9 percent from February 2021 to February 2022, the highest increase since January 1982. That was the month Dwayne Wade, Pete Buttigieg, Kate Middleton and the Commodore 64, an 8-bit home computer, were born, and the year Michael Jackson released "Thriller", Epcot opened and the movie ET made its debut. Unemployment in 1982 was 9.7 percent, the prime rate was 17 percent and Ronald Reagan was president. It was 40 years ago, so today's high inflation period is more of an outlier than a persistent trend. In this article, Louisiana Commercial Realty looks at the components of inflation and how the way you quote it can be misleading.
Price increases for gasoline, shelter, and food were the largest contributors to the Consumer Price Index, which is how we measure inflation. The chart above shows inflation over the last 12 months and the major components that comprise the index. Here is how those components have performed:
For the month of February 2022:
For the 12 months ending February 2022:
The table below shows the components of the CPI and their performance each month from August 2021 to February 2022, plus each component's price increase for the last 12 months. Notice how each month can have a wide variety of price increases but can also have price decreases. Don't be misled when your TV news announces an inflation number for one month and extrapolates that into an annual CPI number. You cannot do the math that way.
The food index increased 1.0 percent in February and the food at home index increased 1.4 percent over the month. All the major food group indexes increased in February:
Price increases for the month of February varied for these components:
For the last 12 months:
The index for all items less food and energy rose 6.4 percent over the past 12 months, with all of its major component indexes rising. The shelter index rose 4.7 percent over the last 12 months, its largest 12-month increase since May 1991. Several transportation indexes showed large increases over the past year, including used cars and trucks (+41.2 percent), new vehicles (+12.4 percent), and airline fares (+12.7 percent).
For February 2022:
The Consumer Price Index is calculated as a single number but is actually 8,018 items grouped into major components which are each affected by supply and demand in their own way, resulting in some components increasing in price rapidly while at the same time others can decrease in price. Since 1914, the CPI has only been above 7.9 percent 12 percent of the time, so the inflation period we have only experienced the last 6 months will not last much longer. In the last 108 years, there have only been 7 periods when inflation was 7.9 percent or higher, with the average period lasting 26 months. These were all periods experiencing an imbalance of supply and demand due to external forces of world wars or a sudden OPEC oil embargo. The beauty of a free market economy is that these supply and demand imbalances are eventually corrected by entrepreneurs and businesses, each acting in their own best interest and motivated by ownership which provides an incentive to compete to provide the best product at the lowest price, which results in bringing prices back into equilibrium.
For more info on how inflation affects commercial real estate, read our article:
3 Common Mistakes In Every Lease
Whether you rent office space, a warehouse, or a retail store, your real estate lease probably has language that ties the rent you pay to the Consumer Price Index. The idea is meant to benefit only the landlord, and helps the rental income retain its purchasing power. The problem is that there is more than one Consumer Price Index and there are different ways to calculate each, so make sure your lease agreement contains language that is very specific. One example of lease language referencing the CPI is:
Method #1-All Urban Consumers (Current)-Consists of all urban households in Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) and in urban places of 2,500 inhabitants or more. Nonfarm consumers living in rural areas within MSAs are included, but the index excludes rural nonmetropolitan consumers and the military and institutional population.
Method #2-Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (Current)-Consists of consumer units with clerical workers, sales workers, protective and other service workers, laborers, or construction workers. More than one-half of the consumer units income has to be earned from these occupations, and at least one of the members must be employed for 37 weeks or more in an eligible occupation.
Method #3-All Urban Consumers (Chained)-The urban consumer population is deemed by many as a better representative measure of the general public because 90% of the country’s population lives in urban areas. Using chained CPI means the rate at which Social Security benefits tick up would be slower, because it reflects substitutions consumers would make in response to rising prices of certain items. Therein lies the “chained” part of the name. The metric utilizes a basket of goods and services that are measured changes from month to month; much like a daisy chain. If the cost of a certain form of transportation goes up, for example, people might switch to another kind. This kind of “substitution” is part of what is factored into chained CPI.
Method #4-Average Price Data-Calculated for specific items such as household fuel, motor fuel, and food items from prices collected for the Consumer Price Index (CPI). Average prices are best used to measure the price level in a particular month, not to measure price change over time.
In calculating the CPI, the urban portion of the United States is divided into 38 geographic areas called index areas, and the set of all goods and services purchased by consumers is divided into 211 categories called item strata. This results in 8,018 (38 × 211) combinations.
The CPI is calculated in two stages. The first stage is the calculation of basic indexes, which show the average price change of the items within each of the 8,018 CPI item-area combinations. At the second stage, aggregate indexes are produced by averaging across subsets of the 8,018 CPI item–area combinations.
Percent changes for periods other than 1 year often are expressed as annualized percentages. Annualized percent changes indicate what the change would be if the CPI continued to change at the same rate each month over a 12-month period. These are calculated using the standard formula for compound growth:
The CPI represents all goods and services purchased for consumption by the reference population with all expenditure items divided into more than 200 categories, arranged into eight major groups. Major groups and examples of categories in each are as follows:
The Bureau of Labor Statistics, under the Department of Labor, releases the latest Consumer Price Index numbers, using the All Urban Consumers Index which increased 0.8 percent in February 2022, but this was for only one month. The seasonally adjusted CPI number for the last 12 months increased 7.9 percent, due mostly to an unadjusted 38 percent increase in gas and a 41 percent increase in used car prices.
Some categories increased prices dramatically the last month while other category price increases were small, which is why the CPI can be misleading. The categories of gas and fuel oil increased the most; however, the categories of medical care and food away from home increased only slightly and electricity and used car prices actually fell. These numbers are only for one month, and a commercial real estate lease should use the annual number. The all items index rose 7.9 percent for the 12 months ending February 2022, but the index for all items less food and energy rose 6.4 percent. The food index rose 7.9 percent while medical care prices only rose 2.4 percent.
Inflation is not what it used to be. In the 1980s the CPI approached 20% and the greatest economist alive said it was going to 25 percent. It went to 2 percent. Our economy today has been driven by a different wage/price spiral over the last 40 years, resulting in low inflation which helps borrowers but hurts landlords and savers. Building in a CPI adjustment can still make a difference in a long term real estate lease, as shown in the table below which compares a 1 percent CPI to a 2 percent CPI adjustment over a 25 year time frame. In the scenario below, 1 percent incremental rate increase annually results in $378,000 additional income over the 25 year span, and assuming a 10 percent Capitalization Rate, increases the market value of the property $338,000, or 26%.
In leasing any type of property, whether you are the landlord or the tenant, make sure your lease is clear about what the rent is, and what inflation adjustments apply to the rent. Even though some parties say they use a standard lease, there is no such thing. A lease is an agreement between two parties, and you should revise it to include language that works for you. As always, consult an expert.
Present Value in Real Estate Allows You To Compare Cash FlowsThe best single tool that you can use over and over again in a variety of situations to help you make smarter real estate decisions is a mathematical formula called Present Value. You can use present value in real estate whenever a deposit is made on the property to determine the lost income, or when a buyer agrees to pay money sometime in the future to a seller, or in terminating a lease prematurely, or in determining how rent payments might apply toward a purchase price, or in deciding whether to lease or purchase, or in figuring how much to pay for property that produces income. It works not only in real estate but also in valuing investments and anytime you need to put into current dollars a flow of money that lies in the future.
Present Value is used anytime you have money paid in the future but need to know what it is worth today in order to make the right decision. Present value helps you put different scenarios of cash flows on the same playing field so that you can compare the options. Even though there are templates and apps that can do the work for you, it helps to understand the basics. The Apple Store has dozens of Present Value apps. Even the US government will give you a template to use for GSA contracts. But the best way to understand how the math tool helps is to use a simple spreadsheet.
Let’s set up an example and work it through. One real-life example is how to get out of a lease. A lease commits the tenant to a long-term payment, in return for the predictability of having space in which to operate. Just ask the New Orleans Roly Poly sandwich shop owners, previously on Tchoupitoulas and Jefferson, why a lease commitment is important. You’ll have trouble finding them though because they did not have a long term lease and when the property owner wanted to build a Regions Bank branch, Roly Poly is no more. They shut down Roly Poly entirely, lost their income and the building was demolished by the landlord. So leases are good things to have. The commitment when obtaining a lease is that you will lease the property for several years. More often than not, you will personally guarantee the lease and the property owner will come after any personal assets if you terminate the lease prematurely.
Let’s examine a situation where you lease the property but want to cancel the lease. Maybe you are moving to a bigger space in Elmwood. Maybe you are moving to do more government contracts in Baton Rouge. Maybe you are closing down your business and retiring but don’t want to subject yourself to a lawsuit from the property owner who now will not have income from the lease payments to pay the bank the mortgage on the property and faces the bank coming after his personal property because you no longer can pay the rent.
Present Value is the following formula:
Don’t let the denominator throw you. The Present Value (PV) is the Future Value Payment (C) divided by the Assumed Growth (1+i) where i is the interest rate expressed as a decimal, times the number of periods money is paid (n).
Assume you have a 5-year lease with monthly payments of $10,000 and you want to get out of the lease that started January 1, 2021. You are obligated to make 12 monthly payments totaling $120,000 per year for 5 years or a grand total of $600,000. But you don’t offer to pay the landlord the entire $600,000 now to terminate the lease because he would normally have received that in future monthly payments, and a lump sum now can be invested over the next 5 years to grow to more than $600,000. So how much is $600,000 over the next 5 years worth in current dollars as a lump sum? So our spreadsheet starts like this:
In the Present Value cell, enter the formula: =120,000 ÷ (1+.05) where .05 is 5% which is an assumption of the interest rate or growth rate of that money. Our (n) value equals 1. If you were earning your MBA, the professor would instruct you to use the Treasury Bill rate for n, but we are not in MBA class so in this case it is 5% which is an assumption factoring in risk to come up with an interest rate that the landlord would need to earn on your lump sum to replace the lost income you are no longer paying. So now our formula looks like this:
The result shows the Present Value which is the amount of money it would take today if invested at 5% to grow to $120,000 in 12 months. Double check by multiplying the growth ($114,286 times 5%, or $5,714) and adding it back to the principal ($114,286).
To get more accurate you can compound the cash flows monthly, and assume you get all the income at the midpoint of the year, but in that case you would want to use a template. Now we have to carry this out for 5 years to determine the total amount, so our spreadsheet looks like this:
The only change is that in each subsequent year the present value formula adds another (1+.05) to the denominator.
All you do is add up each year’s Present Value for a total of $519,537. This is the amount in current dollars invested at 5% that grows to $600,000; therefore, this is the maximum amount a tenant would offer a landlord today to cancel a 5-year lease with payments of $10,000 per month.
In 2020 it was reported that the vacant-since-Katrina 197 room Warwick Hotel at 1315 Gravier in New Orleans sold for $8 million, but like so many commercial properties in 300 year old New Orleans, it has a fascinating history including the mysterious death of an owner, a $300 million dollar fraud, Israeli organized crime, a grisly double murder, connections to the president of Israel and also a local prominent attorney, not to mention an uncanny ability to avoid any fines for building code violations for 14 years.
The Warwick Hotel is a 12-story, 120,000-square-foot dilapidated hotel and vacant since Katrina. It was originally constructed in 1952 but renovated in 2000 and previously under the Ramada Inn and Comfort Inn flags. The 176 room property includes 22 oversized one-bedroom suites, 8 junior suites, rooms with one king or two queen beds and handicap-accessible rooms. The hotel is closed and rooms are gutted and some have mold.
The property records date back to 1951 when it was leased to the Warwick Corporation until sold in 1997 by owners Warwick Exchange, LLC and Rosary Hartel O’Neill for $1,300,000 to Warwick Corporation with Rob Mouton as the attorney at that time helping with the purchase. Recently the attorney was changed to Marc Dorsey who is related to a prolific developer in New Orleans owning retail centers in New Orleans East and hotels downtown.
The primary owner of Warwick was Joseph Soleimani, who also owned the Sea Club Resort in Ft. Lauderdale, but in 2013 ownership of the Warwick was transferred to Shimon Levy. Soleimani died the next year. Levy was reported by David Kidwell at the Miami Herald as having ties to Israeli organized crime and spent a year in an Israeli prison. Levy was also convicted of tax evasion. His business partner at the Sea Club was Zvika Yuz who was shot in the face as he parked his car at the hotel. Yuz was an Israeli native who lived in Miami and was instrumental in one of the largest fraud schemes in Florida history, masterminding his 36 employees who bilked 1,800 investors out of $300 million. Yuz was believed to have been connected to the “List of 11”, known as the top 11 Israeli organized crime figures. Yuz’s business partner, Shimon Levy, spent a year in prison in 1981 after he helped hide two top organized crime figures wanted in a grisly double murder in Israel.
Warwick owner Levy was granted a visa to enter the US because immigration officials were unaware of his Israeli conviction as an accessory to murder since former Israeli president Chaim Herzog ordered Levy’s records destroyed.
Shimon Levy decided to let the Warwick Hotel sit vacant for 14 years, willing to forgo millions in lost income if the hotel had been in commerce. The common belief was that the purpose of Levy owning the hotel was simply to park illicit profits from crime and drugs, not so much as to make money.
The daily business operations for the vacant hotel were left to Yoram Moussaieff, who also operated Revolt which was affiliated with Federal Jeans, an outlet in New York with reported $15 million in blue jean sales. Yoram and I discussed putting the property back into commerce several times over several years, and he arranged a tour in 2017. The building was dilapidated with mold and stripped of any copper wiring which was common for neglected buildings after Katrina, but not so common 14 years later. After walking through each of the 12 floors with a contractor, we estimated it would take approximately $10 million to put the 197 rooms back into commerce, so our price for the property was $12 million. The owners thought it was worth $20 million, as-is. So the building sat vacant for another year.
Then the general manager called to report he had an offer for $18 million but would sell for $20 million to anyone else. The numbers just don’t work at that price, but it appeared none of the principals listed by the Secretary of State for the Warwick Corporation (Shimon Levy, Eldad Israel and Yoram Moussaieff) had been to the property in 14 years since Katrina destroyed it, so they were unaware of a realistic value.
As a commercial real estate broker in New Orleans, I regularly analyze financials to determine a property’s appropriate market price. After touring the Warwick and walking through each of the 176 rooms on the 12 floors, I prepared the best and worse case scenario below and other financials. This simple analysis gives you an insight into how a buyer approaches a valuation by working through the numbers backward. First you calculate the revenues you would generate after the project is finished. Then you back in expenses. What is left over is how much you can pay for the property now.
In the worst-case scenario, the most elastic variable is the occupancy rate. For hotels, a bad number is 60%, which we saw a lot of during the 2008 recession. Room rates for high-end hotels can average $150, but during the August hot month, even good hotels drop their rate to $100. This is a $50 drop, which is 33% and a disaster for hotels. So assuming the worst 60% occupancy but keeping the rate at $150 per night, the pro-forma revenues total $5.7 million and expenses average 60% at $2.3 million for a profit of $2.3 million annually. That values the hotel at $28 million, so you never want to have more than $20 million in an investment like that, because you have to allow for at least $8 million as compensation for putting your capital to work in this project versus something like an oil well. Hotels are so risky that recently on a different project, 5 local banks refused to loan $5 million to a buyer who had $1 million deposit on a $6 million dollar renovation loan. So buyers have to be compensated for their risk especially when financing is difficult. That makes this scenario really a break-even transaction which scares most buyers away.
The best-case scenario is what developers hope for but never count on. What if the occupancy rate rose to 80%? They survive on a night when a convention in town, Essence Festival, Jazz Fest, Mardi Gras, or any other reason we hope to have 13 million visitors like we did before Covid. If occupancy rises above 80%, the room rate could climb to $225, then the revenues jump from $5.7 to $11.5 million and the net operating income approximates $4.6 million, valuing the business at $57 million. A well-run hotel can be very profitable, but there are very few who can run one well, which is why no bank wants to loan money to buy one.
Every college business student learns tariffs are bad for economies that believe in free markets and competition and textbooks are filled with charts showing how tariffs suck money out of consumers’ pockets.
At first glance, imposing tariffs or quotas seems to be the perfect solution to get American industries back on track to prosperity, but the reality is that tariffs steal money out of consumers’ pockets by increasing prices, stifling creativity, rewarding inefficiencies and destroying the competitive drive that allows a free market economy to deliver cheaper, smarter and innovative products to you. If you skipped college or avoided a business degree, you missed the most basic economics course that explains why tariffs and quotas work in communist countries but never work in a free market economy. This article refreshes you on Econ 101 and explains why tariffs in America cost you over $70 billion every year.
The chart above illustrates the interaction between increased quantity and increased prices for buyers (demand curve) and suppliers (supply curve). The supply curve always rises since as prices increase, providers of goods want to sell more, and the demand curve always declines, since as prices rise, consumers always want to buy less. The intersection of supply and demand tells us the long term equilibrium of price and quantity.
Domestic producers are exempt from the tariff. A quota is a limit on the quantity allowed to be imported. The result of both is an increase in the price of the good, from the market price to the new tariff price. American manufacturers get to charge the new price, but manufacturers overseas receive the market price but pay the tariff to the US government. The government gains area “D” in the chart below (the revenue from the tariff); however, American consumers pay the higher price measured by areas A+B+C+D. Even if the government passes along to consumers the revenue from the tariff, the loss to consumers is still area B+D.
Tariffs and quotas are BAD public policy. Tariffs undermine competitive discipline which forces industries to always reduce cost and increase efficiency, driving creativity and invention. Protectionism has a narcotic effect, allowing sick industries to avoid facing up to their problems. These 3 reports explain in detail how our responses in the past only made things worse:
America has many precedents that teach us tariffs are bad policy, and the most obvious is the steel industry, promoted over the last 4 years as an example that tariffs would help. Going back 70 years, the steel industry was an oligopoly, with just a few manufacturers and little competition, allowing the industry to raise prices 9% annually in the late 1940s (twice the rate of wholesale prices). In the early 1950s, steel prices increased 4.8% annually at a time when the wholesale price index was falling. In the late 1950s, steel prices increased 7.1% annually, three times wholesale prices. In 1969, quotas were imposed and steel prices increased 14 times greater than they had in the previous 9 years, during a time of recession that caused 25% of industry capacity to be idle. The result was a lag in technology. American steel companies failed to introduce the oxygen process and continuous casting which put them at a disadvantage. Their oligopolistic pricing policy kept American companies from competing in the world market and eventually allowed imports to erode their market by producing a better product at a lower price. We can learn from history that tariffs are as un-American as you can get.
