The Investor's Secret Weapon
Leverage can magnify real estate outcomes. Here is how the debt works — and how it can kill deals.
Leverage can make a deal work. It can also quietly move the danger into the loan documents.
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Anyone who has heard "conservative leverage" and wants the receipts.
You see how the loan can save, stretch, or wreck the plan.
Follow the loan terms. Rate, maturity, caps, covenants, and recourse matter more than the brochure tone.
Debt smiles until the calendar gets ugly.
Rate, maturity, covenants, caps, and recourse decide how much time a plan has. Do not let the loan hide in the footnotes.
- Rate and cap
- Maturity date
- Covenants
- Refi assumption
The loan can be the quiet villain.
Start with leverage, then inspect rates, caps, maturity, covenants, and recourse.
How leverage helps, stretches, or wrecks a plan.
Debt terms are not footnotes. They are often the timer on the deal.
Learn the debt menu
Agency, bridge, banks, CMBS, debt funds, fixed, and floating.
Read the sharp edges
Rate caps, LTV, LTC, amortization, interest-only, recourse, and covenants.
Watch the exit clock
Assumptions, refinances, supplementals, rising rates, and terms that should scare you.
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