Frequently Asked Questions

How We Mitigate Risk When Acquiring Multi-Family Assets

Disciplined Buying

The demand for apartment communities is very high. Investors are often willing to pay low 5’s to low 6 cap rates for Class B and C communities. Bidding frenzies can make it easy to get caught up in “the market” and overpay – even for sophisticated institutional quality investors who are consistently being outbid by other investors. Our discipline ensures we never get attached to a deal. We also believe in a conservative investment approach to factors we control and even more conservative in the expectations we do not control such as interest rates; rent growth; etc. We believe that when we buy assets that generate strong double-digit cash flow, based on current market rents, we will be in the best position to weather market changes.

Strong In-House Management

DLP Property Managers provides DLP Capital with the significant advantage of having a top notch, an in-house management team whose interest are aligned with investors and the fund. DLP Property Management has been able to drastically beat industry benchmarks in terms of physical occupancy, effective occupancy, tenant retention and collected revenue.

Long-term, Non-recourse Debt

A key factor in real estate investments in the utilization of debt. DLP focuses on utilizing debt in a relatively conservative manner; typically with a maximum of leverage of 75% of costs at the time of purchase. As a whole, DLP’s real estate holdings have an LTV of about 55%. In addition, to utilize leverage conservatively, DLP focuses on locking in long-term debt with no recourse to investors. This allows cash flow and investor returns to have no direct effect from rising interest rates.

How We Mitigate Risk When Lending Capital to Real Estate Investors

Loan to Value Ratio:

When originating real estate loans, one of the most important metrics is the loan to value. Requiring significant equity in the investment allows us to account for unforeseen changes in the economy or the property. For our most of our loans, we limit the LTV to 65% or less with an average LTV of 54%.

Cash Invested by Borrower (Loan to Cost):

Arguably, the #1 determination of the success of a loan is the cash invested by the borrower. We believe strongly in the “old school” principles of lending: 20% down by the borrower drastically decreases the risk of default. On average, DLP funds 73% loan to cost, requiring the borrower to invest 25% of the purchase price plus 25% of the renovation costs out of pocket at the purchase of the property.

Title Insurance:

One of the risks in real estate investing is a “clouded” title. Investors want to be sure the title is free of any outstanding litigation or liens. When investing in private notes, it is important to be in first position, so no other lenders have claim to the property before you. Working with a reputable title company and a partner who can help with all the administrative work can be beneficial if you do not have experience doing this yourself.

Hazard Insurance:

Our private note investors are secured through hazard insurance in the event anything happens to the property, such as a fire or flood. The insurance payout goes to the investor before the property owner can receive the funds.

Escrow of Rehab Funds:

When DLP Capital Partners lends money to any borrowers outside of DLP Capital Partners and its executive team, all rehab funds are held in escrow with DLP Capital Partners and are only released after each stage of the renovation is complete.

Professional Project/Renovation Management:

DLP Capital Partners controls the renovation by employing professional project management and/or third party inspectors to oversee the renovation, ensuring the work is completed to our satisfaction and that our investors are exposed to very little risk.

Strong Borrowers:

When DLP Capital Partners lends capital to investors, a thorough financial and credit analysis is performed. DLP Capital Partners focuses on lending to experienced, seasoned, and financially stable borrowers.

Our return rates indicate exactly what you will earn, with no hidden costs. DLP Capital Partners takes care of any fees.

Investors have the option of taking monthly distributions or letting interest compound and grow. You can switch at any time and/or do a combination (e.g., take a $1000 distribution each month and allow the remainder of your returns to compound).

You may add any amount of money to your existing investment at any time, in $1,000 increments. So as an example, if you have $10,000 free – you can add that to your current investment at any time, or in most cases even invest that money into a different fund or note time frame if you choose.

An increase in rates would actually be a positive for DLP Capital in many ways. First of all – when it comes to DLP Lending – higher interest rates charged by banks would make it easier to charge the typical 13-15% interest rates by Direct Lending Partner. In addition, typically rising rates are a sign of a strong real estate market which, of course, is good news for DLP Capital Partners. Lastly, and maybe most importantly, is that we expect when rates rise, many investors are going to be in trouble as their fixed rate periods end and we expect an increased volume of distressed opportunities. Many investors right now are purchasing multi-family properties at 6% cap rates. You can generate an 8-9% return when you have a 4% interest rate, but when rates go up to say 6% all of a sudden these investments no longer make sense, and we expect banks to end up taking back a good volume of assets that we will, in turn, pick up at big discounts. We focus on buying at the north of 9 cap rate at stabilization which puts us in a strong cash flow position. Also, most of our debt has fixed terms of 4-6 years remaining or more. Also in June, Morgan Stanley strategists predicted no increase in interest rates until 2018.

Two key factors that led to the 2008 real estate collapse were loose lending practices that failed to verify the income of Borrowers, and high LTV terms which allowed Borrowers to purchase real estate without contributing much equity into the acquisition. DLP Capital and DLP Lending follow a strict underwriting process that evaluates the cash flow and repayment capacity of all Borrowers and restricts lending amounts to 65% of ARV of the real estate. The low LTV nature of DLP Capital loans allows an additional level of security in the event that the real estate market is too slow/decline. In addition, DLP Capital Partners focuses on owning cash flow positive assets. So if there was a market collapse, and property values saw a steep decline, DLP would not be “under the gun” to sell its assets at lower prices, as the assets will produce strong cash flow which will be for the most part unaffected by the decrease in property values that a “2008” collapse would bring. Also, a collapse like 2008 would create tremendous investment opportunities for DLP to capitalize on.

Investments are considered collectively so that you can split your minimum investments between accounts (e.g., $100,000 in a Note Fund and $150,000 in an Equity Fund to satisfy a $250,000 minimum.)

Securing funding through banks is often a challenge for flippers since banks typically only fund 75% of the purchase price of a property, while the borrower needs money to cover the purchase AND rehab. DLP Lending uses a common sense approach in addition to the same underwriting standards banks follow to grant loans based on the speculative value of the property after repairs. Also, the typical loan duration for DLP Lending is only six months, so higher interest rates aren’t a big factor for borrowers.

The Individual Retirement Account (IRA) is one of the most powerful long-term investment vehicles available to investors because of the tax-deferred or tax-free nature of either a traditional IRA or a Roth IRA. Either type of IRA can be invested in our Funds, allowing your high-yield returns to add up even faster. While the concept of investing IRA funds in real estate related investments have been around for more than 30 years, it has not received a great deal of attention. Most custodians that offer IRAs (banks and brokerage firms) focus on mutual funds and CDs because they have a vested financial interest in having you select those investments. Because the majority of IRA investors focus on stocks and CDs, there is a misperception that these are your only investment options for retirement plans, but this is not the case. A self-directed IRA is unique because of the investment options available. Most IRAs only allow approved stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and CDs. A truly self-directed IRA allows those types of investments along with real estate, notes, private placements, tax lien certificates and much more. The process is easy; we handle the paperwork to get your account set up with a qualified asset custodian company and make your investment into one of our funds. The custodian company handles all the legal requirements to ensure your IRA complies with IRS regulations. The Internal Revenue Code sets high standards for a qualified custodian of IRA accounts, which includes banks, trust companies, and approved brokerage firms. By law, their governing bodies are mandated to conduct regular audits of trust companies performed by state auditors.