We have added a Graph Library in the Reports/Income Statements function. This new Graph Library allows you to recall and save Graph Specifications for Graphs of your choice using the new Adds and Overlay Lists added in Version 15. Graph Specifications that you save are valid, and may be used/opened, regardless of the current settings for the Period Menu (Yearly / Quarterly / Monthly) and regardless of the View Setting (ProForma / Common Size / SqFt/Unit). This capability allows you to save literally millions of graphs of your own design for future recall and production with any of your analyses. The Graph Specifications saved include the current settings for the graph controls (Font, for instance) at the time of the save, so recalled graphs will appear as they were when saved, rather than being configured to current control settings. A Remarks text box is shown at the screen bottom right (overwriting the Report View box) when you open a Graph Specification, and showing the remarks entered the last time you saved the recovered graph. You may save whatever text you want here, and it is presented as the default Graph Commentary in the Graph Print Options Dialog Box. The Graph shown when you open a specification will agree with the current values for the Period Menu and View Setting, and the data shown in the graph will agree with the current data shown in the report specified by these controls. Therefore, if you open a graph which calls for (and shows, for instance) the Cash on Cash Before Tax Ratio, that ratio must be shown in the report currently specified (and shown), or you will receive an Error Message telling you that the data cannot be found, and the graph to be opened cannot be produced. The Graph Specifications that you save use the Line Title (for instance "Cash on Cash Before Tax") to find the data to produce in your graph. Editing these Line Titles will cause the loaded Graph Specification to be unable to find the required data, causing an Error Message unless you edit the Line Title in the current report accordingly. We suggest you avoid editing Line Titles if you want to use the Graph Library. We ship planEASe with a small library of Graph Specifications you may want to use for your analyses. To distinguish between our graphs and those you may want to add yourself, all our Graph Specification files begin with the letters "pe". Beyond that, we add, for example: pe_us_pf for Unit Sales Graphs preferring the ProForma view pe_ia_cs for Investment Analysis Graphs preferring the Common Size view pe_ds_sf for Development Spending Graphs preferring the Unit/SqFt view
Graph Specifications that you save are valid, and may be used/opened, regardless of the current settings for the Period Menu (Yearly / Quarterly / Monthly) and regardless of the View Setting (ProForma / Common Size / SqFt/Unit). This capability allows you to save literally millions of graphs of your own design for future recall and production with any of your analyses. The Graph Specifications saved include the current settings for the graph controls (Font, for instance) at the time of the save, so recalled graphs will appear as they were when saved, rather than being configured to current control settings.
If you use Revenue, Expense, Depreciation or Loan Pages that begin BEFORE the Acquisition Date YOU MUST READ THIS. In recent years, as we have added the Reimbursements and Market Profiles capabilities, more Asset Managers and Property Managers have adopted planEASe to track their portfolios and re-value their properties annually. In doing this, the old assumptions for a property should typically remain valid, simply shifting the Acquisition Date forward by a year. Unfortunately, Annual and other Growth Methods haven't remained valid under such treatment, and Continuation Pages could be invalidated if the first page ended before the (new) Acquisition Date. In Version 16, these limitations have been eliminated. Specifically, Revenues, Expenses, Loans and Depreciation previously planned for a property now remain constant in the time periods originally planned as long as they were tied to a date when originally planned. That is, any items planned with a Start Date of 0 (at Acquisition) will move with the changed Acquisition Date, but all others will stay constant in time, duration, and amount. Using Continuation Pages with the Annual Growth methods for Revenues and Expenses has been counter-intuitive in the past because the Annual Step did not occur at the end of the continued page. This meant you had to change the (Revenue or Expense) Period to slightly greater than the end of a year (eg. 4.00001 years rather than simply 4) to cause the step to occur. This has been eliminated, and integer year Period amounts now (intuitively) cause the step to occur in the (Revenue or Expense) Amount for Continuation Pages. The prior methodology and Assumption Sets using it continue to compute in the same fashion. Due to this adaptation in the use of planEASe, we have changed the treatment of the Balloon Payment Due assumption for assumed loans (Loans with Loan Origination Dates before the Acquisition Date). The balloon for these loans previously dated from the Acquisition Date, but now date from the Loan Origination Date. If you have any Assumption Sets with assumed loans using the Balloon Payment Due Assumption, you must change the Assumption Value due to this change. Additionally, again to adapt to this new usage, any Depreciation Page with a Depreciation Start Date before the Acquisition Date now does not invoke the half-period rule in the first year of the Holding Period. These changes do not affect Development Spending and Unit Sales analyses, which still must have all costs and events occur within the Holding Period.
planEASe handles "Conduit Loans". Commercial Banks have begun issuing "Conduit Loans" for larger commercial Properties recently. These loans, when amortizing, have a monthly payment determined as normally for loans, but the amount of interest charged in each month relates to the number of days in the month rather than treating each month equally. Thus, while the payment in February is the same as that in July, the amount of the payment charged to interest is greater in July, since it has 31 days, whereas February has 28 or 29 days. We have added "360/365 Conduit, Amortizing" and "360/365 Conduit, Interest Only" loan types to handle these loans. Interest Only Conduit Loan payments are, of course, proportional to the number of days in the month rather than being equal. For both new loan types, leap years are properly considered. For those interested, these loans yield the banks approximately 5 basis points more than standard loans, thereby justifying additional salary for your friendly loan officers. We appreciate the great help provided by Steve Stanley, CCIM in providing the excellent documentation that helped us to add this capability to your planEASe.
Partnership / LLC Measures added. In Sensitivity and Risk Analysis for Partnership/LLC analyses, we have added 4 new NPV measures: Net Present Value Before DebtNet Present Value Before TaxInvestor's / Member's Net Present Value Before DebtInvestor's / Member's Net Present Value Before Tax These new measures allow you to compute and show the NPV for the individual investors in addition to their total profit which is now shown on page 4 of the Partnership / LLC vertical basic analysis.
Partnership / LLC Models Enhanced. We have modified and clarified the terminology for the LLC portion of the Partnership / LLC Models. The terminology "Group Sponsor" has been eliminated in favor of "Managing Member". Additionally the Help File has been improved to include the LLC terminology rather than just the Partnership terminology previously used. The two-line help messages at the bottom of the Assumption Page at the Assumption Edit Screen have also been updated for the LLC terminology used in the RPF and RPR LLC Models.
Multiple Market Profiles per Lease. The previous limit of one To Market Page per lease has been expanded by adding a "Repetitions" data field to the To Market Page. Setting this field to 99 is interpreted as "Until Projected Sale", and computes as before. Now you can, however, set the field to 1 time or 2 times and the referenced profile will be used 1 or 2 times, followed by however many repetitions are called for on the next To Market Page. You may add as many To Market pages as you wish to any lease, and they will be executed in the order they occupy in the Assumption Page List, until the Projected Sale date is reached.
Correct $ Stops to BY Stops with Profiles. When entering existing leases with old Base Year Stops at Acquisition, the only practical method is to use the $ Stop reimbursement method. Now we have added a new reimbursement method (Cont w/BY&$ adj) to Market Profiles which corrects the Stop Amounts for both BY Stop and $ Stop methods to zero at lease end, effectively making BY Stops out of any $ Stop methods. Our thanks to Jim Shook, CCIM for the original suggestion and his patience while we got it done.
Change Reimbursement Policies. Several users have asked to be able to correct lease reimbursements to a (new) standard policy of their choice at lease-end for one, several, or all spaces. Version 16 allows you to use a zero Revenue Period for a Revenue Page beginning (Revenue Start Date) on or after Acquisition for any space. The Revenue Page must have the Square Footage entered in the calculator with a positive $ rate/sqft (the rate amount doesn't matter since the Revenue Period is zero). You can think of this page as a "Place-Holder" for the space that you may use to specify your new reimbursement policy by the usual method in the Reimbursement Dialog. When that has been done, you may add one or more Continuation Pages and/or To Market Pages (using one of the "continue" methods for the Profile Reimbursement Method).
New Lease-Up Capabilities. In addition to evaluating new reimbursement policies, the new zero Revenue Period pages, together with the new capability to use multiple Market Profiles for a space, allow you to plan new and varied Lease-Up scenarios for commercial development properties. You can, for instance, use a zero Revenue Period page for a space at a time of your choosing, take it To Market with a 100% New Profile (with appropriate new TI's and Commissions), followed with multiple repetitions of a 50% (or whatever) Renewal Probability Profile using weighted average TI's, Commissions, Months Vacant, etc. In order to use a Revenue Page in this fashion, it must have: A Zero Revenue PeriodA SqFt or Unit Value and a Dollar Rate entered in the Annual Revenue CalculatorA Revenue Start Date at or after the Acquisition Date The $ amount shown in the Annual Revenue field is irrelevant, and does not show in any reports.
The APOD was not updated to handle events and growth occurring prior to acquisition in Version 16. Now it has been. Specifically, the APOD now is computed the same way as the Annual Statement for the first month of the Holding Period, with the amounts being multiplied by 12 to show as equivalent Annual amounts. If you check the Monthly CheckBox then, the amounts shown are exactly the same as in the Annual Statement for the first month of the Holding Period.
The Rent Roll was not updated to handle events and growth occurring prior to acquisition in Version 16. Now it has been. Additionally the report has been revised in several ways to make it more useful: We have added a Reimbursements column to the Commercial Rent Roll so the Base Rent, Reimbursements and Total Dollars are shown separately. We have also added several new controls:Year ListBox allows you to choose the Year for which the Dollar values are shown. This box comes up at the Acquisition setting, showing the dollar values at Acquisition (thereby reconciling with the APOD). The year values, if chosen, reconcile with the Annual Statements (and Income Statements).Monthly if checked, shows all dollars as monthly amounts on the report and the Title Bar displays Monthly instead of Annual.Use USF if checked in the Commercial Rent Roll, changes the Rent, Reimb and Total Columns to be per USF rather than per RSF.Use Vacancy if checked, adjusts the dollar numbers to be before or after allowing for vacancy and the Title Bar displays Effective Income instead of Gross Income. The previous Comment Column has been eliminated, because the Description Box above the report grid now shows the Assumption Page Notes for the first Revenue Page for the Highlighted Tenant / Unit. When printing (or saving the report as a Web Page) you may optionally include these notes in the report by checking the new Include Lease Description Text CheckBox in the Print Options Dialog. We believe this shows a really attractive Rent Roll, and the new controls allow you to show 2*2*2*11 or 88 possible different Rent Roll Reports for a 10 year Commercial Property Analysis. These changes have caused us to eliminate the previous capability to save Rent Roll reports, so if you have any old reports you want to retain, you should export them to Excel before updating to 16.01.
We have added a Print Menu to the Market Profiles Dialog so that you may print (and Save as Web Page) the assumed values for your Market Profiles in a much more compact, informative and attractive format.
We have added a Print Menu to the Reimbursements Dialog so that you may print (and Save as Web Page) the assumed values for your Reimbursements in a much more compact, informative and attractive format.
The planEASe Demo - Reader is now available for download on our web site.
In an absolutely STUNNING improvement, we have added more than 200 MOVIES INSIDE planEASe (and the Demo - Reader). These movies are short and largely context sensitive, so, for instance, when you are in Sensitivity Analysis, you can pull down the new Movie Menu item next to the existing Help Menu and choose from many movies addressing your particular Sensitivity Analysis needs. Movie menus are integrated with all Analysis Functions (Basic, Detail, Lease, Sensitivity and Risk) and all reports on the Reports Menu. The major Dialogs (Market Profiles, Reimbursements, Development Spending and Unit Sales) also all now have movie and help menus. But the really remarkable development is at the Assumption Edit Screen, where the new Movie Menu offers so many movies addressing particular needs during assumption entry. Additionally, a new HowToStart Menu at the Assumption Edit Screen offers movies with advice as to how to start analyzing different tasks, such as Apartments, Retail, Build to Suit, Tenant Representation, etc. All these movies are instantly served by default from our WebSite, so we can make them as current as possible, but they are also available from our Version 16.01 Demo-Reader CDROM, so if you’re stuck without a broadband connection you can load the CD and get them from there.
Recent changes made by Microsoft in updates to Vista and XP caused planEASe to either refuse to shut down (Vista) or shut down very slowly (XP). Furthermore, when attempting to change printers during a session, planEASe would either hangup (Vista) or react very slowly (XP). These problems disappear in version 16.02. If you have any printing or shut-down issues, you owe it to yourself to update to version 16.02.
The Accrue by Year Growth Methods (both Revenue and Expense) did not work properly in Continuation Pages if the first use of the method was on the First Page, and the Page began before the Acquisition Date. The mis-computed amounts were proportional to the amount of time that the Page Start Date preceded the Acquisition Date. Introduced in Version 15.00 and fixed in version 16.00. Not reported. On some occasions when you opened an Assumption Set after finishing with another, the settings at File/Preferences would re-set, eliminating your choices for the Square Feet/Unit Changeover and Show Reimbursements in Reports Menu Reports. Introduced in version 16 and fixed in version 16.01 The calculation of Cash On Cash Ratios in the Income and Annual Statements did not include Closing Cost in the denominator (Equity), while all other reporting of the Ratios (in Basic / APOD / Sensitivity and Risk) did. The Ratios in the Income and Annual Statements have been corrected to include Closing Cost. Thanks to our good user, William Harwell, CCIM. In Sensitivity Analysis, if you displayed a To Market Page, it would “fly off” to the Left and become only partly visible. While this was unsightly, it was only a visual bug, and is now fixed. A movie at the end of the Presentation Movie menu caused a “File not Found” error shutdown. Introduced in version 16.01 and fixed in version 16.02.