Introduction

Owner / User Property Analysis refers to a class of various analysis techniques aimed at providing financial decision criteria both for businesses seeking space to occupy for business purposes and also for the owners providing such space.

Many times, such space is leased, and the analysis can be performed on a before-tax basis using planEASe Tenant Representation and planEASe Owner Representation techniques, because there typically are no unique tax considerations when comparing leases for the same or different spaces.

However, many times, ownership of the space is considered (perhaps in addition to leasing it), and such analysis MUST, responsibly, be performed on an after-tax basis, since ownership of real estate confers tax advantages in the United States. The best method for such analysis is planEASe Cost Comparison, since it is both an after-tax analysis method and also adapts to adding (and removing) different space alternatives to the analysis as time goes on. When considering ownership alternatives, the techniques of Buy and Use Analysis and/or Build to Suit Analysis may be used for particular alternatives in Cost Comparison Analysis.

There are two special cases of ownership potential that have generated special analysis techniques: Lease / Purchase Analysis in which the identified space may either be leased or purchased (by decision of the user) or Sale / Leaseback Analysis, where space currently owned by the user may either continue to be owned, or be sold and leased by the new owner to the current owner/user.

All these analysis techniques are discussed in this section.