No more squinting at planEASe!!At our classes, we noticed that many users prefer to operate planEASe "Maximized" to occupy the whole screen on higher resolution screens. Prior to Version 9, planEASe would maximize, but the screen elements would stay the same size, so planEASe would appear at the top left of the screen with the right and bottom of the screen "empty". With version 9, all elements "resize" so the screen elements appear larger, and planEASe appears to be "balanced". Further, you may now drag the planEASe window to larger (non-maximized) sizes, and all screen elements will properly resize to the newly specified size. Due to the design of the software, planEASe will not allow itself to be resized below the design size of 640x480 (VGA). Version 9 remembers your preference for size and location so that it appears at the same place and size for the next session.
No more Sale Price Method #6!!Numbered Methods/Types for Sale Price Methods, Revenue Growth Methods, Expense Growth Methods, Depreciation Methods, Loan Types, etc. have been replaced with easy-to-use dropdown lists. No more codes ... you will LOVE it
New more Descriptive Terminology!!Sale Price Methods have been reordered to appear in the list in roughly the order of common usage (and renamed more aptly). You will recognize the names immediately, except that the methods formerly named Annual Growth have been renamed to Continuous Growth since the growth is computed to the end of the Holding Period, whether fractional or not. That is, with a Holding Period of 4.5 years, the Price of Property inflates continuously for 4.5 years. The term Annual Growth implies growth at the end of the year, which is misleading. Revenue/Expense Growth Methods have similarly been reordered to appear in the list in roughly the order of common usage. (and renamed more aptly). The following is/was list may be helpful: Annual (@ %>Inflation) was Stepwise (@ %>Inflation)Annual (@ Growth Rate) was Stepwise (@ Growth Rate)Annual (@ $/Year) was Linear StepwiseContinuous (@ %>Inflation) sameContinuous (@ Growth Rate) sameOne-Time (@ %>Inflation) sameOne-Time (@ Growth Rate) sameRamp (Begin$ to End$) sameRamp (@ $/Month) sameAccrue by Year (@ %>Inflation) was Flat (@ %>Inflation)Accrue by Year (@ Growth Rate) was Flat (@ Growth Rate)Accrue by Year (@ $/Year) was Linear FlatAccrue by Period (@ %/Period) (New)Accrue by Period (@ $/Period) (New)Accrue by Period (@ %>Inflation) (New)
New Growth Methods !! As the list above states, we have added three new Growth Methods (in response to your requests). Accrue by Period (@ $/Period) allows you to specify that the Revenue / Expense Amount in the following Continuation Page will be a specified $ amount greater than the current page, no matter how long the Revenue/Expense Period.. Accrue by Period (@ %/Period) allows you to specify that the Revenue / Expense Amount in the following Continuation Page will be a specified % greater than the current page, no matter how long the Revenue/Expense Period. Accrue by Period (@ %>Inflation) allows you to specify that the Revenue / Expense Amount in the following Continuation Page will be a specified % greater than the current page, no matter how long the Revenue/Expense Period.. Linking the growth to the Inflation Rate (an annual rate) may at first appear strange, but this method allows you to, for instance, vary the Inflation Rate in Sensitivity Analysis to investigate the effect of 5 year bumps of 4% thru 8%.
New Loan Types !! We have added a new No Payments Loan Type where you may specify that any interest due is to be compounded monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, or annually. As with the other loan types, you may freely mix this Loan Type with the others in multiple page loans. The previous use of an extremely small amount in the Payment Override field to simulate this Loan Type continues to be valid.
Debt Coverage Ratio Specification !! If you enter a Loan Amount less than 3, starting with version 9, planEASe will compute and use a Loan Amount that results in a Debt Coverage Ratio of that amount in the year when the loan begins. Thereafter, if you change the NOI (or the specified DCR) in any way, the loan amount will correspondingly change (in Sensitivity and Risk also). DCR specification can be used on loan continuation pages as well, so this enables you to re-fi in any year at a loan amount which results in the specified DCR in that year!! Using Sensitivity Analysis (on Balloon Payment Due vs IRR), you can easily find the Re-Fi year which maximizes the IRR!!
New Sensitivity/Risk Measure - Loan Amount!! In an improvement directed at the Mortgage Brokerage planEASe user, we have added Loan Amount to the list of Sensitivity and Risk Measures. This, together with the addition of DCR specification discussed above, means that Mortgage Brokers can analyze prospective loans for a property by running sensitivity analyses such as: DCR vs Loan Amount (and vice versa) Interest Rate vs Loan Amount (at a constant DCR) NOI vs Loan Amount (at a constant DCR) This improvement was made thanks to a detailed suggestion submitted by new planEASe user Brad Cox, CCIM CPM.
Easier Assumption Entry !! We have expanded the Edit/Add Page command so you can now Edit/Add SubPage and Edit/Add Continuation Page where appropriate. Edit/Add SubPage fills in the "&" in the Page Title (so you don't have to). Edit/Add Continuation Page does that also, and goes further by filling in other fields. For instance, you can now add a five step Variable Rate/Payment Loan by completing the first page, pressing Control-N four times, and editing either the rate or payment (or both) on the four new pages. You can create a Lease with four 3 year bumps of 5% by filling in the first page and pressing Control-N four times (and that's all!). For Depreciation Pages, Edit/Add Continuation Page adds another page scheduling the same Capital Spending one year later than the previous page, so setting up 10 years of Capital Spending is as simple as entering the page for the first year, pressing Control-N nine times, and, if desired, changing the amount in any or all years.
And now for something entirely NEW -- Page SubTypes!! From Version 1.0 until version 9, a Revenue Page was a Revenue Page, and Expense Page was an Expense Page. They all looked the same, except for the assumption values you entered. No More!! In version 9 there are two types of Expense Page -- the normal kind and .....Expense as a % of Effective Income which allows you enter any (and as many) expenses as a percentage of Effective Income. The Continuation Page and SubPage concepts work with these pages, so an expense can be 6% of EI for the first 2 years, 7% for the next 1.25 years, and 5% thereafter. In version 9 there are three types of Depreciation Page -- the normal kind and .....Partial Sale which allows you to sell any of the property at any time during the Holding Period, and properly accounts for any Capital Gain and cancellation of the planned depreciation of the asset being sold. For your convenience in reviewing this change, we have shipped an "Offices Partial Sale" Assumption Set with the update. Please be aware that the Partnership Models have not been adapted to work properly with these Partial Sale Pages . Work is underway here, and we expect that a version 9.0x upgrade will include this improvement. In the meantime, do not use Partial Sale Pages in your Partnership models. Set Substitute Basis which allows you to conveniently set both the Substitute Basis and any Cost Recovery Taken on an exchanged property. The old way of doing this still works, but this is better and easier. This new Page SubType concept allows for future growth in planEASe capability and ease of use.
New Documentation!! Due to the extensive revisions and the renaming of various methods, etc., we are issuing new documentation with version 9. Please pay special attention to the revised Growth Method Discussion on pages 89-93 and the new section on the Page SubType concept on pages 86-88
Ever since we added the Exchange Recap Module to the Financial Utilities, it has been the only "spoke" where you could not view the reports on screen -- no more!! We have added a View menu option to the Menu Bar in version 9.01. After you have pressed the Balance Equities button, the View menu is Activated, and you may view all the reports for the exchange by choosing the desired report from the menu list. If you want to go back and change any of the exchange specifications, choose View/Exchange Form, change the desired specification and choose the View menu option again to review the changed reports.
Sensitivity/Risk Printed Graph Font Sizes have been changed to be more attractive.
The Calculator now defaults to Monthly rates when entering Unit Investments
The new Edit/Add SubPage menu option sometimes did not initialize to the proper assumption values. Introduced in version 9 and fixed in 9.01. As an improvement, holding S down while choosing Edit/Add SubPage now causes a "&&" Page Title, useful for Lease Analysis Assumption Sets. This also works for Edit/Add Continuation Page. The S key also works with the keyboard shortcuts of c - U for Edit/Add SubPage and c - N for Edit/Add Continuation Page.
The new Expense as % of Effective Income Page SubType miscalculated slightly in partial first and last years. Introduced in version 9 and fixed in 9.01. In File/Preferences at the Assumption Edit Screen, changing the SquareFeet/Unit Changeover value sometimes did not work properly. Thanks to Steve Altman for the report. Introduced in version 9 and fixed in 9.01. Some allowable values for Prepayment Penalty were edited as unallowable. Thanks to Monte Froelich for the Report. Several users reported "Cannot Unload Form" errors with version 9. Introduced in version 9 and fixed in 9.01. Reports/Assumptions Report showed wrong font sizes in the lower part of the report when planEASe was maximized at higher resolutions and either Show Page Notes or Refer Revenues was changed while the report was showing. Introduced in version 9 and fixed in 9.01. Thanks to Lance Warner for the report. If you saved a Web Page when maximized to a high resolution, the Web Page would be too wide and high, whereas it should not be affected. Introduced in version 9 and fixed in 9.01. Thanks to Robert Shelton for the detailed report. The Keyboard Method in Transfer Pages did not work properly. Now it does. The icon is now a more descriptive hand pointing right. Introduced in version 8 and fixed in 9.01. In Transfer Pages/OpenSourceFile, you would (rarely) be greeted with an trapped error 9 (Subscript out of Range). Introduced in version 9 and fixed in 9.01. The Investment Name was inadvertently shortened to 30 characters rather than the previous 40. Introduced in version 9 and fixed in 9.01. Utilities/Asset Depreciation used the Half-Quarter Rule instead of the Half-Month rule for Assets placed into service during the last quarter of the year. Thanks to Don Huddleston for the report. If you were viewing the APOD and clicked on the Investment Name in the Status Bar to change the name APOD Purpose, Square Feet or Units, etc, when you exited the dialog, a partial Assumption Page Edit screen would overlay the APOD. Introduced in version 9 and fixed in 9.01. The new Partial Sale capability invalidated the final sale calculations. Thanks to Ron Wallace for the report and his patience. Introduced in version 9 and fixed in 9.01. The Partial Sale capability remains invalid for the Partnership Models. With version 9.01, you are not allowed to compute an Assumption Set with Partial Sale Pages. Allowing Partnership Models to use the Partial Sale Capability remains a target of our development efforts. The Edit/Add Continuation Page Capability did not work properly when adding a Continuation Page to an Assumed Loan with a Balloon Payment Due. Thanks to Gene Trowbridge, CCIM for the report. Introduced in version 9 and fixed in 9.02. In Lease Analysis Summary Mode, if you tried to Print/Export ... and set the dialog to save the Graphed Data Matrix either to a file or the clipboard, an error 13 (type mismatch) resulted. If you specified a Unit property, then asked for the Calculator on a Depreciation Page, the calculator would multiply the expected result by 12. Thanks to Wade Klick for the report. Introduced in version 9.01 and fixed in 9.02. If you entered Sensitivity Analysis and then clicked the Exit Button without performing a Sensitivity Analysis first, you would be greeted with an untrapped Error 5 (sorry bout that!!). Introduced in version 9 and fixed in 9.02. Continuation Pages where the amount was unchanged did not show up in the Assumption Report, although they of course computed correctly. Thanks to Jack Gindi, CCIM for the report. Introduced in version 9 and fixed in 9.02. If you ran a Sensitivity Analysis with the Compare capability, the Print/ Export/Results option did not work properly. Thanks to Burris McRee, CPM CCIM for the report.