real estate Archives - Helen Brown Group

August 8, 2019 By Helen Brown Leave a Comment

How GIS mapping can improve your real estate searching

This week I’m delighted to welcome Senior Researcher Josh Ostroski back to The Intelligent Edge. If you’re a long-time reader, you’ll know that Josh is our go-to guy on real estate research here at HBG, and this week he has a great article to share on a very clever way to find property information. Take it away, Josh! ~Helen

I had planned to write a blog post about some of the things I’ve learned in my 15 years as a Prospect Researcher since all I ever seem to write about is real estate. However, I’ve been noticing a new trend while researching properties that I think would be helpful for everyone – Assessor GIS Mapping – so I decided to go for a real estate theme for a blog post again.

Geographic Information System, or GIS mapping for short, is not necessarily a new technology, but I’ve noticed that it has popped up on most of the assessor sites now. I’ve found it so helpful that I wanted to share it so that more in the prospect development world are aware of it.

What is GIS Mapping?

GIS Mapping allows you to search for a property by address or by location and you will be able to see the property lines and, in most cases at least, who owns it and basic information about the property. Like all assessor sites, not all counties in the country share the same information and some are more robust than others.

Each site has its unique features and allows you to see different information, so be patient and play with each county (or sometimes state) sites. Even if it doesn’t give you all the information you need, you can at least have a visual of what the property looks like. Then you can use what you know and other resources to find out more specific information about the property. Often times the traditional assessor site will have more robust information on its site about the property.

Here is an example of what the map looks like. Each separate lot is outlined and you can simply click on the lot (be aware that some GIS Maps require you click on a tool in order for the assessor information to pop up), and the information will come up.

How is GIS Mapping Helpful?

I always use this feature when I’m looking at a property that has multiple lots; that way I can see what the property actually looks like. I’ve also found it helpful when someone may have multiple lots, but they are owned by different LLC’s or by family members.

Another way it is useful is when a mailing address and a property address don’t match. Sometimes that could be because the property is split between different streets or the owners bought an adjacent lot at a later date and use that mailing address.

Below is a screenshot from the San Miguel County, Colorado, GIS Mapping site. The property in question was located at 115 Francisco, Telluride, CO, which is Tom Cruise’s estate. It has been on the market for $59M.

What this shows us is that the property is owned by Client 2177 Living Trust, which if you run the property report shows an address in Los Angeles, CA, that is home to Chapman Bird Grey & Tessler, a Hollywood business management firm that Tom Cruise has been associated with. The other thing it shows is the properties adjacent to the main home that are owned by the same entity.

In this example, the adjacent properties are owned by the same name, but I have often found the names can be different but have the same mailing address. One example I came across just the other day was a home in New Jersey that consisted of six separate lots; each lot owned by a different limited liability company (LLC) (ex: 123 Briar Lane Acquisiton LLC, 129 Briar Lane Acquisiton LLC).

I always use a satellite view when using the GIS Mapping tool (I actually always use satellite view in life); that way you can really see what the home and property look like. You can also sometimes tell if a home was recently renovated or differs from what the assessment records indicate, which could be due to a delay in new information being uploaded.

Another example of how this has been very useful was a request from a gift officer after a meeting with a prospect. The prospect had mentioned in passing that he was selling some land he had accumulated over the years to a developer. It turned out he owned dozens of separate lots, all under different LLC’s and many with different mailing addresses. By using the GIS Map, I was able to click on all the lots in the area and determine if they were his or not.

He was indeed selling them off and to a developer that was building a new golf course community. We were also able to tell which lots he had recently sold and for how much. With traditional resources, it would have taken me much much longer to do and I don’t think it would have been as accurate.

How to Find GIS Mapping Tools

NETROnline.com is a great resource for individual assessor sites, including listing GIS Mapping links. The assessor sites are under the Public Records Online tab.

You can also do a search for “[County Name] Assessor GIS Map” and you will probably have luck. I’ve rarely found a county that does not have this capability. There are some outliers: Massachusetts, for example, does not do it by county, but the entire state has one map you can search.

Let me know what you think of GIS mapping tools, and what other interesting tools you use to find real estate information.

April 5, 2018 By Helen Brown Leave a Comment

Ski resort real estate

It may be the end of ski season for another year, but we’re always trying to figure out what factors impact the value of real estate in those wealthy areas. This week, Colorado-based HBG Researcher Josh Ostroski shares his insider information on three things he knows really well: skiing, real estate, and prospect research! ~Helen

Josh and his daughter hit the slopes

I grew up in a skiing family in New England and it has been a passion of mine since I can remember. One day a colleague at HBG was researching someone that had a house in Lake Tahoe which had a market value drastically lower than what they paid for it. My colleague asked what some of the factors could be that might cause this, outside the obvious decline due to the housing crisis that hit California especially badly. The more we discussed it, the more it became obvious that there were more things at play in these specialized locations than elsewhere. I decided to look more deeply into the factors that impact housing costs in resort towns, and I thought you might be interested to know what I found. [Read more…]

October 19, 2017 By Helen Brown 4 Comments

Don’t make the real estate mistake

“home yellow” Photo by nikcname (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Flickr

Should we – or shouldn’t we – include real estate as one of the factors we use to determine a prospective donor’s gift capacity? It’s a conversation we had just this week in our HBG group chat room.

Everyone commiserated with one HBGer’s lament that some development offices don’t include primary residence – or even any real estate – in their capacity ratings.

And I’ve heard people say on multiple occasions, “Our prospective major donor is never going to give us their house (or sell their house and give us the money), therefore we shouldn’t include it in our ratings.”

Which is true. The donor is probably never going to give your nonprofit the deed to the house they’re currently living in. (<stage whisper>: I won’t mention “planned gift” at this point, okay?)

THE THING IS…

They are also never going to give you their salary (unless they’re Chris Long), sell their yacht, their plane share, or their horses to make a donation, either. They won’t liquidate their art collection, grandma’s diamonds, or that vintage Chanel worn to last week’s benefit. The privately-held company they own will remain unsold. Likewise the stock options that don’t convert for another 5 years.

If the argument is that they’re not going to sell their house, then we should disqualify those other assets, too, right? Because they are never going to give them to you, either.

You can’t pick and choose.

If you randomly take one non-liquid asset off the table, you should take all of them. And you’d never do that, right? It would be illogical.

Figuring out someone’s gift capacity is hard enough to begin with. Purposefully handicapping yourself makes absolutely no sense to me.

I UNDERSTAND

Real estate certainly isn’t the be-all-end-all, but like all of those other assets I mentioned, if nothing else, it’s an indicator of wealth. But I think there’s much more to real estate – even primary real estate – that should be considered.

To start with, it’s solid information. We’re already operating in a realm where anything concrete is in short enough supply. So why ignore a valuable, real, solid, asset?

Also:

Real estate is a green flag. When I’m trying to find new prospects in a sea of regular donors I may skip over someone who lives in a $850,000 home in San Francisco, but I’m definitely not going to ignore a donor who has a $850,000 condo in Aspen. I’m now going to search to find a separate primary residence.

Real estate is a red flag. I was once asked to research someone who had approached an organization out of the blue offering to make a multi-million-dollar gift. What I discovered – by just looking into the prospect’s primary residence – was the first red flag that probably saved the nonprofit from months of wasted time – or worse.

Further:

100% of the world’s high net worth individuals (HNWI) own real estate. And for the more privacy-aware among them, real estate is sometimes the only hard asset we can find for them. Knowing what kind of real estate they own gives you clues into the type of personality they are, how they may want to be cultivated, and what philanthropic investments may interest them. For example:

The billionaire who owns a 20-bedroom party house on Miami Beach is very different from the billionaire living in a three-bedroom ranch in Omaha. Their real estate choices can give you clues to their lifestyle and engagement preferences. One may be a better prospect for naming opportunities with big splashy events. The other may prefer funding boots-on-the-ground clinics for vaccine delivery and student scholarships.

In addition:

We can use real estate for estimates. According to the Capgemini World Wealth Report, real estate accounted for 17% on average of a HNWI’s total assets globally last year. (In the US, it’s 11% of total assets; in Europe it’s 18%). So if all you can find is someone’s real estate holdings, you can still come up with a decent guesstimate of their total assets using that one ratio if they’re in the HNW classification.

And finally:

Real estate is critical to planned giving. There, I’ve said it, and this is really important.

Let’s say you work at a small college and you’ve got childless husband-and-wife alumni couple with a ski resort condo, a vacation home at Los Sueños in Costa Rica and a primary residence in Boston’s Back Bay. They’re consistent donors and lifelong volunteers to the college. There’s no question that the planned giving officer needs to know about them.

And in this case, it’s not only the real estate that’s interesting, but also what it tells us about these special people. Here is an active, outdoorsy couple who possibly enjoy golf, tennis and skiing. A pair that enjoys regular seasonal travel, but whose lifestyle may require extra cultivation time because they are probably not in town very often. What decisions do you need to make about how to engage them?

Look at all the information that just knowing about real estate gives us!

ONE LAST THING

In case you’re wondering, here at HBG we do include primary residence in our total visible wealth calculations on profiles.

We believe it’s a real asset. I think you should, too.

May 4, 2017 By Helen Brown Leave a Comment

Valuing Real Estate in the US West

Last week at the (sold out!) NEDRA conference, this week’s guest author Heather Willis spoke with her HBG colleague, Kelly Labrecque, on finding real estate values in the US west and east. “Country Mouse/City Mouse” was a big hit, and I asked Heather to share tidbits from her portion of the presentation with us today. (If you’d like to see the slides from their presentation, let us know!) And now, here’s Heather:

It’s that time of year again in the West; the snow is melting, tulips are flowering, calves are being born, and the birds are singing. It also means the year- end real estate market analyses, the new agriculture statistics reports, and the top ten landowners, have been published. Exciting right!?

Ok, you might not have the desire or the time to read through all of these reports when researching a prospect who owns a farm or ranch, so I will point out a few changes from last year and try to give you some insights into an extremely diverse and difficult group of prospects to research. [Read more…]

January 5, 2017 By Helen Brown 1 Comment

My Gap Year From Prospect Research

Most of the time, taking a step back to get a broader view of a situation is a good idea. As we move into 2017, I’d like to welcome one of our newer team members, Josh Ostroski, as our guest blogger this week. Josh took a year out from a distinguished career in prospect research to try out a new profession that brought him great perspective, insight, and some new great resources to share with all of us when he came back into the fundraising fold. I’m sure you’ll enjoy this – and bookmark as many things as I did!

Before joining The Helen Brown Group in July of this year, I spent just over a year as a real estate agent. Prior to that I had worked as a prospect researcher in various roles for a decade. In my year-long “sabbatical” I learned a lot about myself and prospect research, and I wanted to share my experiences with you.

Similarities Between Real Estate and Fundraising

At first thought you may not think real estate and fundraising are similar, outside of our daily scouring of property records, but the first thing I noticed during our weekly team meetings and trainings was how similar they are.

Both are industries that help people. Both have a sales aspect. Both are about reading people. Both require pipeline building and prospecting in order to succeed.

Four days into my re-introduction into the wonderful world of prospect research with The Helen Brown Group, I found myself listening to the APRA Prospect Development 2016 keynote speaker, Risa Mish, speaking about The Art of the Sale. It was essentially an overview of everything I had been learning as a real estate agent. When she was relating it to fundraising, I knew I was where I should be! [Read more…]

November 17, 2016 By Helen Brown Leave a Comment

Why wealth screenings – and prospect researchers – are so reliant on real estate

Here’s the complaint I hear frequently about wealth screenings, prospect research, and real estate: Knowing what our prospect holds in real estate is useless! She’s never going to give any of those houses to our organization!(*)

That’s absolutely right. She’s probably not. But that completely misses the point of why real estate is key.

Here’s why:

Imagine with me that you’re on a lovely sailboat. You’re out for the day with friends in the Caribbean enjoying the sun and the breeze. You’re moving along at a pretty fast clip with the wind, but all of a sudden an unexpected gust causes the boom to flip from one side of the boat to the other, and somehow you’re overboard.

The water’s warm but it’s going to take a few minutes for your friends to turn the boat around and get you. That thin orange ring they tossed you is by no means reliably holding up your weight, but it’ll help keep you up while you tread water until the boat comes back. That orange ring may be crummy, but it’s the most solid thing you’ve got right now. [Read more…]

November 10, 2016 By Helen Brown Leave a Comment

Super brokers in our fair city

Boston Skyline Over the Charles River

Last week one of our favorite fundraisers got in touch after reading Kelly Labrecque’s blog article about real estate super brokers in New York City.

Hey, what about us in New England? she asked. I work for a Boston-based nonprofit, and a lot of our donors are in the construction business.This would be a great allied group for us to tap into!

Great point. There are super brokers all over the world, and equally super resources to find out more information about them. [Read more…]

November 3, 2016 By Helen Brown 1 Comment

Super Brokers in the City

In considering those with high net wealth, we often think about the owners of luxury real estate, but not the people who make their (potentially sizeable) living helping them buy it. So this week, we’re delighted to welcome back HBG Senior Researcher Kelly Labrecque to share her deep knowledge and clear enthusiasm about researching real estate “Super Brokers.” ~Helen

In the world of luxury residential real estate, there is an elite group of men and women who represent some of the most exclusive listings and clientele. These top brokers, also known as “super brokers,” close deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars each year.

You can find super brokers all over the world, but with shows like Bravo’s “Million Dollar Listing” and HGTV’s “Selling New York,” we have become most familiar with those in markets like Beverly Hills, Palm Beach, and New York City.

Since I have a particular fascination with real estate in Manhattan, I thought I’d share a few interesting facts about that market and its super brokers.

(Of course) Manhattan is expensive!

The average cost of an apartment in Manhattan is now just over $2 million.

Despite declining sales and increased marketing time, Douglas Elliman, the nation’s fourth largest real estate company, reported that the Manhattan residential real estate market experienced both higher prices and increased inventory in the third quarter of 2016 (July through September). In addition, there has been a surge in new development over the last year resulting in some astronomical sales prices.

For example, in September, the New York Times featured the sale of a full-floor penthouse at 432 Park Avenue for an astounding $87.66 million! Eight additional units in the building sold that same month, ranging in price from $18.98 million to $43.3 million.

And let’s not forget the record-breaking sales that closed in 2015 at One57 consisting of a duplex penthouse purchased by an anonymous buyer for $100.4 million and the “Winter Garden” duplex purchased by billionaire Bill Ackman and his associates for $91.5 million.

So what does that mean for super brokers? [Read more…]