Can someone walk me through the specifics of how a refi works?
So, in 2013 I put about 25k into a MF property in ATL with some partners who are value buyers (they also manage capex and day to day of the properties). In 2015-ish it was refinanced and I got cut a check for about 60k. Fast forward to Dec 2020 and I got cut a low six figure check for another refi. I couldn't tell you about cashflow because it makes up a very small amount of my annual income and I don't pay attention to it.

My understanding is the increased valuation and thus money that can be taken out is driven by NOI and cap. RCA is showing me prevailing cap rates for this property type and metro decreased from 6.2% in Q1 '13 to 4.9% in Q4 '20. It's also showing 93k to 159k increase in price per door. Assuming an increase in NOI slightly north of plausible and the neighborhood cap decreasing more steeply I don't see how it can account for a 580% increase. 

Can anyone explain to me how that would work? I work at a brokerage so I'm relatively knowledgable about some aspects of CRE really I'm mostly market research so I'm surprisingly hazy on some fundamentals of investing.
[{"id": "gl4qyza", "text": "First off, nice job on your investment! \n\nYou have at least two components contributing to your sizable increase in distributions from 2015 vs 2020:\n\n* Partnership distributions can be structured in a myriad of ways that range from flat percentage payouts to incredibly complicated waterfall scenarios. The partnership may be structured in a way that the managing partners or major investors received a larger percentage of the net proceeds on the first distribution and vice versa on the second distribution. This is most likely the reason for the 580% distribution increase, but you can verify this in your partnership documents. \n\n* The second component is what you mentioned: Property value increased over time, so the cash out from the latest refi resulted in a larger distribution. Property values rarely increase by 580% over 5 years, so I\u2019m guessing this isn\u2019t the only reason.", "replies": [], "depth": 1}, {"id": "gl5mqni", "text": "What was the LTV on the last refi compared to the Refi that was just executed? I'm leaning more towards a change in equity CF distribution due to a waterfall structure.", "replies": [{"id": "gl9vbom", "text": "To be honest, I'm not sure. However, from all of my experiences with them these guys are pretty conservative so I doubt it was highly leveraged.", "replies": [], "depth": 2}], "depth": 1}]