Argus For Asset Management (From An Owner's Perspective)
Do you guys recommend Argus to manage the ownership of a portfolio of commercial properties? We currently just use spreadsheets but I'm wondering if using Argus to manage the investments is the right move. Thoughts?✌🏽
[{"id": "izugah3", "text": "We run unlevered cash flows all in argus and export to excel to layer on debt for office/retail/industrial properties. If you have more than a few leases, I think argus is it worth it. If exclusively multifamily or hotel, I\u2019d just use excel. Argus has the ability to do levered cash flows/portfolio analysis, but my shop prefers to do that in excel. From the people I know, this is a pretty common approach.", "replies": [{"id": "izuifxm", "text": "Agree 100% on multi family and hospitality, excel is better, and many places I\u2019ve worked with do a combination of Argus and Excel for calculating CF.", "replies": [], "depth": 2}], "depth": 1}, {"id": "izugamq", "text": "As a retired am who worked in institutional investment real estate, it was useful to maintain argus models for each property.\n\nHowever, if spreadsheets work for you, i don't think you need to spend top dollar for argus.  argus has moved away from one time license purchase so you now need to pay annually.  Get it when you've determined spreadsheets take way too much effort to maintain.\n\nHaving Argus may help you if you ever want to sell one or more properties, but at that point, if you engage a national broker, they'll put it into argus for prospective buyers.", "replies": [{"id": "izuir8a", "text": "Using a broker works for industrial where the leases might not change for a decade, however anything with multiple tenants, different CAM pools, or multiple leasing assumptions, you\u2019d want to have your own team maintaining the database.", "replies": [], "depth": 2}], "depth": 1}, {"id": "izuiaqc", "text": "Yes, because you want to be able to model not just every property, but every space, and be able to run sensitivities by globally changing all assumptions.\n\nWhat happens if rent growth is only 1% worldwide?  Update the global assumptions.  What happens in TI costs go up 20%, same thing.  What\u2019s your rent at risk, or you projected downtime, Argus can pull all of this, as well as make projecting future cash flows very easy, provided you have an analyst skilled in Argus.\n\nI love excel, but it\u2019s not scalable for large portfolios.", "replies": [], "depth": 1}, {"id": "izvvklc", "text": "Is Argus any useful for multi res?", "replies": [], "depth": 1}, {"id": "izx0ftd", "text": "I should have clarified that we are a Multifamily outfit. Does that change anything?", "replies": [], "depth": 1}, {"id": "izz3tak", "text": "Thank you everyone!!\n\nLooks like I'm keeping Excel and Power BI!!", "replies": [], "depth": 1}]