We introduced a new underwriting model comparison feature back in November to help our customers better manage risk by comparing investment deal performance in varying market conditions.

Read on to learn how leading institutions are comparing underwriting models in Dealpath to understand if a deal meets their target risk profile.

A New Way to Understand the Impact of Shifting Market Conditions

Any given underwriting model is only valuable for projecting asset performance when the assumptions guiding the financials remain accurate throughout the lifecycle of the owned asset. Comparing underwriting models in Dealpath gives your team the most granular visibility available in the market today to understand the impact of shifting economic conditions on your return profile. 

Whether conditions change due to shifting interest rates, fluctuating demand or other macroeconomic factors, investment teams can now gain real-time visibility into how these fluctuations could impact return profiles.

How You Can Use Underwriting Model Comparisons

Many of the industry’s leading deal teams have already surfaced actionable insights by comparing underwriting models at multiple stages in the asset lifecycle. 

Compare Underwriting Models to See If a Pipeline Deal Pencils

As your team is underwriting new deals, comparing underwriting models helps teams to better understand which deals pencil out, even if the most challenging scenario comes to fruition.

Comparing projected investment performance across different scenarios, such as base, bull, bear and any others that might be helpful for your team to understand, gives your team heightened visibility into potential return profiles. Consequently, you can determine if the deal meets your target risk profile. 

For example, a deal might align well with a fund’s risk profile in a bear market, but not in a true downturn.

As Conditions Change, Project Investment Performance

Beyond pipeline deal evaluations, firms are also comparing underwriting models to project owned asset performance. Market conditions are always changing, meaning the assumptions that were true at close are subject to change.

As asset management teams re-underwrite deals across their portfolios, they can better understand how owned assets will hold up against shifting market conditions. If a particular asset in your portfolio will not hold up to the projected return profile in light of recent market fluctuations, the asset management team might flag it as a disposition opportunity.

Comparing original underwriting models against models updated based on current assumptions can also aid in analyzing underwriting accuracy.

How Underwriting Models Comparison in Dealpath Works

Underwriting model comparisons in Dealpath can be configured to best meet your organization’s needs.

Drag and Drop New Models Into Dealpath

Adding a new model to Dealpath is as easy as dragging and dropping an Excel file into the platform. Mapping data in your underwriting models to Dealpath ensures that all of the data will populate in the correct cells, helping you to analyze model comparisons with clarity and precision. 

Select the Data Points that Matter Most to Your Firm

Every model version can be viewed, filtered and sorted by milestone, creator, date and more, making it clear which scenarios are being compared and which information is most up to date.

For example, if population metrics and occupancy rates are particularly important for urban multifamily deals, then you can configure model comparisons to reflect that. 

Your firm can save various views to easily analyze every deal through your unique lens.

Drag and Drop Columns to Understand Variance

After uploading the underwriting models you want to compare, drag and drop the scenarios to view the variance. For example, compare the bull case to the best case scenario to see how particularly strong tailwinds would impact returns. Conversely, view the difference between the bear and worst case scenarios to see what the return profile might look like in the face of strong headwinds.

View Projections at Every Milestone

As you learn more about the deal you’re underwriting, your assumptions will naturally be refined. With just a few clicks, you can see the differences between your initial underwriting model and the one created after due diligence is completed and your assumptions are more solidified.

Uploading new models as deals progres offers a holistic view of return profiles at each stage of the deal lifecycle, helping your firm to memorialize how models change over time, sharpen underwriting assumptions and make smarter investment decisions.

Start a Conversation About a Model or Data Point

If a data point like the cap rate or purchase price looks particularly low or high in a model comparison, start a conversation with your deal team directly within the underwriting model to prompt a team member to refine these assumptions. Bringing this discussion directly to the model comparison view ensures that stakeholders and team members can view the relevant context required to make the best decisions.

Elevate Data-Driven Decision Making With Dealpath

From streamlined deal screening to enhanced underwriting to surfacing market trends, centralizing your pipeline in a proprietary deal database positions your firm to win as the arms race for data analytics in CRE continues. To learn how leading institutions manage risk and supercharge data-driven decision making with Dealpath, schedule a meeting. 

The post Compare Underwriting Models Side-By-Side in Dealpath appeared first on Dealpath.

2023 drove the commercial real estate industry to reconsider their investment strategies by strengthening data-driven decision making, reducing manual work to prioritize impact, and upleveling risk management.

Throughout 2023, we invested tens of millions in product development, orienting our product roadmap and our team of 50+ Silicon Valley engineers to solve for these challenges by helping our customers:

• Elevate firmwide visibility into deal pipeline and investment performance
• Improve operational efficiencies by automating repeatable tasks
• Strengthen underwriting with a clearer view into how market conditions impact performance

Read on to learn about the most impactful new features that make Dealpath the real estate industry’s most trusted deal management solution.

Jump to:

• Newly Enhanced Comps Database
• Streamlined Model Comparison
• Automated Data Ingestion
• Integrated Document Creation
• Tools for Debt and Asset Teams
• Dealpath Mobile
• Approval Tracking
• AI-Powered Search
• Conversations & Reporting Dashboards (Coming Soon)
• AI-Powered Investment Summary & Memo Generation (Coming Soon)
• Supporting Institutional Investors Across the Globe

Looking Back on Innovations and New Releases in 2023

Newly Enhanced Comps Database

Referencing sales comps is an essential part of your deal evaluation process, so it shouldn’t be difficult or time-consuming. The more streamlined your comps sourcing process is, the faster you can underwrite and prioritize the best deals.

We enhanced Comps in Dealpath in 2023, enabling users to leverage existing properties and historical deals to create comps for more informed decisions. Every Comp you create becomes part of a proprietary database aggregating your team’s unique market intelligence for an unrivaled competitive edge. 

Learn how to build a CRE comps database with OMs

Streamlined Model Comparison

Even if your team has financial modeling down to a science, it’s hard to make informed decisions without visibility into how return profiles change with market conditions.

Dealpath’s easy-to-use model comparison tool helps teams quickly identify which deals pencil out, even if the most challenging scenario comes to fruition.

Every model version can be viewed, filtered and sorted by milestone, creator, date and more, making it clear which scenarios are being compared and which information is most up-to-date. Hand-pick the comparison metrics, dashboards and mappings for each property type for a focused and curated underwriting process.

Automated Data Ingestion

Dealpath Data Ingestion (DDI) gives teams a streamlined and effortless way to capture new deals in Dealpath, taking the strain of cumbersome manual data entry off of your already limited resources.

As you receive new listings, DDI eliminates manual, time-consuming work and seamlessly creates new pipeline opportunities. This means you can prioritize deal analysis while building a proprietary deal database to help inform the most important investment decisions. 

In 2023, we introduced a DDI dashboard, giving teams an easy jumping-off point to track and kickstart analysis on all the deals that come across their desk–whether they become viable opportunities or simply market intelligence. A new version of DDI, supercharged by AI, is currently in beta testing with plans for general release to existing customers early next year. 

Schedule a meeting to learn more and join the beta

Integrated Document Creation

Document creation is an essential part of the day-to-day work of commercial real estate teams. Documents must be professional, include company colors and logos and, most importantly, be accurate when presented to internal and external stakeholders. But creating them is time-consuming–especially when you have to enter data points one-by-one.

Dealpath’s add-in for Microsoft Word enables teams to instantly pull Dealpath data like asking price, IRR and more into documents like LOIs, IC memos and PSAs without spending time on manual entry or double-checking accuracy. 

Learn 5 CRE document types you can streamline with Dealpath for Word

Tools for Debt and Asset Teams

We expanded Dealpath’s capabilities for debt investment teams, allowing for further customization, tracking and reporting of various loan types. This provides even deeper insight into your debt pipeline, particularly when various debt instruments are part of the same transaction.

We also introduced more tools to support the transfer of knowledge from deal teams to asset management teams, further breaking down data silos and preserving accurate historical reporting for all transactions.

Learn how to harness proprietary data to inform debt investment decisions

Dealpath Mobile

At the beginning of the year, the newest version of the Dealpath mobile app was released, enabling on-the-go decision making with data at your fingertips. That means no more waiting to get to a computer to enter new deals, make key updates to in-flight projects or pull up valuable market data.

Learn more about on-the-go dealmaking with Dealpath Mobile

Approval Tracking

A streamlined approval process is essential for moving quickly on the right deals and managing risk at scale, so we introduced enhancements that give approvers more contextual data at their fingertips for mission-critical decisions. This includes deal summaries and approval comments that become part of an automated record the moment the approval process is complete, creating a zero-effort audit trail.

Learn how to request, approve and track tasks in Dealpath

AI-Powered Search

First launched in 2022, Power Search in Dealpath leverages machine learning technology to put everything that was once frustratingly unsearchable or difficult to find at your fingertips, with recent AI-powered enhancements. Instantly surface the most accurate results within your deal database, including text within images and PDF documents, to maximize time savings with a smart search interface.

Learn how to surface relevant deals and information with Power Search in Dealpath

Conversations & Reporting Dashboards (Coming Soon)

Arriving early in 2024, conversations will help teams have a focused dialogue about a particular data point or aspect of a given deal, while reporting dashboards will provide even more sophisticated visualizations of pipeline and investment performance.

AI-Powered Investment Summary & Memo Generation (In Development)

Fueled by the contents of an OM or flyer, users will soon be able to generate a clear, concise deal summary highlighting the merits and risks of a deal to rapidly identify if the deal is aligned to the investment strategy.

Schedule a meeting to learn more

Supporting Institutional Investors Across the Globe

Our commitment to ongoing product innovation has yielded demonstrable results, including thousands of new users and expansions across hundreds of accounts. The Dealpath Leadership Team traveled to Dallas, Toronto, London, San Francisco and New York for roundtable discussions on the future of AI-powered real estate investment management to inform our product roadmap.

In addition to innovating new solutions for existing clients like Principal Real Estate, Nuveen Real Estate, Bridge Investment Group, UBS and other top institutional investors, we were proud to welcome a groundswell of new clients. 

In 2023 alone, we completed over 75 unique implementations for institutional clients, including CBRE Investment Management, Gaw Capital, LaSalle Investment Management, DWS, Newmark, Sumitomo, Essex Property Trust, and Centurion, with headquarters ranging from Milan, Italy, to Toronto, Canada, to the U.K., and across over 40 cities in the U.S.

Each client received a bespoke configuration, and included professional consulting services to create alignment with key goals, KPIs and investment strategies. Following this implementation, these customers continue to enjoy white-glove customer service from our team of 20+ customer success professionals based in North America that specialize in CRE. Our post-implementation NPS score was 70.

Dealpath proudly supports 7 of the top 10 institutional investors globally, and is ranked the #1 Real Estate Deal and Portfolio Management Solution for:

• Acquisitions
• Dispositions
• Development
• Loan Origination

Industry Awards & Office Expansions

Over the course of the year, Dealpath and its leadership team continued to receive broad recognition for category-defining solutions that have transformed the real estate investment management industry, including:

• Built In 50 Best Startups to Work for In San Francisco 2023
• Business Insider Hottest Proptech List
• Connect CRE Next Generation Awards 
• Crain’s Notable Leaders in Real Estate
• GlobeSt. Best Places to Work 2023
• GlobeSt. Tech Influencers 2023
• NYREJ Women in Real Estate Spotlight 
• Proptech Breakthrough Awards
• Realcomm Digie Awards 
• San Francisco Business Times Largest Greater Bay Area Proptech Companies

We also opened new, expanded offices in New York, Toronto and Austin, in addition to our San Francisco headquarters.

Schedule a Meeting About the Future of AI-Powered Deal Management

From OM ingestion to portfolio management, Dealpath offers real estate investment managers the most innovative suite of end-to-end tools to build operational efficiencies and supercharge data-driven decision making. To modernize your firm’s processes and maximize value creation in 2024, schedule a meeting.

The post Dealpath’s 2023 Year In Review: AI, Precision & Efficiency appeared first on Dealpath.

Creating documents like investment memos and commitment letters is an essential part of the day-to-day work of commercial real estate investment and development firms. From sharing data to formalizing a loan agreement, these documents are often requirements for executing on next steps.

We’re excited to introduce Dealpath for Word, a powerful add-in for Dealpath users, available for free in the Microsoft store. This add-in helps you create on-brand documents while automatically pulling in Dealpath data, without spending time on manual entry or double-checking accuracy.

Document Creation Is Consuming Your Team’s Valuable Time

Whether you are acquiring industrial properties, developing affordable housing or originating debt, we know from our years working with both large and small commercial real estate teams that the need to generate documents is universal. 

For example, most teams have a deal summary template to present information about a deal either internally or externally. It may be an investment committee memo, a one-pager, or something you call a two-pager–which might actually be five pages. In any case, document creation can be time-consuming, especially when adhering to brand guidelines or investor formatting expectations.

Many teams save time by creating templates in Word that can be reused whenever a certain document needs to be produced and tweaked to the specifics of each deal. But those templates still require someone to manually key in deal and property data and double-check it for accuracy, adding time and tedium to the process.

Now, there’s a better way to quickly–and accurately–create documents essential to your firm’s process.

Accuracy Is Essential to Creating Effective Documents

The Dealpath Word Add-in lets you skip the manual data entry and focus on getting essential documents into the hands of those who need them. Enhance the templates you already use by adding placeholder variables, which will pull data directly from your team’s source of truth. With just a few clicks, you can select a deal or a property, replacing those placeholders with the most up-to-date information from Dealpath.

Let’s say your Investment Committee Memo includes sections for key financial information or projections such as:

• Asking Price
• Offer Price
• Interest Rate 
• Closing Costs
• IRR
• NOI
• LTV 

The Dealpath Word Add-in pulls these data points into your template instantly. Now, you can focus on more subjective factors, like summarizing the strengths, weaknesses, location, history and tenancy of a property. You could even add a table to pull in relevant ESRI demographic data, such as daytime population or average household income, directly from Dealpath to illustrate the qualities of the local market.

Even if you’re working on a simpler document like a commitment letter or purchase and sale agreement, leveraging templates can mitigate risk and expedite approvals. With the Word Add-in, you can ensure details like the property address, critical dates, seller and broker information are accurately pulled in directly from Dealpath. From there, you could use a separate e-signature add-in to further streamline your process and get critical documents out for approval even faster.

The Dealpath Word Add-In also verifies all pertinent information is available, ensuring no data slips through the cracks. Any fields in your template without a corresponding value in Dealpath will be flagged for your review before any data is imported.

5 Documents You Can Rapidly Create With Dealpath for Word

Dealpath for Word can be used to create any document throughout the deal lifecycle, including common examples such as:

1. Letter of Intent: Initiate new transactions by outlining terms and paving the way for future steps
2. Investment Committee Memo: Compel the IC to move forward on deals with clear data about risk, returns and contextual market and transaction information
3. Commitment Letter: Ensure all parties are agreed on terms like the loan amount and interest rate so you can move forward with proposed financing
4. Purchase and Sale Agreement: Maintain deal momentum by quickly drafting a PSA that includes all relevant property and transaction details, as well as seller contact information
5. Cover Letters: Whether it’s for a project plan, an RFP or a closing binder, quickly create a cover letter that has all the pertinent property information

Internally and externally, Dealpath for Word helps your deal team to rapidly fill in the blanks on frequently used templates so teams can get back to the work that matters most.

Professional Documents Give You a Competitive Advantage

Sharing professional documents with partners, investors and other third parties bolsters your firm’s brand–particularly in today’s highly competitive real estate market. Deal documents should always adhere to your brand guidelines, including the company colors and logos that distinguish your organization. Word is a great tool for ensuring this brand consistency, and the Dealpath Add-in helps you take your templates to the next level with instantaneous data transfer.

Learn More About the Dealpath Word Add-in

If your firm is already managing its deal pipeline in Dealpath, reach out to your Customer Success Manager to learn more about the Add-in and receive guidance on creating document templates.

To learn more about Dealpath for Word and why leading commercial real estate teams select Dealpath as their deal management platform of choice, request a demo.

The post 5 Real Estate Documents You Can Streamline With Dealpath for Word appeared first on Dealpath.