planEASe Software Version 16 - 2007
Major new items are: 'Graph Library', 360/365 Conduit Loans, Multiple Market Profiles/Lease, New Lease-Up Capabilities
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Fixed |
Class |
Description |
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16.00 |
Enh |
We have added a Graph Library in the Reports/Income Statements
function. This new Graph Library allows you to recall and save Graph Specifications
for Graphs of your choice using the new Adds and Overlay Lists added in Version
15.
Graph Specifications that you save are valid, and may be used/opened, regardless
of the current settings for the Period Menu (Yearly / Quarterly / Monthly) and regardless
of the View Setting (ProForma / Common Size / SqFt/Unit). This capability allows
you to save literally millions of graphs of your own design for
future recall and production with any of your analyses. The Graph Specifications
saved include the current settings for the graph controls (Font, for instance)
at the time of the save, so recalled graphs will appear as they were when saved,
rather than being configured to current control settings.
A Remarks text box is shown at the screen bottom right
(overwriting the Report View box) when you open a Graph Specification, and showing
the remarks entered the last time you saved the recovered graph. You may save whatever
text you want here, and it is presented as the default Graph Commentary in the Graph
Print Options Dialog Box.
The Graph shown when you open a specification will agree with the current values
for the Period Menu and View Setting, and the data shown in the graph will agree
with the current data shown in the report specified by these controls. Therefore,
if you open a graph which calls for (and shows, for instance) the Cash on Cash Before
Tax Ratio, that ratio must be shown in the report currently specified (and shown),
or you will receive an Error Message telling you that the data cannot be found,
and the graph to be opened cannot be produced.
The Graph Specifications that you save use the Line Title (for instance "Cash on
Cash Before Tax") to find the data to produce in your graph. Editing these Line
Titles will cause the loaded Graph Specification to be unable to find the required
data, causing an Error Message unless you edit the Line Title in the current report
accordingly. We suggest you avoid editing Line Titles if you want to use the Graph
Library.
We ship planEASe with a small library of Graph Specifications you may want to use
for your analyses. To distinguish between our graphs and those you may want to add
yourself, all our Graph Specification files begin with the letters "pe". Beyond
that, we add, for example:
pe_us_pf for Unit Sales Graphs preferring the ProForma view
pe_ia_cs for Investment Analysis Graphs preferring the Common Size view
pe_ds_sf for Development Spending Graphs preferring the Unit/SqFt view
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16.00 |
Enh |
Graph Specifications that you save are valid, and may be used/opened, regardless
of the current settings for the Period Menu (Yearly / Quarterly / Monthly) and regardless
of the View Setting (ProForma / Common Size / SqFt/Unit). This capability allows
you to save literally millions of graphs of your own design for
future recall and production with any of your analyses. The Graph Specifications
saved include the current settings for the graph controls (Font, for instance)
at the time of the save, so recalled graphs will appear as they were when saved,
rather than being configured to current control settings.
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16.00 |
Bug |
The Accrue by Year Growth Methods (both Revenue and Expense) did not work properly
in Continuation Pages if the first use of the method was on the First Page, and
the Page began before the Acquisition Date. The mis-computed amounts were proportional
to the amount of time that the Page Start Date preceded the Acquisition Date. Introduced
in Version 15.00 and fixed in version 16.00. Not reported.
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16.00 |
Enh |
If you use Revenue, Expense, Depreciation or Loan Pages that begin BEFORE the
Acquisition Date YOU MUST READ THIS. In recent years, as we have added
the Reimbursements and Market Profiles capabilities, more Asset Managers and Property
Managers have adopted planEASe to track their portfolios and re-value their properties
annually. In doing this, the old assumptions for a property should typically remain
valid, simply shifting the Acquisition Date forward by a year. Unfortunately, Annual
and other Growth Methods haven't remained valid under such treatment, and Continuation
Pages could be invalidated if the first page ended before the (new) Acquisition
Date.
In Version 16, these limitations have been eliminated. Specifically, Revenues, Expenses,
Loans and Depreciation previously planned for a property now remain constant in
the time periods originally planned as long as they were tied to a date when originally
planned. That is, any items planned with a Start Date of 0 (at Acquisition) will
move with the changed Acquisition Date, but all others will stay constant in time,
duration, and amount.
Using Continuation Pages with the Annual Growth methods for Revenues and Expenses
has been counter-intuitive in the past because the Annual Step did not occur at
the end of the continued page. This meant you had to change the (Revenue or Expense)
Period to slightly greater than the end of a year (eg. 4.00001 years rather than
simply 4) to cause the step to occur. This has been eliminated, and integer year
Period amounts now (intuitively) cause the step to occur in the (Revenue or Expense)
Amount for Continuation Pages. The prior methodology and Assumption Sets using it
continue to compute in the same fashion.
Due to this adaptation in the use of planEASe, we have changed the treatment of
the Balloon Payment Due assumption for assumed loans (Loans with Loan Origination
Dates before the Acquisition Date). The balloon for these loans
previously dated from the Acquisition Date, but now date from the Loan Origination
Date. If you have any Assumption Sets with assumed loans using the Balloon Payment
Due Assumption, you must change the Assumption Value due to this change.
Additionally, again to adapt to this new usage, any Depreciation Page with a Depreciation
Start Date before the Acquisition Date now does not invoke the
half-period rule in the first year of the Holding Period.
These changes do not affect Development Spending and Unit Sales analyses, which
still must have all costs and events occur within the Holding Period.
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16.00 |
Enh |
planEASe handles "Conduit Loans". Commercial Banks have begun issuing
"Conduit Loans" for larger commercial Properties recently. These loans, when amortizing,
have a monthly payment determined as normally for loans, but the amount of interest
charged in each month relates to the number of days in the month rather than treating
each month equally. Thus, while the payment in February is the same as that in July,
the amount of the payment charged to interest is greater in July, since it has 31
days, whereas February has 28 or 29 days. We have added "360/365 Conduit, Amortizing"
and "360/365 Conduit, Interest Only" loan types to handle these
loans. Interest Only Conduit Loan payments are, of course, proportional to the number
of days in the month rather than being equal. For both new loan types, leap years
are properly considered. For those interested, these loans yield the banks approximately
5 basis points more than standard loans, thereby justifying additional salary for
your friendly loan officers. We appreciate the great help provided by Steve Stanley,
CCIM in providing the excellent documentation that helped us to add this capability
to your planEASe.
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16.00 |
Enh |
Partnership / LLC Measures added. In Sensitivity and Risk Analysis
for Partnership/LLC analyses, we have added 4 new NPV measures:
- Net Present Value Before Debt
- Net Present Value Before Tax
- Investor's / Member's Net Present Value Before Debt
- Investor's / Member's Net Present Value Before Tax
These new measures allow you to compute and show the NPV for the individual investors
in addition to their total profit which is now shown on page 4 of the Partnership
/ LLC vertical basic analysis.
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16.00 |
Enh |
Partnership / LLC Models Enhanced. We have modified and clarified
the terminology for the LLC portion of the Partnership / LLC Models. The
terminology "Group Sponsor" has been eliminated in favor of "Managing Member". Additionally
the Help File has been improved to include the LLC terminology rather than just
the Partnership terminology previously used. The two-line help messages at the bottom
of the Assumption Page at the Assumption Edit Screen have also been updated for
the LLC terminology used in the RPF and RPR LLC Models.
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16.00 |
Enh |
Multiple Market Profiles per Lease. The previous limit of one To
Market Page per lease has been expanded by adding a "Repetitions" data field to
the To Market Page. Setting this field to 99 is interpreted as "Until Projected
Sale", and computes as before. Now you can, however, set the field to 1 time or
2 times and the referenced profile will be used 1 or 2 times, followed by however
many repetitions are called for on the next To Market Page. You may add as many
To Market pages as you wish to any lease, and they will be executed in the order
they occupy in the Assumption Page List, until the Projected Sale date is reached.
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16.00 |
Enh |
Correct $ Stops to BY Stops with Profiles. When entering existing
leases with old Base Year Stops at Acquisition, the only practical method is to
use the $ Stop reimbursement method. Now we have added a new reimbursement method
(Cont w/BY&$ adj) to Market Profiles which corrects the Stop Amounts for
both BY Stop and $ Stop methods to zero at lease end, effectively making
BY Stops out of any $ Stop methods. Our thanks to Jim Shook, CCIM for the original
suggestion and his patience while we got it done.
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16.00 |
Enh |
Change Reimbursement Policies. Several users have asked to be able
to correct lease reimbursements to a (new) standard policy of their choice at lease-end
for one, several, or all spaces. Version 16 allows you to use a zero Revenue Period
for a Revenue Page beginning (Revenue Start Date) on or after Acquisition for any
space. The Revenue Page must have the Square Footage entered in the calculator with
a positive $ rate/sqft (the rate amount doesn't matter since the Revenue Period
is zero). You can think of this page as a "Place-Holder" for the space that you
may use to specify your new reimbursement policy by the usual method in the Reimbursement
Dialog. When that has been done, you may add one or more Continuation Pages and/or
To Market Pages (using one of the "continue" methods for the Profile Reimbursement
Method).
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16.00 |
Enh |
New Lease-Up Capabilities. In addition to evaluating new reimbursement
policies, the new zero Revenue Period pages, together with the new capability to
use multiple Market Profiles for a space, allow you to plan new and varied Lease-Up
scenarios for commercial development properties. You can, for instance, use a zero
Revenue Period page for a space at a time of your choosing, take it To Market with
a 100% New Profile (with appropriate new TI's and Commissions), followed with multiple
repetitions of a 50% (or whatever) Renewal Probability Profile using weighted average
TI's, Commissions, Months Vacant, etc. In order to use a Revenue Page in this fashion,
it must have:
- A Zero Revenue Period
- A SqFt or Unit Value and a Dollar Rate entered in the Annual Revenue Calculator
- A Revenue Start Date at or after the Acquisition Date
The $ amount shown in the Annual Revenue field is irrelevant, and does not show
in any reports.
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Major new items are: 'Graph Library', 360/365 Conduit Loans, Multiple Market Profiles/Lease, New Lease-Up Capabilities
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