If you are selling the real estate in a sale-ease-back transaction today, you have the immediate access to that capital to be able to reinvest it into that business. You know, maybe it's growing and buying another point nearby, or maybe it's reinvesting that capital back into the business and seeing an improvement in performance in the short term, right? So that when you go and you're selling the enterprise later on, assuming there's improved performance there, the blue sky multiple on a greater figure is going to yield a greater proceeds figure.
Today, I'm excited to speak with Mark Pamella, Vice President at SAB Capital, a commercial real estate firm specializing in sale-ease-backs of car dealerships. We discussed a massive $30 billion market hiding under car lots, along with deal-ship real estate tax hacks and much more. A big thank you to our sponsors for making today's episode possible. Open Lane, Cars Commerce, Mark Pamella on the CDG podcast.
Mark, welcome. You'll see it is an absolute pleasure to be on the show. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to talk about sale-ease-back with your network, and I'm really looking forward to the conversation. So let's have some fun. Pump the chat real estate valuations are typically our episodes that are very highly anticipated, dive into some esoteric part of the dealership that maybe people don't know so much about, whether it be how reinsurance really works, and salary products, or in this case, real estate, valuation, sale-ease-backs, state of the market. So I'm pumped to talk about that and really offer that insight to our listeners.
So I want to hop right in. Before we get into specifics of dealership real estate, can you give us a very short brief overview of the state of the real estate market today? Happy to do that. So I think when you look at the real estate market as a whole, specifically commercial real estate and net lease and sale-ease-backs, it's not this similar to the car dealership industry where there's massive impact for COVID and there's effectively before and after the pandemic. And the way that the market is working is entirely different in the fallout from that. So it's probably worth taking a walk back to this period of 2021 to 2022, which is between the outbreak of COVID-19 and the beginning of the Fed rate tightening cycle.
This was a great period of time because money was cheap and valuations were high, both as a result of cap rate compression and several years of market rent growth. So at that point in time, the average cap rate for sub-investment-grade credit tenancy, which is the bucket that most card dealers are typically going to fall under, which is your middle market companies of sizable revenue and earnings. And that comes down a little bit, that average cap rate heading into 2022, even towards a sub-6% on average. Then in March of 2022, when the Fed starts its tightening cycle and costs the capital for sale-ease-backs, sponsors increases the transaction velocity in the market. As you compare, 21 and 22 to 23, and the first part of 2024 is of lesser scale. Depending on geography, lease, and credit composition, cap rate yields today are somewhere in the range of 100 basis point higher on average, if not closer to 125, 150 basis point higher than that little point.
So let's summarize that for a second. You're saying that today cap rates on dealership properties, or you're saying all commercial real estate. Across the board, and it's directly related to the cost of capital for some of these real estate investors financing their acquisitions. Yeah. I have a bunch of questions on valuations and specifically dealership real estate. Before we get into that, just want to table set. What do you do? Can you explain to the audience, what do you do at SAB? What is your role really comprised of today? So SAB capital is a commercial real estate investment sales firm. We're primarily focused on sale lease back in NetLease, which is my area of focus and what we're going to be most relevant today. We've got a team internally that's focused exclusively on 1031 exchange representation. We can talk about that.
And then we've got some other arms within the company that are focused on affordable housing, Brooklyn area, commercial properties, and a debt brokerage group as well. In 2023, we closed over half a billion dollars in transactions. The clients and the industries that we work with on the sale lease back side of things are auto dealers, of course, other auto related businesses like car washes and collision centers, gas and sea stores, gyms, restaurants, childcare, manufacturing medical offices. That's the name of a few.
So the sale lease back landscape is massive, but call it broadly center based businesses. Any business that operates to provide a service or create a product that relies upon a real estate footprint to grow their business. What has driven to rise in dealership sale lease backs? You know, before you even that, let's just define what this even means. Like can you give us the spark notes definition for anyone that does it and not familiar with the term, what is a sale lease back? Because I want to talk about what is driven to rise in this industry and then get into the economics.
Sure, absolutely. So sale lease back is an alternative financing solution and it functions as a debt and equity substitute for businesses. Again, that I mentioned exists to make products and provide services. So mechanically, you're selling owned or controlled real estate and you're maintaining operational control of that real estate by leasing it back from an investor for a long period of time. So most typically it's a 15 or 20 year lease where you're with several tenant options to extend. So you've got control over this real estate for a period of 40, 50 plus years in total. Given that real estate ownership is not core to most businesses and particularly dealerships, owning the real estate is not core to selling cars. It's a great tool that extends a significant sum of capital.
We'll get 100% to 150% plus LTV financing on real estate. Most typically that's without personal recourse, without covenants and without taking on a capital partner that's going to dilute the operating entity. It's a massive market. It's a 30 plus billion dollar market. I said there's been a boom in the sale lease back in the industry. I've personally witnessed this. I've noticed a rise over the last couple of years. Why are dealers looking to sell their real estate as a form of financing nowadays? What has changed? Is it simply the fact that cap rates, that valuations went up and so there's more liquidity potential or is there other things are missing? What has changed that has really enticed dealers to at least explore this form of financing if they want to grow or whatever?
Sure. I mean, one piece of it is, and I've heard so many people come onto your show and talk about the importance of scale and diversification within their dealership platform. Being out there and active and acquiring other dealerships as they come up for sale is of great importance to a lot of dealers out there. That's a piece of it. I think if you are tracking some of the data that some of these great buy sell groups, I know you've had Hagon here a bunch of times and Alan listening to those episodes is great. Hey, it was on last week and it was on today. So the last year, I think you had 400 plus buy sell transactions that occurred and Q1 of this year is in excess of 150. So a lot of this M&A activity is important for fueling sale-lease-back transactions because nature of the access to capital.
As I mentioned, if we're talking 100% plus, LTV financing on the real estate, you're financing a massive portion of the acquisition and you can stay liquid and maintain the ability to recycle capital and continue growing via acquisitions or development, whatever comes up. I think that industry consolidation has been one of the big accelerants for sale-lease-backs as dealers are looking to scale more and in addition to, I guess, retained earnings or other forms of financing that are tapping the real estate to buy more dealerships pretty much. 100%. Yeah. Got it. So tell us more a little bit. I want to talk about the behind the scenes of dealership real estate and then I want to talk about how you actually work with dealers and what really happens behind the scenes. Let's just start on the dealership side.
What is a dealer nowadays paying on average rent or mortgage as a percentage of sales? Do you have any metrics that you can share with us like that? As a percentage of sales, I mean, we're not typically tracking it that way, but I will say if we're structuring a sale-lease-back offering for a client who's an auto dealer, the most important thing, and this is for everybody involved. It's for us, it's for the dealership, and it's for the real estate investor that is coming in and acquiring this real estate. They want to make sure that the business is going to be profitable. The is incentivized by the dealership remaining profitable long-term. One metric that we might look at is a rent coverage, which is we'll take earnings and how many times can you afford this rent figure with historical earnings?
I assume the past is indicative of future performance. It depends based off of what the proforma is on a go-forward basis for the dealerships financials. It depends on the particular real estate investor, how comfortable they might be with a tighter rent coverage or a higher rent figure relative to earnings. There's a lot of factors that go into it, but most typically we'll structure transactions that are in excess of two and a half times rent coverage and as much as four to five times coverage.
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Are you targeting any specific regions of the country, any specific franchises? And more specifically, I would say, are there any specific areas that you're seeing more appreciation, right? Do we are we expecting that at Toyota stores, like super safe and secure? And so you're just going to pay more for that. Like, give us a little bit more behind the scenes of kind of your thought process. I'll break this out into geography, and I'll break this out into, you know, brand, right? So like, if you're looking at Toyota relative to Stellantis right now, dealers are going to be much more excited about an acquisition opportunity that flies a Toyota flag than a Stellantis flag. Personally, I'm seeing a lot more, you know, dealer acquisitions that are of Stellantis points rather than Toyota. And the Toyota ones are, you know, going to transact a lot quicker and at a greater blue sky multiple.
You know, when you look at that, right, if that multiple for the enterprise acquisition is greater, then the it is less additive relatively for that dealer to execute a sale lease back. That's not to say that it is not, you know, impactful in financing the acquisition. But if you're paying eight times blue sky for a Toyota dealership and we're simultaneously executing on a sale lease back for the real estate at, you know, 13 to 15, 16 times, you know, that delta is less significant. Whereas if this is a Stellantis dealership and you're able to acquire the enterprise at, you know, maybe it's three to four times earnings. And we're executing on that same sale lease back at, you know, 12 to 15 times rent multiples, then it is financing a, you know, that, like that, that multiple arbitrage that exists is so far so much greater. So you're saying that the dealers are benefiting more, the dealers are actually benefiting more from the, you know, less sought after brands because they're just simply getting a bigger spread on what they're paying versus what you would be paying. Is that, is that correct?
Yeah. And I, like you'll see, we should take a step after a quick second and just say like, you know, it at SAB, it's not our own balance sheet that we're buying this real estate off of. And we're not, you know, acquiring it ourselves. It's, we're acting in a brokerage capacity and acting as a fiduciary and an advisor to auto dealers that are executing on these transactions. So when be us directly that are, they're making these acquisitions, but I think if you, we look at it from the lens of, you know, that, um, that multiple arbitrage again, I think it is significantly, you know, that just that, that delta that exists between, you know, four times blue sky and, and, you know, 13, 14 times rent is greater than eight times versus the same rent multiple. And even if we take that down to a more compressed cap rate or a more significant rent multiple, delta is still less significant for a Toyota brand. But if costs, it all depends on, you know, what is, is most important to, to the dealer involved in the transaction. And that's the way we start off every conversation. It's like, Hey, you know, what is most important to you? Is it limiting cost of capital in this transaction? Is it limiting rent load over, you know, the, the span of the lease? Is it, um, you know, getting the, the greatest proceeds figure, you know, what that's going to do is going to impact cost of capital more than anything else.
Do you find it tough to value these properties, right? The dealership real estate is so core to the operation. It's tied hand in hand. And the dealership to the real estate, the real estate to the dealership. And so, and clearly you're in the business of selling cars, the real estate is just bricks. And how, how big is that spread across different regions when it comes to the actual valuation of the real estate, right? I'm, I have to assume that you probably do some local benchmarking, but I would love to hear from you. Like, how do you go about that process? Right? If a, if a dealership property has been owned for 60 years, how are you now defining what it's worth for a sale lease back? Yeah. So part of that process is, um, you know, qualitative and part of that process is quantitative. Quantitatively, like, you know, we want to understand what market rent looks like in that particular geography. We want to understand what, you know, the average cap rate of, of, um, commercial properties transacted in that geography are, um, and we want to take that into consideration.
And then the other piece of it, probably the most important piece of it. When you talk about just, you know, purely, uh, you know, proceeds figure in, in evaluation as a whole is, you know, how profitable is the dealership? Because it is, you know, one thing again, that we always have to tie evaluation process back to is, is this rent affordable for the dealer? Is it affordable for them today? Is it affordable for them longterm? Everybody involved in the transaction wants to see them succeed and, um, and be really profitable for a long period of time. So that's, um, you know, a big piece of the, the quantitative part of the analysis. I can define this a little, uh, differently as we go, but, um, you know, the other pieces, like qualitatively, right? Like what brand is this dealership?
Again, like we talked about, um, the difference right now between in, in perception and performance between, you know, Toyota and Stellantis that you're going to see washout in costs as capital. Represented as cap rate. So you're likely to see a more compressed cap rate in an apples to apples comparison. All else remains equal. You're likely to see a more compressed cap rate for a Toyota dealership relative to a Stellantis dealership. So I, I'm going to put my dealer hat on and say, if I met you, I think the first question I'd be in, like, I, I've tried to figure out right away is, does this hurt my brand value, right?
So if I sell my bricks today and then five years later, I decide I want to sell the, the business, the enterprise. I'd have to imagine that you've, you know, studied that or, you know, look back at prior results or anything. Can you just share shed a little light on that side of the world and how selling the real estate impacts the dealership's value long term? Well, I mean, if you look at, um, you know, dealership buy, sell transactions, right? You're, you're buying goodwill and you're buying the real estate. Most typically, that's the most common, right? And real estate is obviously a significant portion of the total valuation or compensation in that transaction. You know, so if you are selling the real estate in a sale, lease back transaction today, you know, you have the immediate access to that capital to be able to reinvest it into that business.
You know, maybe it's, it's growing in buying, uh, you know, another point nearby. Um, or maybe it's reinvesting that capital back into the business and seeing her, uh, an improvement in performance in the short term, right? So that when you go and you're selling that, um, the enterprise later on, you know, assuming there's improved performance there, the blue sky multiple on a greater figure is going to yield a, a greater, uh, proceeds figure and just know that you've already cashed out into, um, so to speak on the real estate, but you know, you've benefited from reinvesting that into the business.
So, so you're basically saying that during a sale of the business, these two pieces are anyways segregated the real estate and the business, which is true. And so it's sort of just, it's mutually exclusive opportunities. And this is just one way to take advantage of the real estate without selling your actual operating business. Yeah. And in one important piece of that, right? Is that in that transaction where, um, you tie the, the sale of the business to the sale of the real estate, to the, to the same acquiring business owner. You're most typically going to value the real estate at a praised value, right? And that appraised value is going to be tied to the utility value of that real estate for that dealer and some function of, you know, local market cops, um, for, for vacant and, and utility value real estate, right?
But if you execute a sale, lease back. When I say you're getting a hundred percent plus LTV for that real estate, you know, that might be as high as a hundred and 50% LTV. That's of appraised value. So you're getting a greater proceeds payout from the real estate via sale, lease back, because now you're valuing it based off of the, the income stream for rent. So now I want to put my accounting hat on. What talked to me about some of the tax consequences. That was always a big consideration for me. You know, obviously real estate taxes is very, very efficient. How does this impact tax consequences? Give us some, give us some insight into that side of the world.
So I think first and foremost, you know, in the, in the downside of this, right, is that if you sell your real estate, you can no longer depreciate the structure. Uh, the improved structure on your, on your land, right? On a positive note, um, for sale, lease back, right? If you have a conventional commercial mortgage, and you own your real estate, you know, what is deductible there? It's the, the interest expense. Now if you sell that real estate and lease it back, the entirety of your rent payment is now a deductible expense will depend on a case by case basis. Exactly where that washes out between that trade off, but it's, it's comparable.
Do you find that when dealers do this, like, are the, do the facilities go neglected? Or again, I'm, I'm, I'm maintenance when it's suddenly not your, your smiling. I mean, what happens to the facility? I'm sure there's clauses and whatnot, but how does this actually impact the experience from, you know, improvements to the facility suddenly, you know, the, the OEM comes and says, Hey, you need to upgrade your facilities and invest a million dollars. Like how does all that work once you sell the real estate?
99% of the time these days, a sale lease back is executed with an absolute triple net lease. So the, um, the dealership owner, you know, whereas when you own the real estate, you're, you know, you're paying taxes, you're paying, um, you know, for, for maintenance and repairs to the property, uh, you're paying property insurance. With an absolute triple net lease, the dealership continues to maintain those responsibilities and it's, you know, truly passive income for the real estate investor, the sale lease back provider in the transaction. And that's the way to, um, you know, that we're structuring transactions that yield the cheapest cost of capital.
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Inc slash experience or click the link in the show notes below. So so tell us like what regions are popping right now? I mean, where are we seeing where we seeing good action? What's interesting? Like tell us if I was to fly on the wall right now in SAB capital and you're you're a weekly meeting, right? What what's what's top of mind?
The franchises that we're working with most commonly are, you know, as I mentioned, Stellantis, Ford, Chevy. You know, it seems as though a lot of the dealers that we work with are bringing us acquisition opportunities with those franchises. You know, they're able to buy them at at cheap multiples and, you know, that that arbitrage that exists in a in a sale east back transaction is, you know, most evident.
So those are, are, you know, probably some of the most popular franchise they work with geographically. You know, again, given that there is some trade off between what's affordable for the dealer and, and, you know, valuation relative to appraise value to create this growth capital. Sometimes in the secondary and tertiary markets where the appraise value is going to be less if we've got a profitable dealership, you know, that growth capital generated in the transaction may be greater in, in, you know, some of the secondary tertiary markets.
And there's less pride of ownership for some of those dealers. For the most part in, in, uh, in owning their real estate. Like if you've got trophy real estate and, uh, and fantastic market, like owning that is a whole lot more appealing, uh, for the dealer than a market where finding land is easier to come by. Where it's not as exclusive or unique. Yeah. All right. So Mark, you mentioned earlier that you are not the actual buyer here. Makes sense. Uh, you know, you're an advisor, but who are these buyers typically? Like who's looking for this type of income? And how do you help them value the dealerships? The buyers for these assets are, um, you know, their REITs, both public and private REITs, um, you know, real estate, private equity funds. You've got 1031 exchange capital, which are, um, typically, um, private investors that are leveraging the, uh, IRS code 1031, um, to execute a, a like kind exchange and defer taxes by selling a property and then buying a replacement property.
Um, and then you, you know, you've got private family offices that are well capitalized in groups of that nature as well. Um, and, and how are these assets being valued? But I think it comes down to three main components, uh, which is credit, lease and geography. So, you know, again, like if we isolate each of these three categories, then let's assume all else is equal within the transaction, right? You know, you're going to, um, you know, pay a premium for a dealer with a credit profile of, you know, 20 million in net earnings, then you are a dealership that, you know, has one point and, you know, they're, they're clearing a million dollars a year because, you know, they're, they're going to be, um, better capitalized to be able to afford rent long term. The probability of you receiving those rent payments for a long period of time is going to greater. Um, so credit is an important factor.
How many rooftops they operate? Um, you know, what does each particular dealership involved in the transaction look like? Um, you know, what is the four wall performance of the dealership and how it's read to establish relative to that? Um, you know, the next point is lease. You know, if you've got a strong operator and again, everybody involved in the transaction wants the dealership to succeed long term. You know, you want a, uh, a long term lease with it, with an entirely passive lease, uh, such that you're just cash flowing on the investment as
the, the sale leads back provider. And then the, the last component of, uh, evaluation is geography. And, um, again, you know, each of these three points is going to, um, you know, be most evident and reflected, um, in, in the cap rate of the transaction. So again, that is your, your cost of capitalized. The dealer executing the sale is back. Um, so, you know, that's, that's pretty simple. So it's real estate at the end of the day. You know, so much of it is, uh, you know, a finance tool that's, that's backed by credit that's tied to a lease.
But, you know, what, what does that particular sub market look like? You know, is this a primary dense infill market or is this, you know, a tertiary, um, you know, geography with 10, 20,000 people within a, you know, a radius of the store, right? And, and that's going to, uh, to differ greatly. But the last piece of geography too is, you know, what to say for investment. This is, I got to be curious what your opinion on this is, right? You'll see like, would you rather buy a, you know, a real estate, invest in property, right? Where you were getting 15 bucks a foot and rent from your tenant, but market is 20 bucks a foot.
Right. But it's a, it's a market that you're unfamiliar with and as, you know, low population density, or would you rather make the investment into property that was, you know, in a really core dense infill market where, you know, rent on average was 35 bucks a foot, but your tenant is paying 50 bucks a foot. Like what would be a safer investment for you? And that like, you know, it totally depends on some of these other factors. Right. But I just want to, you know, I want the point to come across that, you know, that's where geography beyond, Hey, how desirable is, you know, this, um, one market relative to the other, but like what was actually going on within that sub market and wire elements like market, Redbird square foot, important to determining valuation.
Yeah. I think it depends on the profile of the investor. I mean, I think it's good for the dealer. Obviously, if they're in a better location, better geography, clearly. So they're just going to get better premium on their property. Tell me a little bit more about your outlook for the commercial real estate market and specifically dealerships. What is, look, we know that profitability is declining. We're still way above 2019 levels. That's great. Uh, but profitability is declining now. Investors aren't dumb. They know profitability is declining. Uh, you know that. So like what is happening right now to valuations on a real estate? How are you, how are you getting deals done? Uh, when someone, you know, when people see kind of the state of the market, how are you actually able to get deals across table?
One of the most important trends is it's so frequently talked about in, in, in our industry, right? And, um, in, in that, you know, the, the cost of capital for, uh, real estate investors financing their acquisitions. Every's got a cost of capital that, that ties into benchmark rates somewhere, right? So a lot of time and effort spent on, um, you know, tracking fed decisions with regards to rate cuts that are upcoming. I think in, in, you know, a month's time we're headed towards a, uh, you know, minimum 25 basis point, um, rate reduction. If we see unemployment figures that are. You know, even modestly greater than the, the July release, then there is a, an increasing possibility that we're headed towards a 50 basis point, uh, rate reduction. If, you know, we, we head towards a, um, you know, rate cuts in a, in a, a lower interest rate environment that should benefit, um, you know, the entire commercial real estate market. I don't think we see that immediately in, um, in cap rate compression, but we will see an uptick in, in transaction velocity in the market as a whole.
Um, Mark Pamella, any closing thoughts? There are a lot of, um, intricacies to the sale, at least back process that. You know, it's hard to cover everything in, in such a short period of time in this podcast. And I, I feel like it's flown by. Um, but I, I just want to note that, um, you know, we're always happy to talk and, um, and share our insight on what's going on in the market and some factors that auto dealers can, can be mindful of and in, um, you know, preparing in, in, in leveraging their real estate portfolio. Now definitely appreciate that. And we'll put the link in the show notes below. So if anyone wants to get in touch with you, uh, or SAB, we'll put the link in the show notes below.
This has been super insightful. Mark, thanks for coming on. Thanks, COC. Absolute pleasure. All right. Hope you enjoyed that episode. Please give the podcast a rating. Consider subscribing to the show and check the show notes for links to what we talked about. Thanks for tuning in. I'll see you guys next time.