A Practitioner's Guide to Bed-Weeks, RevPAB, Nomination Agreements and the Rent Roll That Is Re-Sold Every September
Julian R. Sterling
520 beds in Leeds, six room types, one rent roll that expires on the same day every
year and has to be sold again from nothing, offered at £41.7 million. The rate card says £192.98 a week. The
revenue a bed actually earns is £173.61. The gap is 10.0 per cent, and no yield in the pack discloses it.
These are the workbooks the book was written from. Every figure the book prints is reproduced by
a live formula, and the model workbook ends with a sheet that compares the two line by line.
The files
The whole book
The Student Housing Model
The model every figure in the book is computed from: 520 beds across six room types, the rate card against what is actually collected, RevPAB on both bases, the rate-and-occupancy trade, the summer with its VAT and council tax, the refurbishment cycle and the ten-year cash flow. On the scheme in the book the headline rate is £192.98 a week and the revenue a bed actually earns is £173.61 — a gap of 10.0 per cent that no yield discloses. Overwrite the tape and every figure moves with it.
Student_Housing_Model.xlsx · XLSX · 20 KB
Chapters 6 and 7
The Letting Campaign Tracker
Week by week from January to the November census, on the four lines the book says to monitor: beds reserved against the same week last year, achieved rate by room type, the gap by room type, and cancellations. It projects RevPAB from the current booking pace and prices every point still to sell — £39,600 of net operating income a point on this building, £681,613 of value.
Letting_Campaign_Tracker.xlsx · XLSX · 10 KB
Chapters 10 and 11
The Operating Cost Benchmark
The cost base per bed, line by line, with the energy exposure an all-inclusive rent creates, the lag before it can be repriced, and the level at which it eats the management fee. The margin on this scheme is 65.7 per cent; the sheet shows what is left at the top of every cost range at once.
Operating_Cost_Benchmark.xlsx · XLSX · 9 KB
Chapters 19, 20 and 24
The Bid Sheet
The bridge from asking price to bid, the four inversions of Chapter 20 — including the two that have no solution at any price — and the omissions table to put on the facing page, laid out as a one-page committee paper.
Blue on pale blue is an input you may edit. A yellow fill is the carrying assumption of
the sheet — the one to argue about first. Black is a formula. Nothing is locked,
protected or watermarked. There are no macros and no external links.
The model workbook ends with a sheet called Checks: the figure as the book prints it,
the figure the workbook computes, the variance and a status. If a line ever reads
“to check”, the workbook and the book have drifted apart — and the workbook is
right.
Three numbers to compute on your own scheme
Revenue per available bed — and say which base. Everything collected
over the 44 academic weeks, divided by beds times those weeks, is £173.61 here, against a rate card of
£192.98. Everything collected over the whole year, divided by beds times fifty-two, is £151.83. Both are
right; a pack that quotes one without naming the denominator is not.
What a point of occupancy costs to buy. A point is worth £39,600 of net operating
income and £681,613 of value here — and the discount that buys it is charged to every bed, not
only to the one still empty.
The supply already consented in the town. 33,900 purpose-built beds against 68,400
students, with 2,450 more under construction: 67.0 beds per hundred students today, and 71.8 once the
pipeline lands, inside three years.
One warning, because it decides the answer
Occupancy in student housing is not a measurement. It is a price the operator chose to pay.
Across the whole range of rate this operator can actually use, occupancy moves 11.5 points while revenue
moves 3.9 per cent — so a scheme reporting 96.8 per cent tells you almost nothing until you know the rate that
bought it. Worse, at an elasticity of 0.907 the whole walk from floor to ceiling is exactly
break-even, and at 0.968 a single point of occupancy is free: two thresholds that look like one
number and are not. Change the elasticity on sheet 3 of the model and both move; they are not the
same number and they never were.
Closing the DealTwo defensible bridges 20.70 million apart, a peg worth 7.00 million, and the six choices that remove 6.60 of a 12.00 earn-out.
CMBS and CRE CLOsWhere the loss actually lands, from appraisal reduction to realised severity, and what the B-piece is really being paid for.
How to Read a Commercial LeaseThe three refinements chapter 19 names and never performs, and the renewal rate below which the mark-to-market is worth nothing.
How to Read a Credit AgreementWhere the default actually comes from, the cure that costs 5.5 times the other, and the capacity nobody adds up.
How to Read a Real Estate Loan AgreementThe cure ratio in closed form, the four-point window in which the cheap cure works, and the cure sized to the wrong threshold.
Office Real EstateA six per cent yield that returns 3.2 per cent once the re-letting cycle is paid for, and the headline-to-net-effective rent arithmetic.
Private Equity Real EstateBoth worked waterfalls to the dollar, the two capital stacks, and the arithmetic of the promote made changeable.
Private Markets PerformanceThirty-one of the thirty-three figures chapter 19 publishes reproduce exactly — and the two that do not are named rather than quietly adopted.
Raising a Real Estate FundThe chapter 17 funnel run on a calendar — when the first close actually lands, and why more travel does not help.
Real Estate Financial ModelingProperty, development and fund models built line by line, and the modelling test worked end to end.
Real Estate Fund ManagementThe waterfall of 6.11, the build-to-core of 8.7 and the proceeds gap, reproduced as live formulas rather than asserted.
REIT Analysis and ValuationFFO of 532.0, AFFO of 381.0, net asset value and dividend safety — every figure a formula you can change.
Retail Real EstateThe occupancy cost of every unit in a centre, the sixteen per cent of the rent roll no tenant can sustain, and the right-size-convert-or-hold decision priced.
Sale and LeasebackA €179.5 million transaction end to end, with rent cover measured on the entity that actually signs the lease.
Self-Storage Real EstateThe cohort engine behind a 590-unit store, and the rate increase on existing customers priced against the move-outs it causes.
The Fund Finance ProfessionalChapter 8 builds the reported-to-eligible NAV bridge; chapter 9 computes every ratio without it. Two points at every state — and what a subscription line does to the IRR.
The Growth Equity InvestorWhat a pro rata cheque really costs, and the band where defending your ownership loses money.
The Private Credit InvestorThe two coverage ratios are not measured on the same thing: the erosion is 47.7 per cent, not the 28.7 the headline implies.
The Private Equity Fund Controller PlaybookThe book defines IRR, DPI, RVPI and TVPI, tells you to update them at the exit, and prints not one value. Computed: a 1.833× deal inside a fund at 0.892 TVPI.
The Venture Capital AssociateWhat defending a position costs, and how many companies a reserve pool actually defends.
Real Estate FinanceFour people look at one building and reach four numbers; the lender is whole only above 105,109,489, twelve per cent below today’s value rather than forty.
Financial Risk ManagementA fund inside every limit that cannot meet a redemption — and the number that decides it is the one with no currency attached.
Business ValuationThree advisers land 26.8 per cent apart on one company, and the whole gap turns out to be 1.96 points of perpetual growth.
Quantitative FinanceThree models agree to a quarter of one per cent about a number that one unobservable input moves a hundred and three times as much.
Asset ManagementFour people quote four returns for one mandate, all correct and 2.7017 points apart — forty-eight times the manager’s net skill.
Alternative InvestmentsA manager reports 13.29 per cent and the endowment earns 6.26 — both correct, and only a third of the advertised advantage arrives.
Credit AnalysisFour defensible EBITDAs on one borrower give leverage from 3.19x to 6.47x — and the add-back argument is fifty times the covenant headroom.
Venture CapitalOne company out of twenty-eight returns 56.7 per cent of the fund, and half the capital goes in after the decision — at half the return.
Machine Learning for FinanceFive people quote the accuracy of one credit model, all five are right, and the number that decides how much money it makes is none of them.
Commercial Real Estate InvestingThe equity earned 8.6647 per cent and the investor received exactly 8.0000 - the preferred return, and nothing above it.
Mergers and AcquisitionsThe board paper says the deal creates 13,436,667 of value. The arithmetic says it destroys 17,530,855. Nobody is lying.
DerivativesThe treasury report says the hedge cost 1,233,698. That is the interest differential, not a cost. The number that mattered appears in no report at all.
Treasury ManagementFive cash balances for one company, all correct and 145,600,000 apart — and the revolver that is two-thirds of the liquidity leaves at a revenue fall of 8.4127 per cent.
Financial Planning and AnalysisRevenue 3.0190 per cent above budget and operating profit 16.3209 per cent below it, in the same quarter, with every figure correctly stated.
Energy TradingA position report that is 91.7031 per cent hedged and correctly computed, on a book that is short 2,542,000 MWh — and a margin call of 198,400,000 the next morning.
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