The last of our Key Asset classes and their Classifications include:
- Land
- Medical Office
- Senior Housing – This asset includes: Independent Living, Assisted Living, Nursing Homes and Memory Care
- Student Housing – This asset offers On or Off Campus (multi-family type structures): Dormitories, Residence Halls and Student Housing Cooperatives
Land
Investment properties of Emergent, Raw and Rural Land ready for future development, or Infill Land with an Urban Area, Pad Sites, and more.
The Land asset is divided into 3 classifications:
- Greenfield Land refers to undeveloped land such as a farm or pasture.
- Infill Land is located in a city or urban area, and has usually been developed, but is now vacant.
- Brownfield Lands are parcels that have previously been used for industrial or commercial purposes, but are now available for re-use.
- It should be noted, that Brownfield properties are usually environmentally or economically impaired. Federal and local government incentives may make these types of properties look attractive, but they require experienced commercial agents and legal representation to assist you with the valuation of liability and your due diligence, to insure a successful transaction.
Medical Office
The Medical Office Asset Class includes 3 classifications:
- Doctors’ Offices – may contain a single practice, either general practitioner or specialist, or can be a medical facility in which a group of medical doctors receive and treat patients.
- Dental Offices – may include private practices or a dental clinic, which usually has more than one kind of specialist, and
- Labs – which are equipped to conduct medical tests, scientific experiments, or to manufacture medicines or similar products.
Senior Housing
There are multiple types of Senior Housing facilities and the aging baby boomer population is attracting more investment capital into this sector in terms of acquisitions, development and property renovations. The National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care (NIC) is an industry association that offers a variety of research and resources for investors, owners and operators.
The Senior Housing asset class has 4 types of facilities:
- Independent Living: Designed for seniors who require little or no assistance. These properties often cater to residents who are 55+ with a variety of on-site amenities and social programming for active seniors.
- Assisted Living Facilities (ALF): These licensed facilities combine housing with a variety of personal support services, such as transportation, meals, laundry and health-care assistance.
- Nursing Homes: Properties are generally licensed and provide 24-hour skilled care for chronic and short-term conditions that require medical and nursing care.
- Memory care: These long-term care facilities are designed for people with a level of impairment, such as Dementia, that makes it unsafe for them to continue to stay at home, but who do not require the intensive care of a skilled nursing facility.
Student Housing
The Student Housing asset offers 3 types of multi-family type structures, either On or Off Campus. These range from Dormitories or Residence Halls to Student Housing Cooperatives:
- Dormitories: Most colleges and universities provide single or multiple occupancy rooms for their students, usually at a cost. These buildings consist of many such rooms, like an apartment building, and the number of rooms varies widely from just a few to hundreds.
- Residential Rooms: Vary in size, shape, facilities and number of occupants. Typically, a Residence Hall room holds two students with no toilet. They often have communal bathroom facilities, a laundry room and internet facilities, either through a network connection in each student room, a central computer cluster room or Wi-Fi.
- Most residence halls are much closer to campus than comparable private housing such as apartment buildings, and Halls located away from university facilities sometimes have extra amenities such as a recreation room or basic kitchen facilities for student use outside catering hours.
- Student Housing Cooperative: A housing cooperative for student members. Members live in alternative cooperative housing that they personally own and maintain. These houses are specifically designed to lower housing costs while providing an educational and community environment for students to live and grow in.
- They are generally nonprofit, communal, and self-governing, with students pooling their monetary and personal resources to create a community style home.
Since 2015, there has been an expanding market for private, luxury, off-campus student residences which offer substantial amenities.
Now that you know about the 4 Major and Key Asset Classes, join us for our 8th and final installment of the Beginner’s Guide to Commercial Real Estate (CRE), where we will review some of the questions you should ask yourself before investing in Commercial Real Estate.