LoopNet: A lot of the info you need for cost segregation studies
LoopNet is a site to browse commercial properties and businesses for lease or for sale. If a property is listed on LoopNet, it will include all kinds of useful information, including square feet, assessed value, pictures, and more.
Just about any commercial property that’s listed for sale or lease will make its way onto LoopNet. After a sale or lease has taken place, the website will ‘archive’ the information from that property and leave it up on the site. So, even if the property is not currently for lease or sale, you can still use this site to look up much of the information you need to start a cost segregation study.
Free LoopNet photos to get you started
One of the greatest benefits of LoopNet is all the photos that are left up on the site. You may not have every photo you need to identify every available component for your study, but you might be able to get pretty far.
LoopNet often has solid pictures of the exterior, building features, and interior of your building. If you either don’t have time or are unable to do a site visit, you can use these photos to identify what elements you can separate out for individual depreciation for your cost segregation study. Or, you can use them as a guide to finding components you need more information or better photos for, and then have your client take the photos for you if you can’t make it on-site.
Nothing can replace using your own photos in a cost segregation study, but LoopNet is definitely second best. As an example, there are numerous photos of this property at 700 Colorado Ave in Santa Monica, CA. You could reasonably use these to conduct the majority of your cost segregation study, as you can easily identify individual elements and structures within them.
Check out just a few of them below.
A treasure trove of free cost segregation data
If your property was ever listed on LoopNet, you can use the site as the starting point for gathering all of the information you’re going to need. If you’re using SegStream Pro to do an automated cost segregation study, you can simply take the information from LoopNet and plug it into our system. It may not have all the information you’ll need, but it’s a great way to get started and can save you hours compared to gathering this manually.
Below is an image on LoopNet from the same property in Santa Monica. Notice how it has useful information regarding the property type, square footage, tenancy, parking, year built, and number of drive-in doors.
PDF brochures to help you do a deeper dive
Many properties will also have downloadable PDF brochures that contain more useful information on the property. While these are designed to help sell the property, they contain data you’ll need to plug into your cost segregation study.
The screenshot below is taken directly from the downloadable brochure from the same Santa Monica property. Note how it shows how much of the property has been improved, including a breakdown of square footage for concrete and masonry improvements. It also shows how much parking is available. Lastly, it shows how much frontage there is along each street, which is useful for breaking down curb space as a cost-segregation component.
Save time and start with LoopNet
Without fail, I always start my cost segregation studies with a quick search on LoopNet for my property. Much of the time, I hit the jackpot and get much of the information I need to get started and save hours on tedious info-gathering tasks. This isn’t a guarantee, but it is well worth it.
In our next article, I’ll teach you how to use another info-gathering tool that can supplement LoopNet and Google Earth Pro to piece together missing data for your cost segregation studies (and it’s also free!).
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