CRE 101 · deweyluong.realtor

CRE 101: Commercial Real Estate, Explained in Plain English

Short lessons on how commercial deals actually work — the math, the leases, and the paperwork. By Túy “Dewey” Luong, CCIM — Founding Broker, SERHANT. Atlanta · 318 closed sales / $281.2M career volume · 678-707-2498

Most commercial real estate education is written for people who already speak the language. This library is not. Each lesson takes one concept investors, owners, and tenants in Atlanta and Gwinnett run into — a cap rate, a CAM bill, an SBA loan, an estoppel at closing — and works it step by step, with real arithmetic, in plain English.

The lessons are organized by topic below, the way the work actually flows: analyze the income, understand the lease, test the financing, check the property, then price it. Read one lesson for the question you have today, or work through a whole section before your next deal.

Investment Analysis

How a commercial building gets priced: start with the income, then measure what your money earns.

• Cap Rate and NOIThe two numbers every buyer needs first — what a building earns, and the return at the asking price.
• Cash-on-Cash ReturnWhat your actual cash earns after the loan — the return on the money you really put in.
• 1031 ExchangeHow to sell one property and roll the gain into the next without a tax bill in between — deadlines included.

Retail

Retail leases run on shared expenses and sales reports. If you own or lease a shop in a Gwinnett center, this is your section — and if you are thinking about selling the center itself, see selling a shopping center in Gwinnett County.

• CAM Reconciliation and Percentage RentHow retail leases true up at year-end, and how percentage rent works when a tenant's sales pass the breakpoint.

Leasing

The lease is the product an investor actually buys. These lessons cover who pays for what, and how the land itself can be leased.

• NNN LeaseWho pays taxes, insurance, and maintenance in a triple-net lease — and why that decides the real rent.
• Tenant Improvement (TI) AllowanceHow TI dollars really work: who pays for the build-out, who owns the work, and what happens at renewal.
• Ground LeaseRenting the land and owning the building: how ground leases split the two, for landowners and tenants alike.

Development

Before the land closes and the drawings start: does the project pencil, and what return does building create?

• Development FeasibilityThe five gates a project must pass before you buy the dirt — including residual land value, the developer's way of pricing land.
• Yield on CostThe cap rate you build: stabilized income divided by total cost, and the spread that makes building worth the risk.

Financing

Your lender runs its own math before it runs yours. These are the two ratios that decide how much you can borrow.

• DSCR — Debt Service Coverage RatioThe coverage ratio your lender runs first: whether the building's income can carry the loan, with room to spare.
• Debt YieldNOI divided by the loan amount — the lender metric that quietly caps your loan size, whatever the appraisal says.

Owner-User & SBA

For business owners, the building is both an expense and an asset. These lessons cover owning your own space, and the loan built for it.

• Lease vs BuyShould your business own its building? The honest math — and the questions that matter more than the math.
• SBA 504 LoanHow owner-occupants buy their building with as little as 10% down: the structure, the eligibility rules, and the timeline.

Sale-Leaseback

• Sale-LeasebackSell the building, keep the business in it: how owners unlock equity and stay in place on a long lease.

Due Diligence

Between the contract and the closing, everything gets verified. These lessons cover the checklist — and the two lease documents strangers have to believe.

• Due DiligenceWhat buyers check before the money goes hard: leases, financials, the physical building, environmental, and title.
• Estoppel Certificates and SNDAThe two lease documents that decide a closing — what tenants certify in writing, and the promises that protect them afterward.

Valuation & BOV

• BOV vs AppraisalTwo different numbers for the same building: what a broker opinion of value is for, what an appraisal is for, and which one to trust when.

CCIM Analysis

Every lesson in this library is written the CCIM way: verify the income, run the numbers the lender runs, and let the analysis — not the asking price — set the value. The cap rate and NOI lesson is the foundation, the same investment analysis taught in the CCIM program's first course, and cash-on-cash return builds on it by measuring the equity, not just the building. For more on the designation itself, see why work with a CCIM and CCIM in Atlanta.

Put the lessons to work

Reading the math is step one. Running it on a real building is the job. If you are buying, selling, or leasing commercial property in Atlanta or Gwinnett, start with the commercial real estate broker page for Gwinnett County, or bring me the address and I will run the numbers with you. Vietnamese-speaking owners and investors can start on the Vietnamese investors page.

Túy “Dewey” Luong, CCIM | Founding Broker, SERHANT. Atlanta | SERHANT. Georgia | 678-707-2498 | dewey.luong@serhant.com | deweyluong.realtor