Commercial Real Estate investments typically deliver steady cash flow with income distributed to investors monthly, quarterly or annually. First Floor Equity investments involve buying underperforming assets, such as hotels, office, or multifamily buildings. We then reposition or repurpose these assets to deliver what most investors seek—steady or rising cash flow over time.

This is the use of a small initial cash investment to gain a high return in relation to one’s investment. Typically for investment properties, banks only require an investment of 25 to 35 percent of the asset’s purchase price in cash as equity.

Real estate investments typically increase in value over the long term. This appreciation typically comes from rising rents or from the market valuing the income more highly. Investors have the opportunity to boost their overall investment return by cashing in on property appreciation once the asset is sold or refinanced.

Another key advantage of real estate investing is that it is a good way to diversify portfolios with hard assets. Real estate is not the same as buying shares in a company that may be here today and gone tomorrow. Real estate is an asset class that investors can literally touch and feel. While some building occupants may come and go, and there may be ups and downs in building valuations over the course of its life, the property itself is not going to disappear.

Investors widely consider commercial real estate an asset class that can help offset the impact of inflation over the long term. In fact, that benefit is regularly cited as one of the advantages of adding real estate to a mixed-asset portfolio of investments. The ability to adjust rents over time is typically credited for real estate’s inflation-hedging benefits.