Data processing: financial – business practice – management – or co – Automated electrical financial or business practice or... – Finance
Reexamination Certificate
1998-08-14
2001-02-20
Trammell, James P. (Department: 2764)
Data processing: financial, business practice, management, or co
Automated electrical financial or business practice or...
Finance
C705S031000, C705S035000, C705S038000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06192347
ABSTRACT:
I. TECHNICAL FIELD
This invention concerns a digital, electrical computer and a data processing system, and methods involving the same, applied to the financial fields of securities, real estate, and taxation. More particularly, this invention relates to a computer system for supporting a financial innovation involving the securitization of property by its decomposition into at least two components. One component can be an estate for years component and a second component can be a remainder interest. The computer system computes the respective values and investment characteristics of the components, and produces documentation thereof, to facilitate financial transactions involving the separate components.
II. BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
A. Description of the Prior Art
During the last recession, a far greater number of businesses failed than would normally have been expected. Bankruptcies, financial defaults, and foreclosures on property also increased, and bad real estate loans caused an atypically large number of lenders to collapse. If there were obvious ways to increase investment return under conditions of economic stress, most likely those ways would have been uncovered long ago.
Consider real estate, for example. Commercial real estate market activity was at or near a standstill for several years around the start of this decade, beginning in the last recession and continuing for more than a year past the end of the recession. Although excess development of commercial space received great attention in the financial press, there was also a drastic reduction in capital available for real estate equity investment and finance.
Real estate equity capital declined as pension funds reduced or ended commitments of new equity capital to real estate capital markets. Capital for real estate finance declined correspondingly as savings and loan institutions withdrew from commercial real estate lending. Of even greater significance, real estate lending practices of insurance companies and commercial banks came under greater regulatory scrutiny in response to increased loan defaults in the early 1990s, which led to a tightening of standards for real estate loans and a reduction in flexibility on loan terms.
Property values fell, and investors were uncertain of how far values had fallen because so few sales of commercial property were occurring.
The problem was not a lack of potential investors. Although the pension funds had withdrawn from the markets, the core group of real estate developers and professionals involved in the markets before the pension funds entered were still committed to the real estate business and were still willing to commit capital to acquire and control real estate for business investment purposes.
Nor was the problem a lack of potential financing. Despite some withdrawal by savings and loan institutions, insurance companies were still available to provide financing for sound commercial real estate developments. However, there were at least two key constraints on loan commitments by insurance companies that had the practical effect of restricting the amount of available financing.
One key constraint was the emergence of a more strict regulatory environment that restricted the maturities of most loans that insurance companies were willing to make to no more than ten (10) years. This conflicted with the dictates of tax considerations for taxable investors, which suggested that the terms of loans should be at least fifteen (15) years, and preferably twenty (20) years or more.
A second key constraint was that, due to high nationwide vacancy rates in commercial properties, insurance companies were making real estate loans primarily on property that was almost fully leased to tenants that were unlikely to default on their leases. Thus, credit ratings of the tenants were a prime consideration in deciding whether loans should be made.
In fact, insurance companies usually viewed real estate loans as financings of existing tenant leases. Accordingly, lenders usually insisted that property owners assign the rent payments to the lenders to provide additional assurance that loan payments would be made, and lenders also insisted that the rent assignments totally amortize the loans. (The primary reason that most offered mortgages were for no more than ten years was that, in the high-vacancy rental environment existing at that time, most leases ran for no more than ten years.) Furthermore, the lenders could frequently have viewed their legal claims on the tenants' rental payments as perhaps more important than their claims on the property, because in a market with excess space, a claim on vacant space was not particularly valuable.
In other words, during this period of excess rental capacity, financing necessary to sustain the level of liquidity historically experienced by the real estate markets was not available from financial institutions on acceptable terms and conditions.
The result was market “gridlock” and a dearth of real estate transactions until the current economic expansion led to a nationwide increase in demand for rental space and a corresponding decrease in vacancy rates.
Similar troubles have been features of the real estate market at low points in the real estate cycle at various times in the history of the market. Despite great economic pressure to improve the situation, a more efficient technology for real estate finance in an economic environment of excess rental capacity and weak economic activity has not surfaced.
III. SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
In response to the above, a new financial product has been developed based on the concept that property value consists of separately valuable property rights that can be worth more when sold separately. In a manner of speaking, the whole can be less than the sum of its parts.
With the development of a new financial product, a need has arisen for new machines and processes to use in bringing the product to market and sustaining it. These machines and processes are the subject of the present invention.
A. Real and Personal Property
As an example, in the case of property that is customarily leased by corporations, leased and unleased property have different investment characteristics. Ownership of leased property is a fixed-income asset with investment characteristics that depend upon lease covenants, the market for corporate debt, and the lessees' credit ratings. By contrast, ownership of unleased property is a speculative asset having investment characteristics that depend on the spot rental market for that type of property. Thus it is possible to split ownership of this type of property into at least two components, at least one of which is a fixed-income asset.
Consider real estate, for example, which can be divided into an estate for years and a remainder interest. Lenders can purchase the estate for years outright instead of writing a commercial mortgage on the whole property. Alternatively, a special purpose entity can be established to purchase the estate for years, and the lenders can purchase ownership or equity interests in the entity. Similarly, the other component—the remainder interest—can be purchased by real estate investors (or, again, the remainder interest can be purchased by a special purpose entity in which the real estate investors purchase equity or ownership interests) in lieu of the standard investment approach, in which the investor would purchase all rights to the property using some funds from a commercial loan. Examples of such special purpose entities include, but are not limited to, trusts, limited partnerships, and limited liability companies. The term of the estate for years can be determined by the parameters that describe the property, in particular by the remaining lengths of the terms of the existing leases.
For purposes of this summary of the invention, in those cases in which a special purpose entity is created to hold a component, for example, such as the estate for years or remainder interest, an equity interest in the component is intended to refer to an equity interes
Graff/Ross Holdings
Rosen Nicholas David
Trammell James P.
Trzyna, Esq. Peter K.
LandOfFree
System and methods for computing to support decomposing... does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this patent.
If you have personal experience with System and methods for computing to support decomposing..., we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and System and methods for computing to support decomposing... will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFUS-PAI-O-2594411