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Tax reduction strategies for property tax: Lessons learned from the IMN CFO & COO Conference (East)

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November 1, 2023

3 min read

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Key highlights


  • IMN’s COO and CFO Conference East confirmed many of the market challenges being faced within commercial real estate (CRE)

  • Amid higher capital costs, increased compliance scrutiny and general market uncertainty, firms are widely acknowledging the need for improved data transparency as it relates to decision-making and client relations

  • Property tax appeals can potentially be a silver lining of cost savings in uncertain markets, but it can be difficult to navigate with a countrywide portfolio spanning many different tax jurisdictions.  Property tax software solutions are designed to help create efficiencies and transparency across the tax management process


IMN Conference 2023 hosts a broad spectrum of COOs and CFOs across the CRE industry


IMN’s COO CFO Conference East was held in Lower Manhattan on October 3, 2023.  It was an opportunity for COOs and CFOs to discuss the challenges being faced in CRE investments and operations, and for service providers to offer solutions.

The conference began with a roundtable featuring speakers representing both debt and equity funds: Sean Cunningham, CFO at Integrated Capital Management, Jennifer McClean, CFO at Kushner, Jerome Baglien, CFO/COO Real Estate at Benefit Street Partners, and Phil Pottfield, CFO at Wexford Real Estate Investors LLC. The challenges they described are familiar to many in the industry. Altus Group was there to offer solutions for overcoming staffing shortages, improving transparency and communication, and boosting NOI.



The challenges facing COOs and CFOs in commercial real estate


On the equity side, the roundtable speakers cited challenges including: high cost of capital hurting returns, reduced financing availability, and refinancing challenges.  On the debt side, lenders noted higher regulatory scrutiny and requirements as key contributors to reduced CRE exposure.

Rents that had been increasing by double digits pre- and post-pandemic are now stagnating or declining. Additionally, properties are having difficulty meeting their debt service coverage ratios (DSCR) and it has become a challenge to get projects off the ground. Deals that looked promising in 2020 and 2021 “no longer pencil” – but many investor expectations have not yet adjusted. Pricing hasn’t come down to meet buyer expectations and sellers are hanging on to higher values, hoping for sale prices that will cover their debt and deliver attractive returns.  



Strategies for property tax reduction


Today’s market is challenging for CRE values – but these market conditions can create prime opportunities for successful property tax appeals – which can in turn alleviate some of the pressures on ROIs and NOI. Bad news about stagnating or declining rents, rising cap rates and dropping values is good news for property tax. While property tax assessors and appraisers may be slow to react to changing markets, professional property tax advisors can strategically identify and pursue tax appeal opportunities, providing a silver lining to some of the persistent dark clouds plaguing CRE.

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Businesses need solutions that maximize transparency, increase efficiency and reduce costs


Another concern expressed by the COO CFO roundtable was the increased need for transparency. As investors and lenders grow concerned about valuations, it is important to “deliver good news fast, and bad news faster”. From the COO and CFO perspective, the data needs to be available for both good and bad conversations with clients. Investors and lenders need to have better sightlines to what has been happening and what firms are doing to turn things around.

In other sessions, COOs and CFOs identified staffing concerns, particularly high turnover rates, and the challenges of training new employees. With less staff and time available, there is a critical need for data integration solutions that eliminate the need to cross-validate information from multiple sources and in different formats.

One of the challenges with optimizing a property tax strategy is the number of taxing jurisdictions, each with its own set of rules, processes and deadlines. Thirty-eight states charge a personal property tax, in addition to real property tax. Property tax is usually administered at the county or local municipal level, which means a nation-wide portfolio could be subject to a wide array of requirements and deadlines.

Property tax management software provides an ideal solution to these challenges. Assessment notices and tax bills can be imported into the system, and opportunities for appeal flagged by integrated AI (Artificial Intelligence). Software can provide a single source of truth into property tax and appeal history, bill payments and deadlines – eliminating the need for hours of manual management and report aggregation. Deadline tracking and automatic notifications can dramatically reduce late fees and penalties and ensure no appeal opportunities are missed.

Learn more about how local market expertise and technology-backed workflows can minimize risk and maximize tax liability savings for multi-property portfolios

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Sandi Prendergast

Senior Director

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Sandi Prendergast

Senior Director

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