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Commercial Real Estate Glossary

Parcel Number

A Parcel Number or an Assessor's Parcel Number (APN) is an identifying set of numbers and or letters for a parcel of land, which is assigned by the controlling government authority, typically a county. A parcel may consist of one legal lot, a portion of a legal lot, or many lots. APNs are unique for each parcel and are important reference numbers to gain assessment and map information for a property. APNs have different names in different counties, i.e., Folio number, Tax acct number, PIN number, etc., and can vary from a few digits up to 25 characters. They are for tax assessment purposes only and should not be confused with Legal Descriptions.

Park

A large tract that has been or will be developed by a single entity with common infrastructure (i.e. surface streets, landscaping, lighting, signage, etc.) All projects within a park usually have complementary/similar uses and complementary zoning. Projects within the boundaries of the park are usually governed by restrictive covenants designed to create an overall synergy within the park. CoStar strives to gather building-specific data for each property within the park as a separate entry in the database.

Parking Ratio

The parking ratio indicates how many parking spaces the building has per 1,000 square feet: (# of spaces x 1,000)/rentable building area.

Pass Through

Used to define those cases where a landlord passes certain expenses onto the tenant in addition to the rent. Typically, it applies to a full service gross lease where the tenant and the owner have agreed to an expense stop. The stop is the maximum amount the owner will pay each year and any expenses over the stop amount will be passed through to the tenant in addition to the rent. AKA Recaptured or Recoverable Expenses.

Pension Fund

A fund established by an employer to facilitate and organize the investment of employees' retirement funds contributed by the employer and employees.

Percent Leased

The percentage of space in a specific building that has been leased or pre-leased. This applies to buildings that are under construction or proposed, as well as existing buildings Percent Leased = (Total Space Leased / Rentable Building Area) x 100

Percentage Rent

A lease with rent based on a percentage of the monthly or annual gross sales made on the premises. There may be no minimum rent, but most specify a guaranteed minimum rent with the percentage, or graduated percentage rent payable on sales that exceed a specific level. The percentage can be fixed throughout the life of the lease or it can be a graduated percentage that increases based on lease specifications. It appeals to tenants in that, if sales performance is poor, they benefit from having a reduced rent. In a sense the property owner shares in the business risk as well as the upside. Percentage leases are common with large retail stores, especially in shopping centers. The underlying concept of the percentage lease is that both the landlord and the tenant should share in the location advantages of the leased property.

Phase

Phase is the splitting of volts, with the term 'wire' being how many splits. Single Phase service is typically residential or small commercial. Three Phase will be used with higher voltage capacity needs. Normally described as 3 Phase, 4 Wire (with the 4th being the ground).

Planned/Proposed Space

Planned / Proposed space refers to space that has been announced for future development, but has not yet started the construction phase of development (that is, has not broken ground yet). Costar enters a record for a proposed building once the projected building size is known.

Plat Maps

Plat maps are assessor parcel maps that are drawn for every piece of property within a county. These maps are prepared by a registered civil engineer or licensed land surveyor, showing the location of streets and property lines. Each parcel has an assessor's parcel number, and shows its location, as well as its relationship to surrounding surveys. Plat maps also contain the legal information that describes a property. The maps can be purchased from the county or from secondary data sources. Plat maps are stored for each CoStar Comps record when available

Plus All Utilities

A type of Modified Gross Lease where the tenant is responsible for their proportional share of utilities in addition to the rent.

Plus Cleaning

A type of Modified Gross Lease where the tenant is responsible for their proportional share of cleaning in addition to the rent.

Plus Electric

A type of Modified Gross Lease where the tenant is responsible for their proportional share of the electrical cost in addition to the rent.

Plus Electric & Cleaning

A type of Modified Gross Lease where the tenant is responsible for their proportional share of the electrical and cleaning cost in addition to the rent.

Plus Utilities and Char

A type of Modified Gross Lease where the tenant is responsible for their proportional share of the utilities and cleaning cost in addition to the rent.

Pond

In some regions, developers may incorporate decorative ponds in the design of suburban office/industrial/flex parks, for aesthetic value. These are not to be confused with retention ponds used for storm drainage control.

Porter Wage w/out Fringe

Porter wage increase (or a percentage of the increase) is passed along to the tenant.

Porter Wage With Fringe

Porter wage and benefits increase (or a percentage of the increase) is passed along to the tenant.

Power

An industrial building that has service of 800 amps or greater is considered to have Heavy Power. Amps fields allow a range from low to high due to the fact that buildings may have different sources of power. Volts fields also allow a range of low to high. The low to high range accommodates a facility that has a transformer enabling the power to be stepped up or down. Phase is the splitting of the volts and it's counterpart, wire, is how many splits, i.e. 3 phase 3 wire, 3 phase 4 wire (the 4th being the ground). Generally 200-400 amps for flex buildings, 800+ for heavy industrial buildings. 480 volts needed to run machinery, 220 for lights. The Power field will contain data such as "Heavy", the number of amps (i.e., "1000a" or "1200a") or the number of volts. If there is no data, CoStar Group has not yet researched this field for this particular building.

Power Center

The center typically consists of several freestanding (unconnected) anchors and only a minimum amount of small specialty tenants. 250,000 -- 600,000 SF. A Power Center is dominated by several large anchors, including discount department stores, off-price stores, warehouse clubs, or "category killers," i.e., stores that offer tremendous selection in a particular merchandise category at low prices.

Preleased Space

Preleased space refers to the amount of space in a building that has been leased prior to its construction completion, or its certificate of occupancy.

Previous Address

The address of the previous building where the tenant occupied space.

Previous Area

The submarket of the previous building where the tenant occupied space.

Price Per Acre (Land)

The sale price divided by the total acres of land area.

Price Per SF Net

Example: 5000 SF of land sold for $1,000,000 and the assessed improvement ratio (supplied by the assessment office) is 80%. Take the inverse of the Improvement ratio to generate a land ratio of 20%. Calculate the value of the land when using the land ratio against the sales price. ($1,000,000 X 20%=$200,000) That value is then divided by the land area to come up with a Net $/SF for land. (e.g., $200,000/5000 = $40 Price per SF Net)

Price Per Square Foot

(Improved Properties) The sale price divided by the rentable square feet of the building.

Primary Contact

The highest-ranking officer for a tenant at this location.

Property Type

Designations used by CoStar to group property into groups based on the presence of improvements, structural characteristics of those improvements, and on the tenant use or intended use of the improvements. When properties and tenants are logically grouped by these categories, users can more efficiently search for data that meets their business needs, statistics can be generated and compared, and analysts can report on past trends and forecast future growth and decline patterns.

Proposed Building Status

Proposed refers to land considered for a particular future use or a building that has been announced for future development, but has not yet started the construction phase of development (that is, has not broken ground yet). All stages prior to construction including concept, approvals, and permits are included in this definition. Abbreviated PR.

Publication Month

In CoStar Comps it's the month a comp report was published.

Publication Year

In CoStar Comps it's the year a comp report was published.

Published-Comps

In CoStar Comps it's a sale report that has been completed.

Purchase by Tenant

A situation where a lessee (tenant) purchases the property from the lessor (landlord). Buyer may be a single tenant or a tenant in a multi-tenant property. Typically the price is below market as both sides benefit from this direct deal.

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