Achieve Your Financial Goals Through Real Estate Investing, Diversification and Controlling Occupancy Costs

By Helen K. Kelley

As a physician, you are faced not only with the daily demands of treating patients, but also the pressure of reacting to additional issues that affect your bottom line such as managed care, HIPAA regulations, malpractice insurance rates and changes in the marketplace. It’s difficult enough to squeeze out time and energy for the present, much less plan for your own future.

But what if you had a network of qualified people with proven tools and strategies that could help you secure your financial future, while allowing you to concentrate on the present? Healthcare Real Estate Advisors, Inc. (HREA) offers exactly this kind of network, with its team of professionals who are dedicated to serving the physician community toward achieving both an improved bottom line today and investment and retirement goals tomorrow.

“Our focus is on helping physicians find better ways to invest and diversify their money through commercial real estate,” says Todd Perman, a principal with HREA. “In short, we find solutions that allow our clients to make more money, keep more of it and retire sooner.”

 More Resources, Expanded Services

Established in 2003 as a division of Bull Realty, HREA was created by Perman on behalf of physicians, whom he felt deserved better representation in the real estate market. With experience in the commercial real estate investment and medical sales fields, Perman and his organization had a unique understanding of what it takes for busy doctors to increase their net worth through financial avenues other than their medical practices. HREA’ initial offerings included assistance with tenant representation (negotiating more favorable terms on leased office space to control occupancy costs), buyer representation (selecting the right location, property and purchase terms for acquiring a building), investment properties (strategic acquisition and management of real estate as long-term investments), and passive investments (recommendations for building wealth through syndications, limited partnerships and more).

Over the next three years, the demand for HREA’s specialized services grew so significantly that Perman realized a transition was needed in order to provide a more diverse array of investment strategies for physicians. Therefore, the company has recently expanded its offerings to provide a new and unparalleled level of service to its clients.

Perman and partner Andy Sutton — who both lead HREA’s parent company, Lynx Real Estate, Inc. — have assembled an exceptional team of real estate advisors to provide more powerful tools and strategies to clients. Each team member has a background in healthcare, making him or her uniquely qualified to understand and serve the physician market. And, in addition to its long-established services of tenant and buyer representation, HREA can tap into Lynx for knowledgeable resources on land acquisition, retail leasing development, investment sales and more.

“We’re now able to offer our physician clients a lot more capacity when it comes to services,” explains Perman. “By having access to the additional resources that Lynx brings to the table, HREA can help doctors find new ways to invest their money, diversify and, best of all, keep more of their money to achieve short and long-term goals.” 

Sutton adds, “The expansion has allowed us to do a complete redesign of our website to offer more valuable resources, better access to properties and investments, and more exposure for marketing properties.”

A new benefit, MyHREA.com, offers physicians the option of receiving specific information of interest, privately, through HREA’s Web site, www,physiciansadvocate.com.  There, a client may register online to create a personal Web page, through which he or she can request and receive information, see available properties, and communicate directly with their healthcare real estate advisor via email. This allows the physician to customize his or her search and access information at a time that’s convenient, 24/7.

Additionally, HREA publishes The Physician’s Advocate, an electronic and print publication that clients receive on a regular basis. The Physician’s Advocate is an excellent resource for busy doctors, packed with timely information about real estate investment opportunities, answers to questions about lease terms and more.

Taking Charge of Your Future

Realizing that market knowledge, timing and planning are critical cornerstones to building a solid financial future, HREA’s advisors encourage physicians to be proactive, rather than reactive.  For example, looking ahead and knowing when your office space lease expires will give you an opportunity to either renegotiate the terms of the lease or, if you’re considering buying commercial space, time to find exactly the right building and location.

With regard to purchasing space, Sutton cites several potential areas that should be taken into consideration well ahead of time.

“Depending on the area, it’s getting more difficult to find suitable buildings for purchase. Also, it’s more difficult to find expansion locations expand your practice and move to additional locations these days because costs can be prohibitive, depending on your reimbursements or how large the practice is.  Plus, depending on your desired location, there can be scarcity of land,” he explains. “We can advise our clients on the best acquisition strategies and it really depends on the individual practitioner or group practice as to what the strategy is.”

If a physician is leasing space and is not financially ready to purchase a building, HREA can present some alternatives, such as renegotiating the lease in more favorable terms while acquiring other types of investments to begin a plan for retirement. Also, since leases are extremely complex documents, a healthcare real estate advisor is incredibly valuable in helping the client figure out how the business points of the lease could impact his or her  practice in the long-term.

Many physicians have already caught on to the value of commercial real estate as a way to diversify their retirement strategies.

“They are learning they can diversify with real estate holdings and are managing their assets better,” notes Perman. “In the end, this means that they won’t be completely dependent on their medical practices to keep the lights on in the future.”

A Team Approach to Success

The keys for physicians in creating a successful plan for retirement include controlling occupancy costs, making good decisions on how their practices are run, and diversification of investments to create as much passive income as possible to complement their assets.  However, this knowledge doesn’t always come naturally, nor is it easy to cover all of these bases without help.

“We look at our group as the ‘quarterback’ for executing the plays and getting the right players involved. That means making sure each of our clients has the right advisors at hand to help make decisions and ensure they are not being taken advantage of,” says Perman. “Because our advisors specialize in health care, they have training and knowledge of issues such as what it takes to run a medical practice, how HIPAA regulations or new technologies can affect decisions, or how declining reimbursements impact the bottom line. We know what physicians’ goals should be and customize a plan for each client. A traditional real estate broker wouldn’t have that kind of specific knowledge, nor access to related team players such as accountants and attorneys who know the industry.”

Ultimately, physicians can’t make a living unless they see patients. But the reality is that “seeing patients” is often more than a full-time job.

“Those who work in healthcare are sometimes so busy attending to their day-to-day responsibilities that there is no time left over to focus on the future,” says Perman. “We can create a process and a plan for our clients that will both improve their bottom line in the present, while ensuring that they have a secure retirement waiting for them when the time comes.”

Healthcare Real Estate Advisors, Inc., the physician’s advocate for buying, selling, leasing and investing, is a division of LYNX Real Estate, Inc. For more information, visit online at physiciansadvocate.com, e-mail at info@myHREA.com or call 404-477-2044.