Solutions

Asher & Associates is a consulting firm that provides solutions to the real estate and financial services industries. We pride ourselves in providing superior personalized highest quality service to our clients.

 

 

About Us

Asher & Associates was founded by Isaac Asher who has been working in the real estate and financial services industries for 25 years. Mr. Asher has performed consulting services in real estate finance, public finance, acquisition due diligence, loan sale, securitization, cash flow analysis and other financial analysis.

Prior to heading Asher & Associates, Mr. Asher has been with Ernst & Young and formerly with Kenneth Leventhal & Company. He has performed accounting, auditing, tax and management consulting services for entities of many sizes. He has extensive experience in securitization; structuring mortgage backed securities; business planning; structuring and analyzing acquisition possibilities; valuations of a wide range of real estate properties including residential, commercial, industrial and multi-use properties.

Mr. Asher has a high degree of experience in financial projections and forecasts; syndications of various real estate properties; collateralized mortgage obligations; bond transaction analysis; and debt analysis. He is also an expert in computer modeling.

Mr. Asher has worked with the Development Planning & Financing Group on a wide range of projects including Community Facilities Districts (CFDs), Assessment Districts (ADs), School District advisory, land use planning, fiscal impact analysis. Redevelopment area tax increment financing, infrastructure cost allocation, project feasibility analysis and other related work.

Mr. Asher has a Master's Degree in Mathematics with emphasis in applied mathematics, partial differential equations and statistics from the University of California Los Angeles, and a bachelor's degree with a dual major in (1) Business Administration with Concentration in Accounting, and (2) Mathematics with concentration in Pure Mathematics from California State University, Fullerton.

Mr. Asher is a licensed Certified Public Accountant and Real Estate Broker in the State of California, and is associated with numerous affiliations and societies, including the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, California Society of Certified Public Accountants, Honorary Member of the Mathematical Association of America and the American Mathematical Society, National Association of Accountants, Beta Alpha Psi, an accounting honor society, and Beta Gamma Sigma, a business honor society.

 

Services

Asher & Associates provides a wide rage of services to the real estate and financial services industries.  These services include:

Structured Finance Securitization Advisory

• Collateral stratification analysis
• Collateral due diligence
• Transaction document review
• Reverse engineer transactions
• Collateral and bond cash flow modeling
• Stress test cash flows for defaults, prepayments, interest rates and other factors
• Residual value assessment
• Servicing rights assessment
• Trustee remittance report verification
• Agreed-upon procedures letters

Public Finance Advisory

• Community Facilities Districts (CFDs)
• Assessment Districts (ADs)
• Statewide Community Infrastructure Program (SCIP)
• Other public finance advisory

Project Cash Flow Advisory

• Prepare pre and post debt project cash flow analysis
• Prepare alternative project financing modules
• Prepare restructuring plan
• Prepare partner / investor cash flow allocations and splits
• Calculate project and partner/investor internal rates of return (IRR)
• Stress test project and partner cash flows under various assumptions

Business Planning Advisory

• Summarize objectives, mission and ownership
• Summarize services
• Summarize market analysis and segmentation
• Summarize strategy and implementation
• Review and assess appropriateness of financial assumptions
• Prepare break-even analysis
• Prepare projected income statements
• Prepare projected cash flows
• Prepare projected balance sheets
• Prepare projected partners capital

Asset Acquisition and Disposition Advisory

• Review and summarize asset characteristics
• Data stratification analysis
• Preparation of bid packages
• Develop bid evaluation model
• Structure joint venture and sales terms
• Assess optimal value

Financial Modeling Advisory

• Prepare all types of financial models
• Review and test existing financial models
• Critique and improve financial models
• Prepare agreed-upon procedures letters

Land Use Advisory

• Preparation of revenue and cost by product type
• Calculate and assess land use alternatives
• Maximize land residual value based on optimal land use plan

School District Advisory

• School mitigation agreements
• School fee negotiations
• School Facilities Needs Analysis (SFNA)
• School site acquisition

Fiscal Impact Advisory

• Review fiscal impact reports
• Assess assumptions used in fiscal impact analysis
• Review agencies budgets and actual results of operations
• Prepare fiscal impact reports

Experience

We have been involved in a wide range of real estate and financial services engagements. A sample of the engagements that we were involved with include:

• Assisted various New York investment banking firms and conduit originators in securitizing, structuring and due diligence of over $20 billion of commercial and residential mortgages. Some of the issuers include J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, CF First Boston, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Salomon, DLJ, Chase, Banc of America, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers, Paine Webber, GMAC, Nomura, Daiwa and Heller Financial.
  
  
• Assisted the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in their Accelerated Claims Disposition (ACD) Demonstration program. The work consisted of developing a bid evaluation model, running loan valuation scenarios, credit subsidy analysis and other assistance in structuring the joint venture and sale terms for the SFJV-2002 and SFJV-2003 transactions.
  
  
• Assisted the U.S. Department of Agriculture review their Business & Industry guaranteed loan subsidy model, review the model’s cash flows and credit subsidy rates based on Office of Management and Budget (OMB) credit subsidy calculator.
  
  
• Assisted the U.S. Department of Agriculture evaluate the impact of alternative default and recovery assumptions on credit subsidy rates for their single family housing loan refinance and nonsubsidized guaranteed programs.
  
  
• Assisted the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) perform independent validation and verification of their secondary Market Guarantee (SMG) subsidy estimate model and SBA’s 504 program subsidy estimate model.
  
  
• Assisted many builders/developers in the creation of Mello-Roos Community Facility Districts. Analyzed the sources and uses of a bond issue, calculated the size of the bonds necessary to obtain level and/or escalating principal and interest payments from the entire bond issue and assisted with the special tax formula and the bond payoff calculation.
  
  
• Assisted many builders/developers in the formation of Assessment Districts. Derive methodology of allocation special tax liens to different parcels and calculate lien amounts and special taxes for each parcel. Review bond issuance documents, sources and uses of cash, and related appraisal, market studies and value to lien calculations.
  
  
• Assisted mortgage lenders and servicers in valuing security residual interest of complex security structures and value mortgages servicing rights of large portfolios.
  
  
• Assisted various Canadian firms including Laurentian Bank of Canada, Merrill Lynch Canada, Caisse De Depot and Toronto Dominion Securities in due diligence, securitization and financial structuring of their commercial mortgages.
  
  
• Assisted a hedge fund bid on a 16,000 loan portfolio with a balance of approximately 1 trillion yen ($10 billion) of a failed bank in Tokyo. The analysis involved cash flowing each of the loans in the portfolio based on an extrapolation of results from an underwritten and credit evaluated sample, and applying various global default, loss severity and discount rate assumptions.
  
  
• Assisted a commercial bank in Taipei, Taiwan, Republic of China, in the issuance of over 5 billion NT dollars of residential mortgage back securities. The work involved due diligence and comfort letter procedures relating to information in the offering memorandum.
  
  
• Assisted an insurance company in the performance of a national residential mortgage market study in Eastern Europe. The study identified opportunities for the company in entering the residential mortgage market in Eastern Europe and introduction of products, including mortgage insurance and credit default swaps.
  
  
• Acted as financial advisor to the FDIC in selling a complex set of assets including residual interest in REMICs, servicing rights, and residential and commercial loans and participation interest in the loans.
  
  
• Acted as financial advisor to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in connection with the National Single Family Mortgage Loan Sale #5 consisting of approximately 18,000 loans with a balance of over $1.1 billion.
  
  
• Assisted a subordinate tranche/residual holder resecuritize over 200 classes of certificates backed by one-to-four family fixed and adjustable rate mortgage loans. The collateral consisted of approximately 160,000 mortgage loans with an aggregate balance of $43 billion.
  
  
• Assisted the Resolution Trust Corporation ("RTC") and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (“FDIC”) in securitization, structuring and due diligence of over $15 billion of residential, multifamily and commercial mortgage backed securities. The work included issuing comfort letters to the RTC and to the underwriters. Some of the engagements included the RTC Multifamily Series 1991-M3, M5, M6, the RTC Commercial Series 1992-C5, C7, CHF, 1993-C1, C2, C3, 1994-C1, C2, FDIC REMIC Trust 1994-C1 and 1996-C1, the RTC Residential Series 1992-15, 1993-3, 1994-1, 1995-1 and nonperforming RTC Series 1993-N1 and N2.
  
  
• Acted as financial advisor to Ginnie Mae on their multi-class residential REMIC program. Also, assisted Ginnie Mae in their new mortgage product development.
  
  
• Developed computer models to structure cash flows and compute price/yield information for all types of mortgage backed securities including collateralized mortgage obligations, pass-through, multiple REMIC structures, fixed and variable collateral, IO, PAC, TAC, Accrual Certificates and Accretion Directed Classes.
  
  
• Developed loss analyses computer models that handle complex mortgage-backed certificate structures.
  
  
• Assisted the Resolution Trust Corporation in calculating Derived Investment Values ("DIVs") for tax exempt, bond enhanced multifamily and commercial properties. The DIVs were used to package and sell these assets.
  
  
• Assisted many builders/developers in negotiating school mitigation agreements with school districts, calculate school fees, provide alternative financing mechanisms to finance the school fees, review of school facilities needs analysis and assist with school site acquisition.
  
  
• Assisted a large homebuilder in preparing a compilation of cash flows for a portfolio consisting of approximately 70 residential single-family projects 13 apartment projects and 10 commercial/industrial projects.
  
  
• Assisted land developers in preparing fiscal impact analysis for multiuse projects and review of municipality’s budgets and fiscal impact reports.
  
  
• Assisted an investors group in evaluating a potential offer for an equity share in an insurance company $15 billion real estate portfolio. The portfolio contained approximately 250 wholly owned real estate projects, 250 joint venture projects and 1,000 loans across the United States.
  
  
• Supervised and created a complex computer model that reflected cash flows, income statements and balance sheets at a project and corporate level. The model was used to work out the debt of approximately 300 projects with aggregate value of about $7-8 billion.
  
  
• Derived an entity value for a $300 million development company that the FDIC owned. The company had residential and commercial projects in Florida and Illinois. The report was used to evaluate offers in selling the development company.
  
  
• Supervised and performed an executive investment and incentive compensation plan for a major developer and land holder. The plan was based on comparing the value of the company's real estate and non-real estate assets at different points in time.
  
  
• Directed the creation of a cash flow and income statement computer model to assist a home builder raise investor's capital and obtain lender's financing.
  
  
• Assisted a major real estate developer and landholder in southern California in their financial planning and budgeting analyses.
  
  

Contact Us

You may contact us at our Orange County or San Diego, California locations.

Orange County, California

Telephone: (949) 552-4000
Fax:          (949) 552-4400
Email:        isaac@iasher.com

San Diego, California

Telephone: (619) 275-6800
Fax:          (619) 275-6900
Email:        isaac@iasher.com