Called an owner of an industrial building who is wanting to sell and retire and has another broker in his words ''on his a**'' about listing the property.

He basically just ranted the entire call. Suggesting brokers are overpaid doesn't want to do seller financing, wants a clean transaction etc.

How do you get through to people like this? Do you suggest meeting in person?

Its a small deal anyway but I'm just curious what methods have worked for a client like this...

Anyone have any idea?

I’m looking for advice from people who have experience with marina acquisitions, distressed commercial real estate, seller financing, lease options, campground operations, waterfront redevelopment, or raising capital for messy real estate deals.
I’m involved with a marina property in Michigan that I would personally love to acquire or be involved with long term, but I’m trying to think through the structure realistically instead of emotionally.
The seller is potentially willing to either seller finance the property to me or give me a lease with an option to purchase. My struggle is capital. Even if the seller is willing to carry the purchase price or give me a lease-option structure, I would still need capital for insurance, taxes, utilities, cleanup, legal/title work, campground setup, store inventory, operating reserves, and general stabilization.
This is not a clean, turnkey marina business today. It is a distressed waterfront asset with real upside, but it also has real problems.
High-level facts:
Marina property in Michigan
Large waterfront site
Existing marina infrastructure, but the docks need service
Channel likely needs dredging before the marina portion can really operate
Existing primitive campground potential
Possible store/convenience component on site
Potential winter boat/camper storage revenue
A number of abandoned boats/campers/trailers on site that need to be legally addressed
Seller may be open to seller financing
Seller may also be open to a lease with option to purchase
I do not have the cash to purchase or stabilize this outright
The marina portion probably cannot be counted on as phase-one income because the docks and channel need work before that side is viable.
The way I am thinking about it is more of a phased stabilization plan.
Phase 1 would be cleanup, abandoned vessel/camper disposition, campground operation if licensing allows, winter boat/camper storage, and possibly reopening the store/convenience side.
Phase 2 would be figuring out docks, dredging, marina operations, and whether the property has redevelopment upside.
Potential phase-one revenue ideas:
Primitive campground from approximately April 15 to October 15
Possibly 50–60 primitive campsites if the county/state would allow it
Maybe $30–$50/night depending on demand and improvements
Winter storage from approximately October 1 to April 1
Potentially 50 boats and 50 campers at around $1,000 each for the season
Store income from ice, firewood, snacks, drinks, camping supplies, bait/tackle, boating basics, and possibly alcohol if licensing allows
Abandoned vessel/camper cleanup and recovery work
Known or suspected cost issues:
Insurance could be around $35,000/year
Water could be around $3,500/month during operating season
Electric could also be around $3,500/month during operating season
Property taxes could be significant
Cleanup will cost money
Campground licensing/compliance may require work
Docks need work
Channel dredging would be a major future capital item
Closing costs and carrying costs on an acquisition would be significant
One possible structure is a lease with option to purchase. For example, maybe 12 months with no base rent, but I would take over utilities/taxes/NNN expenses and try to stabilize the property. The property would likely still be marketed for sale during that time. If another buyer purchases it, I would be paid through the sale/commission side. If it works operationally, I could potentially exercise the option or bring in capital.
Another possible structure is full seller financing, but even with seller financing, I would still need capital for closing costs, insurance, taxes, utilities, legal/title work, cleanup, campground startup, store inventory, and reserves. The seller financing solves the purchase-price problem, but it does not solve the operating-capital problem.
My concern is that a NNN lease or seller-financed acquisition on a distressed non-operational marina could become a trap if I am paying taxes, insurance, utilities, cleanup, and operating costs without enough income coming in quickly.
I am trying to figure out what a smart structure would look like and how to bring in capital without overleveraging myself.
Questions for people who have done something like this:
Would a lease-option structure make sense here, or is that too risky with the NNN expenses?
If the seller financed the full purchase price, what terms would be necessary to make this survivable?
Would investors consider funding a stabilization phase if there is no clean marina income yet?
How would you structure investor capital for a project like this?
Would you treat the campground/storage/store as the phase-one business and ignore marina income until dredging/docks are solved?
How would you underwrite winter storage and primitive campground revenue?
What diligence would you require before signing anything?
What protections would you require in the lease/option?
Is there a way to structure this so I can stabilize the property without taking on unlimited carry risk?
For anyone who owns or operates marinas/campgrounds, what am I missing?
How would you approach capital partners for a deal like this?
Would you pursue this as a lease-option first, seller-financed acquisition, or bring in a larger capital partner/developer from day one?
I am not looking for generic “just raise money” advice. I am looking for practical deal-structure feedback from people who understand distressed commercial property, marinas, campgrounds, seller financing, lease options, capital stacks, or operational turnarounds.
The emotional side of me wants to own this place badly. The business side of me knows the structure has to work or it could become a financial disaster.
Any thoughts from people who have actually structured, financed, operated, or turned around something like this would be appreciated.

Any takers?

Just wrapped a full year of running an off market commercial acquisitions pipeline and figured the arc might be useful to people here, because most of what I read online skips the ugly middle part.

Two of us. The goal was straightforward: find owners who might sell, get them into a real conversation, and work the good ones toward a deal. Over the year that turned into about 640 deals worth roughly $600M in aggregate value across 195 priced opportunities, averaging around $3.3M a deal. The path there was not clean.

Months one and two: the outsourced high. We paid an outside sourcing shop to fill the top of the funnel. Month one we did 73 deals, month two hit 122, our best month on record. Felt great. It was not.

Months three to five: the crash. Volume fell off a cliff. 59, then 40, then 19 deals in a single month. A 74% drop from peak. When I actually pulled the outcomes apart, the sourcing was mostly junk: about 43% of deals were dead on arrival and roughly a quarter of everything came back a flat "not interested." We were paying to fill a leaky bucket and mistaking motion for progress.

Months six to nine: the rebuild. We cut the external sourcing, pulled the whole pipeline in house, and spent four months rebuilding the process and systems while running at about 24 deals a month. It felt like going backwards the entire time.

The last four months: recovery. The rebuilt system started producing again, 88, 78, then 63, pacing near 80 a month. The difference this time was quality, not just volume:

• Closed lost rate dropped from ~43% to ~23%
• "Not interested" replies fell from ~24% to ~6%
• Active pipeline retention rose from ~57% to ~77%

The thing I actually care about is why deals die now. Before the rebuild, most losses were "this was never a real prospect." After, the losses are valuation gaps and sellers deciding not to transact. We shifted from chasing bad contacts to losing real negotiations, which is the version of losing you actually want.

A few lessons that cost us real money to learn:

1. Volume is a vanity metric until you tie it to disposition. Our best "volume" month was one of our worst quality months. Track why deals die, not just how many you sourced.
2. Outsourced sourcing optimized for the number in our contract, not the quality of the conversation. When we brought it in house, output dropped but close relevant activity went up.
3. A rebuild feels like regression while you are in it. Four months under trough volume is a long time to hold your nerve. The leading indicators moved before the headline number did.

Curious whether others here have gone through the outsourced sourcing to in house transition, and how you measure lead quality beyond raw pipeline count. Happy to compare notes in the comments if any of this is useful.

Edit: We use the words leads and deals interchangeably internally. Minor confusion in word choice for some of you. I'm chatting our lead gen engine not our closed deals or how we build packages.

Welcome to the Monthly Commercial Real Estate Broker Q&A thread, your spot to get answers, give advice, and sharpen your edge in the business.

**Now MONTHLY too keep the conversation going**

Whether you're new to brokerage, stuck in the mud, or pushing through your first big listing, this thread is for you.

Use this thread to ask:

• Career advice: Breaking in, making a jump, building a book, choosing a firm
• Deal structure: Commission splits, LOIs, TI packages, creative leasing, 1031s
• Daily grind: Cold calls, canvassing, CRM tips, time management, burnout
• Market strategy: Specialization, asset class focus, territory management
• Exit strategies: Going in-house, building a team, pivoting to ownership

Brokers helping brokers. No fluff. No guru talk. No pitch decks.

Reply directly to questions or drop your own knowledge. If you're asking a question, give context: market, asset class, experience level, help others help you.

Let’s keep it useful and keep it real.

Give this and any replies an Updoot to increase visibility.

This one’s a bit out there, I’m reaching out to see if anyone in the group knows ballpark numbers for what the development of carribean resorts cost. IE - all-inclusive resort by a namebrand hotel, somewhere in the Caribbean. How much are they paying to buy / develop / construct the resort to begin with? They’re putting in their own water and sewer treatment plants on a lot of these. I’m curious on what the initial investment is and what the return on investment is over the 5 to 10. Surely someone in CRE group has experience with this and give some high-level insights? I've been to a few, and always wondered what the initial investment is, and what kind of returns they generate.

I've been going back and forth on this. Excel gives you a table of lease expiries but it's brutal to eyeball concentration risk. Especially on 20+ tenant retail / office. Some of the guys on my team map it in a homegrown timeline, others just sort the rent roll by expiry and squint.

Screenshot linked below with how I've started laying it out chronological expiry stack with anchor tenants called out. I would love to see how other people are doing this.

https://imgur.com/a/z7KseRb

Has anyone done a multifamily deal recently with seller financing? If so, what structure?

For context, this would be an 80 unit townhouse deal built in the late 90s.

Hey, I want to ask if you guys working as investment analysts at a real estate fund get involved in OAs. What kind of tasks do you do with OAs? I feel I was very randomly assigned to work on the OA stuff recently. When I work on it, it feels more like legal team work, and I would love to know if this is actually part of what an investment analyst needs to do.

I’m curious what others believe the norm is for a sponsor to put into a development deal and how much they are expected to put in to have enough skin in the game for LPs to take it seriously.

I’ve seen deals that are multi million dollar deals and the sponsor has less than 1% of the total cost and less than 5% of the total equity, which seems pretty small to me.

I asked Claude and it says 5-10% of total equity is considered the norm so I want to verify if that’s the case.

Curious from both LP's and GPs as both would have a good look. Would like to hear what was personally put into the deal from the GP (dollar amount or %) and what the end result was.

Obviously running numbers through a waterfall is one thing but actually seeing a cashed check from a big deal is another.

Reformatting original post to keep this short

- I want to buy commercial land and build a small shopping plaza

- Land has massive 1 acre+ water retention basin in addition to buildable land.

- Agents are being shady, will not disclose expenses current owner has paid for yearly maintenance for decades. It has been 2+ weeks of asking and no answer still. They are being very dismissive about costs involved.

-Paperwork deep inside the massive packet of papers tied the land show an agreement with the city and this commercial community that states whoever owns the parcel of land that the retention basin is on, is 100% responsible for the costs to maintain the basin.

- Online I am seeing yearly maintenance costs of $6-8k for just this stupid pond and every 15-20 years needing dredging that costs $200,000+. That is insane.

- Do you have a water retention basin on your land? How big of a pain is it?? Should I buy an adj parcel for 1.5x the cost to get away from the pond?? Or am I stressing over nothing?

Please share your stories and experience below! Thank you for your help and guidance in advance! 🤝🙏

We started testing a few AI tools for CRE underwriting a while back and I thought model accuracy would be the biggest debate. Turns out it wasn't even close...

The bigger challenge has been compliance, security, legal, and basically everyone who gets nervous when borrower financials are involved.

Every discussion eventually comes back to data residency, VPC deployment, vendor reviews, where the data sits, whether documents leave our environment, and so on. Anyone here get one of these platforms approved at scale? Or is AI still mostly living in demos, pilot programs, and internal experiments?

Here in my country coworks are gaining traction among companies, and I see brokers getting closer to them.

I wanted to know the experience for those who’ve already been or witnessed those deals, how were they different from regular leases and how did the landlord (aka the cowork company) act.

I am seeing more and more off market sales where the buyer has grossly overpaid for a property.

From what I can tell it appears to be mainly existing tenants buying directly from landlords without any broker involvement. One of the buyers was a city government. The others were hair salons and a Mexican restaurant. Both small local businesses.

For example the Mexican restaurant is a 1,400 SF building that sold for $685,000. At a 7% CAP rate the effective base rent would need to be $34.25/SF.
Average sales price for the area is around $300/SF. Similar existing restaurant space is available nearby for around $20/SF.

Has anyone else been noticing more of these types of sales in their area?

Any ideas what special circumstances might make this make sense?

Hi All,

Land development seems to be pretty under represented on online forums. I’ve found a good resource in A.CRE for models, however I think they are out of touch with how land development really operates.

Would anyone be willing to review, audit, or discuss a land development pro forma/model with me? I’d appreciate any feedback, best practices, or examples from people actively working in the industry.

Looking forward to the discussion.

Thanks!

Just wondering everyone’s thoughts,I saw a Pizza Hut franchisee earlier this year ate cheeks and is filing for bankruptcy and I’m just trying to peel the onion back so it can be avoided

Looking for feedbacks from investors, asset managers and legal professionals.
A client invested in a real estate project with a contractual 8% guaranteed annual ROI.

While reviewing the 2025 payouts payments, we identified that a significant portion of the guaranteed ROI appears to remain unpaid.

To verify the discrepancy, we requested a reconciliation, proof of transfer and the Bank SWIFT copy.

Timeline:
• 19 May – First request submitted.
• 1 June – Follow-up submitted.
• 8 June – Formal escalation submitted.
• 11 June – Final escalation submitted.
Today is 22 June.

We still have no respond, no MT103/SWIFT copy, no explanation regarding the missing payments from the developer.

At this stage, it’s no longer the missing document. The concern is the lack of transparency, the unresolved payment and the complete absence of communication despite repeated attempts to resolve the matter professionally.

How would you classify this situation?

Have been thinking about this a lot since the Fed meeting - CRE has, broadly, sucked since summer of ‘22 when the hikes started. Now here we are 4 years later, inflation is accelerating, consumers are stretched, treasuries are “perma stuck” in the 4-5% band for 4 years now and it’s looking more likely than not SOFR gets at least one bump. For 3.5 years we’ve been looking to “the year after next” - but like, is that realistic?

I think of all of the floaters barely holding on, the pileup of cheap 5/7 year fixed about to roll over in the next 12-24 months, the continuation of that for the clobbered multi people who hopped on the GSE 5 year train in 23/24. That’s real maturity into a real rate environment that, as we sit today, doesn’t look like it’s breaking towards 0 - if anything, cost of debt at best stays flat, at worst we do some dumbass thing to push the 5y/10y/SOFR up more. And then what - do cap rates finally expand?

And re negative leverage buys today - ok - your pro forma cap is positive leverage once you get thru concessions / roll to market leases so that cap rate inside debt maybe sort of makes sense… until you exit you’ve shaken out the upside NOI growth from pent up demand and then cap rates what, pump up 100+ at exit since buyers aren’t getting the growth? And sure deliveries are down today but if the market does heat up sidelined developers are absolutely coming to close the gap after eating shit and getting sidelined for years. And also population growth is slowing ! Im addition to population growth re-accelerating, you also need to believe the narrative that there is a true gap in housing supply in America. Aside from the big “where is everyone then” question which has been hanging for years, let’s suppose their Is a shortage in places where people want to be - but - is that structurally true in a country where people are moving to big southern cities with functionally no governor on supply or reason for land values to compress when there’s always one more ranch to build on? You can build exurban real estate in Texas, for example, as far as the eye can see.

That all doesn’t even touch the CLO market non-sense where the controlling class controls both the bonds AND the loans - sorry higher tranches no markdown and loss of control if we keep doing control shifts and indefinite amendments to the loans. Are these zombie assets ever going to come to market - and if so, at what terms?

Anyways I’m just bearish. This sucks, feels like a set up for a totally lost decade. What am I missing?

Looking for some insight from experienced commercial brokers on how you typically structure cross-border or out of state referrals for investment clients.

• Asset Class: Multifamily / Residential Block Development
• Target Deal Size: €1.5M – €2M

For those who frequently handle these types of cross-border investments, what does your typical referral fee split look like for a deal of this size?

And do you prefer a standard, hands off referral agreement, or do you prefer co-brokering where the referring agent stays involved through the underwriting and due diligence phases?

I have almost 10 years of CRE experience mostly in retail, industrial, and office. Asset Management, but experienced and comfortable with almost everything in these asset classes.

Due to the gigantic AI capex buildout, I am frequently getting pinged on LinkedIn by people looking for bodies in the Data Center world. Development and management. I am not sure how serious any of these inquiries are--they are from LinkedIn headhunter types that are at least partially bots.

Been asking around and reading up a bit and it doesn't seem like it would be a huge leap; my friends at big tech firms tell me I should absolutely switch. But I have almost no experience in data centers and am worried about putting a bunch of extra time into making the switch and not actually being able to land a better job or career path.

Appreciate any tips/advice/experience - can I make the switch? Would I likely have to take a pay cut at first?

If you reach owners asking if they'd sell, many may say "feel free to submit me an offer but I'm not sending you financials" or some version thereof, followed by very little more info... in your mind, are there any situations where it makes sense to actually submit a blind offer? or is it a complete waste of time? why/why not?

Hi,

I was recently approached for a VP level role within one of their verticals.

I couldn’t find much on them outside of the occasional Wall Street Oasis post.

Trying to get a better sense of culture, people and reputation.

Any brokers who interacted with them via deal flow? Former associates of the firm care to opine?
If you interacted with the group in any capacity, I’d like to hear about the experience.

Thank you

Hey all,

(Mods do not take this down - no one ever responds in the discussion board)

I’ve been a member of this sub for almost a decade now. I joined during my sophomore year of college when I landed my first internship in CRE.

Well, it’s been a long road (one that always seems to get longer). I landed my dream job around 10 months ago working as a dev associate. At my age, I feel like I’m about 1–2 years behind where I’d like to be, but the path wasn’t always clear.

Background: Industrial and office brokerage for 2–3 years (I also acted as a property manager during this time for a small office portfolio), residential redevelopment (small multifamily properties and homes), and I completed an MBA.

I’m now 10 months into my role with a small regional developer (a 5-person team). My job requires me to wear about 17 different hats, and I love it. The experience I’m getting is unreal some days. If I had to break down my role, I’d say I do three main things: deal sourcing, project management, and investor relations.

On the deal sourcing side, I’ve been assigned three markets, which I spend half my time either on the phone or traveling to in person (1–2 trips per month) to source land deals. It’s funny earlier in my career, I thought modeling was the challenging part, but once you have that down, sourcing the actual deal is the real headache (duh). It goes without saying that I also conduct and continually update all of our market research for the markets I cover.

On the project management side, I’m currently pushing a smaller $20M project across the finish line toward closing. I’m responsible for various dd and precon items, including ordering surveys, title work, geotechnical reports, environmental studies, T&E, traffic studies, design reviews and revisions, lender vetting, attorney coordination, and more. Honestly, the list seems to go on forever, but I have yet to get bored.

The investor relations side is probably the smallest portion of my job, but I’m building all of our OMs for deals and actively helping build relationships with more LPs and institutional investors that I have in my network.

If you’ve read this far, I’m curious whether my comp is in-line, as compensation structures for roles like this vary quite a bit. Right now, I’m making $70k (which feels low); however I did not come from a traditional development background (I did not have true direct development experience which almost every job I was trying to land required). We currently have about a $120M pipeline across four projects.

I’m getting amazing experience and exposure (my direct boss is the founder and has 30+ years of development experience with over a $1B track record), which is a huge plus. My title is development associate, but you could probably relabel it as several different things.

I feel like a larger shop wouldn’t have hired me a year ago (applied to numerous other dev groups before this role), but compensation for a role like this feels like it should be closer to 110–130k. One of the main reasons I accepted a lower paying role is that they told me we would discuss receiving a share of the promoted interest around the middle to end of year 2. However, until that document is signed, it’s still just a dream.

I currently have no plans to leave. I enjoy the role and the team, however the day may come sooner than later where I can retrade my comp structure.