The ideal position to be in when choosing the best qualified buyers to work with who invest in existing properties or who develop ground up is having a property or properties in your inventory that suits the needs of a range of buyer types. If you are not in the position of having being hired as the broker with the exclusive right to sell, to handle the marketing and sale of an investment property for your client then you will need to contact other brokers with the listings on properties that your buyers are interested in purchasing.
At Accord Real Estate Group we mentor our agents, we offer professional training to our agents and we encourage our agents to become proficient at accumulating their own saleable inventory of properties to be marketed and sold.
Buyer/Investor types will generally be interested in one or several categories of opportunity such as:
Small single or multi - family residential/ handyman’s special which needs rehab work, selling for below market price.
Small mixed use (commercial and residential combined/ handyman’s special which needs rehab work, selling for below market price.
Medium size multi- family rent stabilized residential with 6 to 20 units, good cash flow with good potential upside for rents to increase, few or ideally none of the tenants in court with the landlord, in fair to good condition at market price or below market.
Medium size mixed use with 3 to 4 stores with 8 to 20 residential units. Same criteria as #3.
Value add property which is an existing property in a good location, ideally 100% vacant, few or no tenant problems, which has expansion possibilities with favorable zoning (R-6, R-7, R-8 and up + favorable FAR (floor area ratio of 4 and up with the addition of a Community Facility as part of the project to capitalize on the opportunity to build additional square feet).
Adaptive Reuse property such as an existing office building, factory, garage or warehouse that can be reimagined, reconfigured or redesigned for a completely different use such as residential condominiums residential rentals, office space, mixed use ( stores + residential apartments ) etc…
Ground up development which typically involves vacant land in a hot or an up and coming neighborhood with 25x100 lot size minimum, larger commercial (parking lot) or residential lots of 50x100 size and bigger with existing buildings on them (to be demolished) that have favorable Zoning and FAR where the opportunity to build is very attractive and the sale or leasing of units is very lucrative compared to the financial risk involved for the developer.
Elevator Apartment building of 20 units and up with a strong upside in the rents, very few if any rent control apartments and preferably only stabilized rental units. Of course outstanding court actions with tenants is not necessarily a deal breaker but not good.
Commercial building only with offices and ground floor retail with good tenants and reasonable lease terms for both landlord and tenant and a rent roll with upside potential.
Some words of advice. Learn about, get to know and become an expert at a specific property type or types that your buyers are interested in. Market knowledge of trends in the neighborhoods that you are focusing on is key.
Real Estate is an intensely local business. Every block in every neighborhood is different. Every location on a given block is different. Positioning on a block can make the difference between prime location and a less than prime location on a specific block. Every opportunity is different.
Listen VERY carefully to what your buyers are saying. Use your gut instincts. Don’t waste your valuable time with unrealistic, unreasonable, overly aggressive and especially dishonest investor buyers. There are many of them out there. Always be polite, professional and direct. Find out the name of the person who you are speaking with, the company, person or group of individuals that they represent, where they are located, email address and phone number, the type or types of investment properties they are interested in purchasing and how much cash they are working with? What is their budget for the purchase? Is it their money or someone else’s? Always talk directly to the money person who is the decision maker. Remember be polite but direct. If the buyer says “money is no problem” and you do not get a direct answer to your questions, move on to the next investor. Work with the investors who you are comfortable with, who are down to earth with no BS.
To learn more about our company and the training that we offer, call us.
Thank you
Jeff and Anna
Accord Real Estate Group
