Creative Ideas Needed to Motivate a REIT to Sell me a Property

[Account Closed]

I have a somewhat unique situation in which I'm stuck.

I own a building and operate a business out of it. It shares a common wall with another building that it has been vacant for over 5 years. I'd like to purchase the vacant building and expand my business (open portions of the wall).

The building is owned by a REIT (owner) and is leased to a major bank which closed in our market over 4 more years ago. The bank (absentee tenant) is in a NNN lease that pays the owner. The owner's paid around a $1M and have been enjoying about a $100K annual return for approximately 16 years to date.

The owners' portfolio which owns the property that I'm interested in includes about 60 other properties all with the same tenant; only a few are vacant.

The tenant presumably has been making all of their payments, so the owner has no motivation to sell at this time.

I have several reasons for which I'd like to own the building...and others in town have been interested in it for years as well.

The value of the "building" if it was vacant would be around $750K.

I've made two offers (over $1M) over the past year or so both of which have fallen on deaf ears. They say they are cross collateralize and not interested in selling. Once this lease is up (eventually) they will be very motivated to sell (I'm sure) but that is a way off and I'd like to be first in line.

The tenant is interested in subleasing the space but I don't have any desire to do that without any assurance that i will control the space in the long run.

Any ideas as to how to entice the seller to make a deal? I'd be willing to pay a bit of a premium for the space.

They have another vacant (but performing) location not far from here (leases are coterminous) that I would purchase as well if it helped.

[Omar Khan]

@Account Closed If this is any respectable REIT, you will not get through to the CFO. These companies aren't mom-and-pop operations run by some mid-level executive.

The point about cross-collaterialization isn't wrong. They are managing from a portfolio level whereas non-institutional investors manage at the property level. Different perspectives lead to different strategies/outlook. 

Best bet: Continue to develop a relationship with their broker and do some LinkedIn/Google searches to see who is on the investment team at this REIT. Reach out to them and develop a relationship to understand their acquisition and divestiture criteria. Once you start speaking their language, you will be in a better position to communicate.

This strategy might take longer but has a higher probability of success. Randomly calling senior executives shows that you're an amateur and will not help you be taken seriously.