How to Protect an Off-Market Deal

[Chris Brooks]

Hi All,

I've found what I believe to be a good off market deal for a small apartment complex. This is my first apartment deal so I want to bring in partner(s) for capital as well as experience. However I've never pitched this type of deal. My concern is that if I pitch it to a bunch of investors someone might try and reach out to the seller and cut me out.

What would be the best practice here? Pitch the deal without giving the exact address or perhaps asking potential investors to sign some kind of document stating that they won't do anything with the specific property without me?


Has this ever happened to anyone? I'm not sure if I'm making a mountain out of a molehill.

[Justin Moy]

Your only protection is having the deal under contract, then you can talk about it to anybody and everybody and they can't take it from you. Unless you don't disclose the entire address and just talk about the neighborhood, but if someone really wanted to then they could take the size of the property and the neighborhood and figure it out. 

Overall I'd ask for some referrals on who you can trust. Very very unlikely someone who was referred will steal the deal from you, reputation is huge in the commercial space, it's a lot smaller on this side than on the SFH side.