Buying a Business with RE but Looking to Sell the RE to an Investor

[Jessi Beyer]

Hi everyone! My name is Jessi, and I'm a small business acquirer. I'm currently looking at a business acquisition that includes real estate. The business operates out of the real estate (office space), but the business sellers want a certain value for the real estate that the business's cash flow is not able to support.

Normally, I'd just chalk this up to unrealistic expectations on the sellers' part, but in this case, their real estate is in a prime location to be re-developed into multi-family housing, so the valuation that they're asking for is, I think, realistic.

I'd like to buy the business and the real estate at the same time (makes me a more appealing buyer if I can take both off their hands), but simultaneously sell the real estate to a developer/investor at the value they're asking for and move the business to a new office location. Essentially, I'm looking to do a sale-leaseback, but instead of leasing it back to the business, the developer/investor would just keep the real estate, and I'd keep (and relocate) the business.

Is there anyone in the BiggerPockets community who a) is interested in this type of transaction (the sellers are valuing the real estate between $1-5M -- keeping it vague since I'm under NDA), or b) can help broker this type of transaction? Additionally, if anyone has tips on how to make this type of transaction work, I'm all ears!