Mainly office with a little bit of shop space!

[Cole Bigbee]

Investment Info:

Office Space commercial investment investment in Muscle Shoals.

Purchase price: $105,000
Cash invested: $5,000

2400sqft metal building with brick exterior. 1600sqft of office space and 800sqft of shop space.

What made you interested in investing in this type of deal?

Great location in the middle of town and looked to have been vacated for at least a year.

How did you find this deal and how did you negotiate it?

It is near a lunch spot I frequent. There was no sign in they yard, so I looked up the owner on the tax assessor's website. It showed the owner as a bank that was located an hour away from the site. After calling the bank and visiting with them, they set me up with a real estate agent they had representing them. Turns out there was a sign in the yard but since the agent was from out of town as well, he didn't know the sign had blew over and grass grew up around it. This deal happened fast!

How did you finance this deal?

Traditional bank financing.

How did you add value to the deal?

The previous owners left the place in a wreck! We gave the building a good cleaning to start. We then added an additional restroom as there too many office and only one restroom. On the outside the parking lot got re-striped and re-sealed. We also added a canopy over the front to give it a better look, while providing some rain cover.

What was the outcome?

It took close to 6 months to get it leased and I got lucky and leased it to an engineering firm.

Lessons learned? Challenges?

I worked with the same agent who represented the seller, to list the property for me. He was a super nice guy but him being located an hour away and not really having good knowledge of the area and in the "know" of this particular market did not help me. After 5 months of nothing, I told him it wasn't working out for me. Long story short, look around to see who is the best agent for your particular property and who keeps their ear to the streets. It takes more than an MLS listing to get a tenant