All Forum Posts by: Adam Craig

 Thank you for the offer but this one would be in person

I good friend of mine runs a quarterly real estate meetup where rookie and seasoned investors (and non investors) get together to network and talk real estate.

This is a very casual real estate group so not a lot of pressure. David would go over the questioning format beforehand.

If you have significant real estate experience or a great story related to real estate investing, PM me or reply on this thread. 

I have been to a number of different real estate meet ups and this one is my favorite.

 Playing the appreciation side is a risky move in my opinion, especially when you could be buying at the top of the market in some metros (potentially). What if those markets have a 10%+ correction? Then you are negative equity with negative cash flow and this is not an impossible scenario. 

I would take the cash flowing property because no matter what happens to the market, you can pay the mortgage and put money your pocket.

 I guess I didn't think of the fact that they are putting it into my building but yes I will now be receptive to a higher amount

We are not actually opening a restaurant. The first floor space could be used for insurance or retail or just about anything but the city is desperately trying to work with me on getting a restaurant in this lower space and we are trying to do what we can to accommodate since they gave us a $30,000 Grant to improve the space and have been extremely gracious.

This is a borderline  C+ B- area but there is active investment much greater than the amount I am putting into this building going on  around and there are a couple restaurants in there that have been there for decades so it's not prime location by any means but it's certainly not dumpy either. It's downtown area and the city is the county seat and their government buildings everywhere.

We recently leased a vacant restaurant in a nearby city in a so-so area during covid so I am fairly confident this is a better space in a better climate then it was a year ago when we least this one

 Great insight from the other side!  

Does the 20psf seem to change if the location was previously a restaurant compared to an open space that needs everything put in? I was thinking closer to 12psf if the operator brought most of the funding to get the operation going. But again, this is not a prime area, C+ B- location.

We are rehabbing a 25K 3 story building and looking to attract a restaurant go to into the first level. The city is a major help because they were the ones who came to me when I bought the building and they are offering any help they can so I can fill it with a restaurant because its a big part of their plan to revive what used to be a thriving downtown area.

 The city has been reaching out to restaurant owners and setting up showings. I just walked through the building with a restaurant group looking to expand and they seemed to have some strong interest.

What are some common incentives I can offer them or future prospects to make it happen?

My initial thoughts were 6 months free rent and $5000 in building out assistance. Is there anything else I can offer or is $5000 a low number.

To put the numbers in perspective - The total project for rehabbing levels is going to be around 500K and the lease for the restaurant could be 4-5K a month so the lease would heavily contribute to the NOI. I have no idea how much their build out would be for the restaurant but I would imagine 150-200k ?

 Thanks for your input. This is a 3 story office/retail building. Everything is existing and no structural or floor plan changes for the initial rehab.

I am a 10 year veteran single family investor but made the switch to commercial in 2018 and I am not on my 5th building. 

Now that I am getting into bigger projects, I need to sharpen my approach. I have been using mostly small time handymen and contractors for rehabs and we never really needed site plans, architect, drawings ect...

But now we are rehabbing a 3 story 23K sq/ft building and I want to show the city and prospective tenants we are professionals.

Who do I go to for site plans, floor plans - would it be a construction company or an architect ?  Are site plans needed on every commercial job? My guys know what to do because they have been with me for so long so I never understood the importance unless you are changing the space layout which we are not at the moment

Oh I am so sorry to hear that. Mine dragged out for over 2 years! Mostly due to Covid pushing things back. Long story short, we ended up settling. Feel free to PM me I can tell you some things I learned and have changed since.