All Forum Posts by: Danny Simard

Here to also say do what Chris Mason said. However, with an arrangement like that, you should talk to an attorney. 

Hey Sam, 

I don't think I'm exactly the right partner for what you're describing, but I'm also bullish on Atlanta, and I have one residential rental property in Georgia. Plus, I work in the commercial world, so I might have some insight to share with you. If you'd like to chat and brainstorm ideas, my dm's are open.

Just going to piggy back on what others are saying here with a simple question you should ask when considering buying any existing property, assuming you aren't buying with the plan to demolish and build something new:

- When my current tenant leaves, what kind of tenant will replace them? It's a bad situation when you have a property that only serves an extremely limited pool of potential tenants, i.e. Dollar Generals et al. Apartments? Pretty much anyone can replace an outgoing tenant. Same applies for other broad asset classes (office, industrial, retail). Gas station? Pretty much only another gas station operator would move in there. Can't really convert it into a Starbucks without a cost-prohibitive amount of capex.

Congrats on that leasing activity! 

This is the $100,000,000 problem of most office landlords and will be for the rest of this decade (and beyond, probably).

This is a fantastic list. Thanks for writing it up, @Kristi Kandel!

Mine? Well, based on the floor plates of this particular building, there's not much to be done. We're in that sweet spot of too big to chop up into resi, and too modernized to justify the cost of either demo or cutting into the structure to make it "E" shaped. 

Definitely not unique to Utah. At least here in Southern California, the story is exactly the same (for most assets). For Landlords who don't have to sell, they're waiting out the storm, so to say. This is especially true for properties without debt. 

Hey @Chandler Butler, did you end up getting your license? Did you join a CRE brokerage?

The tl;dr is: it depends

At my last property, our brokers were busy as hell. We did, on average, 1 new lease and 1 renewal each month. This was at a class B industrial flex business park in San Diego, about 70 total tenants.

Also in San Diego, one of my office assets was 100% leased with soaring rents, strong lease renewals, and basically everything you could ask for. Meanwhile, one of my current office assets is doing some touring, but no real leasing activity (and we have plenty of vacancy).  

If you wanted to do capital markets for office right now, that's probably not the best plan, at least not in the short term. 

If you wanted to work leasing or capital markets for industrial just about anywhere, it's probably (relatively) easy to find success. 

Capital markets for residential? Kind of a good bet anywhere given the dearth of housing across the US. 

Like with anything, it depends on what you're trying to get into, where it is (Atlanta is a great market!), and your personal cash flow requirements. 

If you do make the switch, talk with multiple successful CRE brokerage teams, and find one where you can join, learn from the team, and support the team while doing so.