All Forum Posts by: John Smith

How recession proof is the commercial real estate appraisal business?

Anyone know of any good resources or books on finding adaptive reuse properties (I.e. vacant warehouses, etc.) that to be converted to apartments/office/retail?

Just trying to understand the whole process of getting one of these properties under contract for a more experienced investor than myself. I imagine I need a team consisting of a good contractor and environmental engineer at the very least but any additional insight would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

I've figured out how to search for only cash sales in my area over the past year.  However, when I try to export the results, it only shows the owner in all of the excel spreadsheets that trend offers, which refers to the seller, not the buyer.  I am trying to create a list of recent cash buyers in my area and was wondering if anyone knew how to create an excel spreadsheet from trend that had a column showing all the buyers, not just the owners ("sellers")? Any help would be greatly appreciated.  Thank you.

I was speaking with this young and hugely successful developer in my city the other night at this networking event and he told me that the best way to get started in development is to get a property under contract and partner with someone who knows what they're doing to work on the deal.  My understanding was that I should essentially be wholesaling but rather than flipping the property for a quick buck, flipping it to someone more experienced than me so I can learn the process.

Since I know several highly successful developers through work, my plan was to start emailing them on Monday asking if they wanted to meet up for coffee.  Then when I see them, I would tell them that I want to be a part of their next deal, that I will do everything in my power to bring a deal to them and in exchange, I just want to work with them on the project and learn their process, I don't care about equity. If they agree to this, I will make sure that they are willing to back me financially in the event that I find them a deal and I will find out exactly the types of deals that they are looking for so I can hone my search specifically for what they are looking for.

I'm very new to this but very eager to start learning the process so that I will have the experience and knowledge necessary to start doing this on my own.  Is my plan reasonable or is it foolish? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.