All Forum Posts by: Anthony Johnson

I have been a full time non-residential CRE investor for over 10 years and have purchased everything from retail (vacant --> fully leased NNN), warehouse, office, flex, land, industrial, mixed use, restaurants, medical and have done ground up development. Most of what I do is heavy value add vs. parking money. I wish I had a mentor but its hard to find others that do exactly what I do. I have learned from making every mistake you can imagine. I have mentored people individually for many years and recently started doing that in a group setting. Please don't take this as a solicitaion and I am no longer accepting new members. I will tell you that we met every Tuesday for six months and each session was 4 hours long. The six months ended in May and we now meet every other Tuesday and still learn a lot from new deals that people are evaluating. Everytime you read a lease, you can learn something new. There are so many different clauses in leases that affect how you underwrite deals. There are countless factors that go into evaluating buildings, guaging the health of the area, calculating how long it will take to fill a vacancy, stress testing deals, projecting on the upsides as well as downside, dynamics of having an anchor tenant lease renewal on the horizon, guaging competition and surrounding vacancy, looking at future development of the area, understanding how local politics are affecting growth, traffic patterns etc. Imagine a shopping center where certain tenants pay taxes, insurance, maintenance while others pay a flat rate or a capped amount for maintenance. With MF, you have comps, single year leases and a lot of precedent for your playbook. We also have tenant improvement allowances where we give them money upfront and that has to be factored into the proforma. A mom and pop tenant will trade at an 8-9 cap where as a high quality nationan tenant can trade at 5 caps. There are very few books written on CRE relative to MF and other residential becuase there is no simple formula. There are tons of masterminds on MF, flipping, wholesaling etc. Very few on CRE. My advice, find someone that specializes in the area that you want to dive into and add value to them in return for education and mentorship.

Hi BP,

I have a commercial property in Cincinnati, OH NNN-leased out to a single corporate tenant (pharmacy). The lease has 2.5 years left, but the tenant has closed this store and offered me a lump sum (1-year rent amount) to get out of the lease now. I need help finding a new tenant.

This is my first time dealing with commercial tenants. Based on the research I presume the best way to find a tenant is to hire a commercial real estate broker?

1. How do you vet commercial real estate brokers? I don't mind paying more for better quality service (i.e. finding better lease and faster), i.e. I am NOT looking for cheapest option.

2. Any pitfalls to look out for as a newbie (with brokers, leases, general processes, dealing with old/new tenants etc)?

2. Can you please share broker referrals? Especially the ones you have personally worked with in past.

Thanks

Greg Dickerson has some mentoring programs, check out his YT for more details.

Agreed, there isn't much in commercial because everyone is already doing it, more money in the deals than selling courses. Manny Khoshbin has a commercial course--pretty scammy marketing, cars, houses, etc. But he did make money in office/retail...

It seems like in every asset class there a few mentorships/programs to choose from but in commercial it's kind of scarce. Can anyone recommend one that they have personally used and had good results?