Or is it okay to work for a private one/two man shop- where Im friends with the principal and who has all the knowledge and experience from working for the big firms...

You can then start shopping for another, and rinse/repeat.  

Two comments, One is that nothing just shows up with a large body of law behind it.

The 80,750-SF grocery-anchored neighborhood center, which traded at a 6.5% cap rate and was 92% occupied, has had The Fresh Market as its anchor tenant for the past 12 years.Higher up the pricing spectrum, unanchored and open-air shopping centers may see cap rates above 7% and occasionally push into the 8% to 9% range as specific market and quality factors influence each transaction.In the open-air shopping center segment, Nuveen sold the 1 MSF Fayette Pavilion to 5Rivers CRE, a private buyer from Houston, for $134 million, or $128/SF.

I don't know why it is that way but you look a little harder when you put that kind of cash in vs. getting that preapproval and going shopping, at least that's the way it was for us.

i'm a long distance investor as well happy to talk shop if you're needing help with anything. :)

We’re a one stop shop for everything you need.

The land is an out parcel with direct access from a shopping center that incudes tenants like CVS, Publix, Family Dollar, Marathon oil etc.

Real Estate prices are competitive and the area offers plenty of activities, from outdoor recreation to shopping.

The institionalized players typically have 100-200 BPS lower rates than standard hard money lending players but they're clunky and have lots of requirements its almost like the instituional HML should be called "hybrid hard money or hybrid bridge money," because of all these requirements.When we're working with those instutionalized players we usually have to do almost as much work as a conventional loan (1-4 fannie, not quite but almost as much).If you'd like to learn more about the different options or get a sounding board on what options are out there feel free to reach out and we can talk shop.