We leveraged our expertise to secure the property at a competitive price, ensuring there was enough margin to make necessary renovations and achieve a profitable sale.

Not sure how you can be 94% below projections without some gross lack of due diligence prior to purchasing these assets. 

In the ten-year period beginning with Q2 2014, the Downtown submarket has experienced the greatest introduction of new inventory, 3.3 million square feet, amounting to 20.5% of all new competitive stock added to the market.Asking and Effective RentDuring May, the metro's asking rent remained unchanged at $42.24.

These areas often have less competition, lower prices, and better cash flow potential.

I've done these deals and we have been able to renegotiate price and terms late in the deal, all while my client's EMD is fully protected either based on an inspection period or based on lack of disclosure. 

Utilize tools like BiggerPockets Self Storage Calculator for competitive offer terms.

Instead of recommendations and professional advice from her I found myself with more questions than answers often times, and her newness and lack of confidence left me feeling like I couldn't trust her.I think you're already 4 steps ahead of her as you're here asking the questions and are engaged on the BP forums which in my opinion, besides having a great broker with seasoned agents to learn from in person, is the MOST important thing.

Still today, most every competitor of ours has blatantly or partially launched their services based on Carrot... but Carrot still crushes the competition in most every measureable performance indicator... because of my intentional focus to just outserve our clients.

They are very thorough and competitive on price.  

I like targeting what I would call secondary or tertiary markets, because the lack of supply and the lower competition.