Cons:  it's ground up construction  - know your builder, their strengths, their timeframes, and their weak links. 

@Brandon Rush Wow, havent heard of that one, sounds like a great book, I love the concept of using others' strengths to combat your weaknesses and vice versa, I will have to order this book right away and give her a good read!

Do not tell him that you have fixed his maintenance issues in the past; he will only see your "kindness" as "weakness."

Then I bought another one that came mostly occupied. some of the tenants are again longterm recession rate tenants and some are market rate. some of them proved to be weak and incapable of paying and have since broke their leases and moved out, or were asked to be moved out by us.Now on the flip side, those above mentioned properties, tenants placed by the property manager have been a hit or miss either.

My fear, of course, is buying and holding it for months while I look for a tenant because the market is weak and there's no high demand for good rental property.Thanks!

Emotions are a weakness that should never be wasted on tenants whenever money is involved.

It was either the wrong location, wrong design, or over exuberance hoping growth would come and absorb the project in a weak market to start.Retail in the right areas is doing amazing.

It usually is a low growth state or a warm belt state with weak suburban to rural area instead of strong suburban to urban core.So if an investor is accredited and has say 300k but wants assets with 3 million quality the answer might be to invest with a retail sponsor on larger high quality projects and locations.

If you just have weak or cash poor buyers you need to keep your list as they probably just have their money tied up for the time being.

@Jay Hinrichs When a potential tenant leads out by saying they'll pay a year up front, that signals to me that they are trying to compensate for a weakness in their application.