the owner would typically pay the commissions on a commercial lease; however, an option to renew is an option to renew. it just gets renewed. there is no new lease, no new leasing agents, none of that. it sounds like they aren't exercising their option to renew. they are essentially letting the existing lease expire and negotiating a new one. my response would be - we either renew as is as provided under the existing lease please plan on vacating as we'll start marketing. it is possible that we may come to terms on a new lease but no guarantees.....

Found the deal searching the sites and negotiated with the help of Craig Curlope at the FI Team How did you finance this deal?

@Bob Stevens that will be 8-10% net after all monthly reserves for property taxes, insurance, any owner paid utilities, vacancy (5%), property management (10%), and maintenance (10%).

(In fact, once you figure this out, you could market to owners of 5-20 units and find some deals in this space, simply due to the fact that finding sellers+lenders make this space “difficult”).You mentioned the seller’s age.  

I worked for the owner as a property manager for 3 years.

I would look into getting a registered agent address lots of offerings for this type of service it will help a little with privacy and peace of mind but you can and will be found...For example my county took out the name search for property records but if you go to the tax claim bureau site you can still easily search by name and business name.   

Other investors such as many which I have represented prefer an established neighborhood where I can tell them how many, and which homes are owner occupied vs. not as a neighborhood with more owner occupied homes means less competition for rental homes.

I just renewed my SAM.gov status and am seeking to apply to some of the listed leasing bids, but wanted to understand more on whether it's common to acquire them as tenants through subleasing, informing the owner & getting authority to lease, or I'd have to own the commercial/residential property out-right?

(One of the nice things about Westminster is that they're one of the few Denver-area cities to allow non-owner occupied short-terms, so you could give that a try to boost your revenues.Also, my standard advice for first time investors is to not overthink it.

They will sell below market and lose more money, then the new owner will jack up the rents.