The Checklist That’ll Help You Save Big During Due Diligence

You have an apartment building under contract, which is awesome. Performing due diligence is an exciting part of the buying process because it means you successfully negotiated the deal (which is not easy to do!) and are now ready to start due diligence to determine if it’s something you want to go through with. But […]

How to Use a Master Lease to Acquire Commercial Real Estate With No Money Down

The vast majority of commercial real estate deals are “conventional” with regards to financing, meaning they are financed with a commercial lender requiring 20% – 30% down. But it’s important to have other, perhaps more creative financing techniques at your disposal because they can get you into a deal when traditional methods fail. One of […]

How to Know It’s Time to Walk Away From an Apartment Building Deal

You’ve looked at many different apartment building deals, and you finally have one under contract. Congratulations! Now the real work begins: due diligence. If you don’t uncover anything new that materially changes the deal, you’re well on your way to closing. But many times you DO uncover things during due diligence that you weren’t told […]

Estimating Acquisition and Closing Costs for Apartment Building Deals

Apartment Building Investing - Estimating Closing Costs

Many beginning commercial real estate investors are shocked at how much it costs to perform due diligence for a deal and how high the closing costs are. While the latter are usually paid for at closing, the former must be paid with hard cash while doing due diligence. In the video below, I review the […]

MB 003: How to Analyze Apartment Building Deals

In this episode, my good friend Jonathan Mickles asks me a 101 questions about analyzing apartment building investing deals, and how to do so as quickly as possible. We talk about investment criteria, returns, the 50% rule, how to value commercial real estate, and how to determine the most you should pay for an apartment […]

Power Negotiating Apartment Building Deals with Side-by-Side Scenarios

When you get a deal in from your broker, the marketing package usually provides actual financials as well as “pro forma” financials, i.e. the way the building should perform if it were managed perfectly. Most often, the asking price is based on the pro-forma net operating income at the prevailing cap rate for that market. […]