A buyer handed me $31k over my ask on a 9-unit in Spokane Valley and I am still not sure what I did right

The month-to-month leases almost certainly helped you, and here is why that makes sense mechanically.

A sophisticated buyer looking at a value-add play (value-add means: property where rents are below market and the buyer plans to raise them) wants flexibility to reposition. Long fixed-term leases at $180 under market would have locked him into below-market income for years. Month-to-month leases on six of nine units meant he could begin bringing rents up relatively quickly after closing. When his partner ran the pro-forma (a projection of what the income looks like at market rents), the upside would have been reachable in a short timeline rather than a distant one. That is almost certainly what moved the number the second time.

The 7.4 cap on actual income is the other piece. Cap rate means: annual net operating income divided by purchase price. A 7.4 cap on in-place rents becomes a much more attractive cap when you pencil in market rents. His partner ran those numbers and the deal got better on paper without you doing anything.

The thing worth sitting with: you packaged a deal correctly the first time and the buyer's own underwriting did the persuading. That is the job. You do not need to oversell; you need to get the right information in front of people who know how to read it.

One thing you might not have thought to ask: how did you settle on $38k as the fee rather than building the contract closer to what the market would bear? Knowing how you arrived at that number tells you something about where to price the next one.

What kind of sellers are you talking to for the next deal, and are they in a similar situation, long-held property with rents drifting under market?

The assumption doing the most work in that second number is pro forma NOI, specifically what the buyer's partner projected once they stress-tested market rents on the four under-market units. The $28k jump between offers is almost exactly what you'd see if someone modeled a 200 to 250 basis point compression on exit cap after a 12-month lease-up. They bought the upside, and your package gave them enough raw material to build that case themselves.

On the month-to-month question: it almost certainly helped. Month-to-month on six units means a repositioning buyer can move on rents or non-renewals inside 30 days with proper notice, rather than waiting out fixed terms. For an operator planning a value-add run, that is a feature. If the buyer had been a long-term hold passive investor, the same characteristic reads as income instability. The fact he came back higher after his partner ran the numbers tells you he is an operator, and operators price flexibility.

The risk you did not mention is that you left the assignment fee visible at $38k in the initial package. Eleven buyers saw your structure before you closed. In commercial, sophisticated buyers sometimes use that information to approach the seller directly on the next deal, particularly when the seller is a longtime private landlord who is likely to do another transaction as they wind down a portfolio. Whether your contract had an adequate non-circumvention clause is worth confirming with your attorney before you run this again with the same buyer list.

The 7.4 cap on actuals with that rent gap is a clean setup, and 31 days PSA to close on a 9-unit is tight execution. The structural question I'd want to understand: did you have a hard close deadline in the PSA that gave you leverage to push him, or did the 31 days just happen to be where he landed?

The $59k jump between his first and second offer is the number worth sitting with. His partner ran pro forma rents on six vacant-to-flexible units and got a stabilized NOI that probably pushed the cap rate on a reversion sale well below 7, which is where the extra $28k came from arithmetically. You did not change the package because you did not need to. The upside was already in the rent roll. He just needed a second set of eyes to trust what he was reading.

The part that actually decided this in your favor was the 1987 basis. A seller that deep in almost certainly had no mortgage, which gave you a clean assignment without lender consent complications and probably made the April 22nd close possible. Deals with that kind of title history tend to move faster than buyers expect, and speed on a commercial assignment is a real competitive signal to a buyer who has watched deals fall apart in due diligence.

What did your package say, if anything, about the four under-market units specifically, did you show a market-rent scenario or leave it implied?

The month-to-month position reads as a vacancy risk to a conservative buyer and as a mark-to-market runway to an aggressive one, so the same fact sorts your buyer pool for you without you having to do anything.

What you probably did right without realizing it is that you sent the package before the buyer's partner saw it. The first offer was a solo gut call at the going-in cap. The second offer was a proforma underwrite, and once someone builds a rent-growth model on four units sitting $180 light, the stabilized yield looks materially better than the 7.4 cap on actuals, which is exactly the spread that moved his number.

The thing worth knowing for next time: a buyer who reprices himself upward by $28k in four days without any new information from you is telling you his first number had significant cushion in it, which means your package did not surface the upside clearly enough to pull that offer out on day one. Did your T12 show the market rents alongside the actuals, or did you leave that math for buyers to run themselves?