$4,500 to review a $180k first purchase. The math won't say yes.

The reassessment number isn't consulting work, it's a phone call. In most states the assessor's office will walk you through how the ratio and the sale price interact, and plenty of counties publish the method. It varies a lot by state, some reassess on transfer and some don't touch it, so start with the county and see how far you get before you pay someone $4,500 to look it up.

That's not an argument against consultants generally. It's an argument that you haven't found the thing you actually can't get.

$4,500 on a $180k building where the whole thesis is "rents are 25% under market" seems like paying to confirm the one thing you're already confident about. What would make you walk away from this deal? If the answer is a $60k roof or a sewer lateral, then hire the contractor and the plumber and skip the memo.

The scope he quoted is what an institution buys, priced for a deal thirty times this size, and he probably knows that. $4,500 is his minimum engagement, not his read on your building.

Which means the real question is whether he'll take a smaller job for a smaller fee from someone he thinks becomes a repeat client. He said no once. Ask again in a form he can say yes to: "I can spend $1,500 now and I'll come back with a bigger scope on the next one." Half the consultants I've watched work will take that. The other half have enough work that they won't, and that's fine, you find someone earlier in their career.

Four deals in and I'll tell you where the ceiling actually was for me. It wasn't analysis. I underwrote fine. What broke was the six months after closing, when I'd bought a building where three of four tenants were paying under market and I discovered that raising rent on people who've been there since 2016 is a different skill than modeling it.

Your $2,850 to $3,900 gap is not a spreadsheet problem. Ask the consultant if his memo covers how you get from in place to market, tenant by tenant, with the notice rules in that state. If it does, the fee starts making more sense. If the memo just says "upside to market rents," you already wrote that page yourself.

What are the leases? Month to month or terms, and are they written? A 78 year old self manager who hasn't raised rents in years sometimes has no leases at all, and that changes both your risk and your options in ways that depend heavily on state law. I'd want that answered before I decided what to buy from anyone.

Buy the boring parts. Contractor walk, sewer scope, roof, and whatever the local equivalent of a rental inspection is. That's maybe $1,200 and it's the money that stops you buying a disaster. The three scenario memo is a nice thing to own and it isn't what protects you.

In the small markets I look at, $4,500 is most of a year's cash flow on a building like that. That framing settles it for me pretty fast.

One thing nobody's priced. If you spend $4,500 and the memo says don't buy, was that money wasted or was it the best return you got all year? Because the way you've written the post, you're treating the fee as a cost of buying, and it's actually the cost of deciding.

I've paid for two land opinions that told me to walk. Both were worth more than the ones that told me to proceed.

parcel, that logic works if the memo can actually make him walk. tally already told us the deal breaker items are physical, and he's not buying the physical inspection from this guy, he's buying a walk with the guy's contractor. That's a $400 service dressed up.

tally, the expense normalization on a four unit self managed by an owner occupant is where I'd actually spend the attention. His expenses are fake in both directions. He does his own repairs so maintenance looks like $600 a year. His insurance is a homeowner policy that won't renew for you. There's no management line at all. Nobody's mentioned that his water is probably one meter for four units and you're inheriting the bill.

Dumb question I'd have kept to myself elsewhere. What does a consultant give you that a good agent and a good property manager in that market don't, for free, because they want your business? I've had a manager spend an hour on the phone telling me what a building would rent for and what it would cost to run. Am I missing what's different?

compass, the manager's hour is free because he wants the management contract, and everything he tells you points at signing it. That's not dishonesty, it's just where his interest sits. You pay a consultant so the advice isn't attached to the next transaction. Whether that independence is worth $4,500 on a $180k building is tally's question, and I think it isn't.

Following this mostly confused but the one thing I understood is thicket's point about the insurance. Is that a normal thing, that the seller's policy tells you nothing about what yours costs?

vellum, yes, that one's normal, an owner living in the building is on a different policy than an investor renting four units out, and the quote you'll get is your own.

tally, the thing I'd sit with is that you've spent a year not buying. $4,500 to a consultant might be the most expensive way yet to spend another quarter not buying. I don't know if that's a reason to skip him or a reason to hire him and be done deliberating.