The tenant, the seller, the closing that went sideways. No lesson required.
Take a mid-size office building that has just gone through a recapitalization rather than a sale. In situations like this a mezzanine lender often becomes the invisible hand shapi…
I don't build anything myself, I put money into other people's deals, so my ADU education came secondhand and by accident. I was walking a small property with an operator I was co…
Side work I picked up last year: a small bridge lender pays me to drive out and photograph job sites before they release draws. Two hundred a visit, sometimes three sites a day. I…
A mile and a half from a nine unit property sits 300 acres of soybeans a developer wants to turn into three large single story buildings. Neighbors and nearby owners often show up…
1960s ranch, bridge loan, rehab budget around 84k on the submitted scope. We opened the kitchen wall on day three and found knob and tube running to a subpanel that had been added…
Consider an offering package on a permanent-crop deal, roughly 300 planted acres of nuts in a hot inland valley, where the detail that reorders the whole analysis is one page in t…
Small strip retail center, five bays, one of them empty for as long as I've serviced the place. I was up top swapping a condenser fan motor and the owner came up the ladder to com…
Here's a pattern worth watching for anyone building a target list before buying: a single buyer working the same block, identifiable by the same dumpster company and the same pain…
Consider a 34,000 square foot two story suburban office building in a second ring suburb, the kind with a brick facade and a parking field too big for what is left inside. A whole…
I got invited to a closing table last spring because I was funding the equity check. Small number, nine thousand dollars, which is why I said yes without much thought. The buyer w…
I was replacing a blower motor in a fifty year old furnace, house in a working class stretch of town, owner in his sixties. He's standing in the doorway talking the whole time the…
I sat in on a call because a friend from my land group wanted a second set of ears. He owns a piece of a small industrial park and the senior loan was coming due. The new lender w…
A common pattern worth studying: parents convert the back half of a garage into a one bedroom ADU when a family member's rent becomes unaffordable elsewhere. Permitted and inspect…
Look at a full appraisal report line by line rather than at the one number, and there are 34 pages behind that number. Most of it is what you'd expect. Sketch, photos of every roo…
I'm passive in a couple of things and I read documents for a hobby, so when a sponsor I follow opened a hotel fund I got on the diligence call. I expected an hour about markets an…
Full gut on a 1920s four square, senior hard money loan covering purchase plus about 70 percent of the rehab number, and a gap position from a guy who does three or four of these…
I had a flight booked to look at a suburban office-to-medical conversion where I'd been offered a preferred equity slice. Sponsor was good on the phone, the market made sense, and…
A useful case for anyone carrying seller financing on a note they plan to eventually sell. A seller carries a balance at 8.5 with a twenty year amortization on a five year balloon…
A common early mistake for a new landlord with a single property is signing up for full accounting software before it's needed and then getting stuck on setup. A chart of accounts…
A useful diligence exercise for anyone evaluating a sponsor is requesting the last four quarterly investor updates on a currently operating deal. It's common to receive only two,…
