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Commercial Real Estate FAQ With John Manes On Self-Storage Property Investments

How Do You Secure Off Market Commercial Real Estate Deal Flow In The Competitive Space Such As Self Storage?

The following Q&A was completed as part of our conversational Commercial Real Estate FAQ Interview Series, we hope you find it helpful.

When trying to secure off market commercial real estate deals in a competitive market, it’s important to be open to deals and take them where you can get them. They may come in from all over, and you may see a lot of “passes” before you find a deal you’re interested in, but the deal flow is worth the effort. This openness helps to build relationships with brokers and others within the industry and gives you your best chance at finding worthwhile investment properties. 

Richard Wilson: How do you secure off market commercial real estate deal flow in the competitive space such as self storage? 

John Manes: I’ve got a couple people just dialing for dollars, that’s one. So they’re not brokers, they’re friends and family, and they make phone calls to different people. I have strong relationships in the brokerage industry like there’s one guy here in Houston that we’ve bought 8 or 9 deals off of already. And then there’s all these fringe relationships that we’ve created, and there’s a couple young brokers that keep giving us volume which is really super cool recently. And I’ve looked at 350 deals in the last 14 months, and we’ve only bought 5, right? 

Richard: Last week – so it was a good week, huh? 

John: Yeah, great, that was last week, that’s correct! You kiss a lot of frogs, and that’s okay, but I kiss a lot of frogs when it comes to raising equity, I kiss a lot of frogs when it comes to shopping debt, and I kiss a lot of frogs when doing deals but the reality is we’ve created a 100 million dollar portfolio, or better now. I haven’t even, now that we bought those three and closed on one in June I haven’t even added that to the mix, but I’ll bet you it’s probably 110 million or something now. So from that standpoint, sourcing them I’ll take it from anywhere I can get it. Like I see LinkedIn posts and now what I do is I go to the comments, and I tag my financial analyst on it. So he goes and gets the OM and all the paperwork and starts to underwrite it. So I’ve done all kinds of crazy stuff to try to get deal flow. It doesn’t matter; I mean, a deal is a deal to me, right? 

Richard: Right, right. For sure. 

About the author

Richard Wilson