How to Find, Buy & Exit a Retail Property

Commercial Real Estate Investing From A-Z

How to find a retail deal, negotiate, buy, develop all while dealing with all the curveballs that are thrown at you? Beth Azor, CEO of Azor Advisory Services, has been investing in retail for the last 36 years and shares one particular deal from beginning to end.

Read this entire interview here: bit.ly/3kFdS5R

Let's talk about a deal of yours, how did you find it and what happened throughout the deal if you still own it?
I'm going to talk about B&B Plaza. I was at a City Commission meeting and they outlawed strip clubs, immediately my brain went to a strip club on Main and Main. It was going to happen 24 months from then. The next morning, I look up the tax rules on the address of the strip club and I found out this 80-year-old couple, I called them and said, I'm calling you about your building where Eden's nightclub is located, last night at the town of Davies commission meeting, they outlawed strip clubs, so 24 months from now, there will not be a strip club there, would you like to sell me your building? They said, no, we don't believe you, we get $10,000 per month in cash from the strip club. I sent them the minutes of the meeting, we started having a dialogue and they were not jumping up and down to sell me the building.

The two-year mark comes, the strip club closes, and exactly my prediction happens, four competitors of mine swoop in, they were very aggressive with these people because they didn't understand them, and didn't know them. I got a call from their son. They had been very ill, and that they're definitely going to sell and I'm coming to town to meet five of you. I said okay, can I be the last person? He said yes, my parents really liked you so you have the jump ball. The next day he calls and says if you pay 3.4 million, it's yours. I said done. He says, how fast can you close? I said 24 hours. The reason why I could afford to pay more is because I had great relationships in the market. I had called a friend of mine who had a property across the street and she had just done a renewal for 5,000 square feet with a national company at $50 a square foot. My two shopping centers down the street: one was at $30 and one was $40. The fact that she had $50 rent and it was behind our parcels, was very good market intel.

I went through three project managers to build it. After we built it, everything was opened, Starbucks, Blaze Pizza, Select Comfort. A day before Verizon moved in, they told us that there is no RTU's in the building (air conditioner units). My air conditioning guy puts the air conditioning units on the roof, he doesn't pull a permit and he gets caught. I get a call from the city, with whom I have a phenomenal relationship saying you have an illegal vendor on your roof and he doesn't have insurance. I had to pay $27,000 in late fees to Verizon and I had penalties from the city because I tried to do it without a permit for speed purposes. It was a very expensive lesson.

My NOI today is $660k, on average $66 a square foot, it's probably worth 12 to 14 million, we paid 3.4 million, the construction was probably another 4 million.

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