A Commitment to Building Relationships Over Commission

While there are several excellent, listing-focused investment brokers across the country who possess the experience and skillset necessary to sell a broad spectrum of net lease properties of varying quality for top dollar (we know all of them), we recognize that the key to longevity in this hyper-competitive industry — and success in any market cycle — is earning trust and building long-term relationships with sellers and buyers alike by mastering real estate investment fundamentals, with an emphasis on each property’s intrinsic “go dark” value — its highest and best use — in the scenario it’s vacated by the current tenant. While this focus may have limited our firm’s bottom line in the short term, we would rather turn down inferior deals for the sake of building a long-term relationship with an active principal who values our honest approach to the business, and understands we always have their best interests at heart.

A More Critical, Comprehensive Approach to Valuation

We feel strongly that our emphasis on buyer representation at the beginning of our net lease careers — which started before 2007-2008 Financial Crisis — has helped us tremendously in refining our comprehensive valuation methodology that meticulously analyzes all four drivers of an asset’s worth: cash flow, appreciation potential, amortization structure and tax structure. Mastering these fundamentals is the only way to achieve our singular objective as real estate service providers: to preserve our clients’ equity and help them grow it over a disciplined, long-term investment horizon. This detailed approach is especially prudent in a retail sector that is facing constant disruption by technology and e-commerce giants with the financial and human capital to slow most tenants’ expansion plans at best, downsize their footprints on average, and bankrupt them at worst. Consequently, we have developed the following formula for achieving success in our role as strategic partners for our clients who entrust us to maximize the value of their net lease portfolios:

Our Formula For Net Lease Success

1. We have targeted our focus on a handful of profitable, creditworthy, dynamic, “Amazon-resilient” national tenants that offer the strongest corporate guarantees in the net lease sector, industry-leading historical financial performance, and the willingness to adapt their business models as needed in the face of disruption to continue thriving. This focus has enabled us to build one of the best databases in the industry with regards to leasing and sales comparables for the top national “daily needs” tenants operating within the grocery, pharmaceutical, discount retail, convenience, and fast food/quick-service restaurant sectors. Additionally, we go beyond valuing the quality of the underlying real estate these tenants occupy and offer clients a critical assessment of each tenant’s financial performance at the operating level, which is an equally important step in the valuation process of a net lease investment opportunity.
2. More importantly, we limit our business development activities to major metropolitan statistical areas throughout the United States that possess the holy grail of real estate investing: supply-constricted property markets with long-term appreciation potential. The common denominator linking all of our territories we meticulously canvas for opportunity is long-term sustainability driven by dense, skilled populations and robust economic growth spanning multiple industries. Our business is built on the premise that location will always provide the ultimate hedge against re-tenanting risk.
3. Most importantly, we strive to emulate the vertically integrated model of the top global commercial advisory firms that have been servicing the institutional real estate market for decades by offering a highly specialized version to the rapidly growing pool of private investors that have been flooding the market year-over-year during the current upcycle. Since the last economic downturn until today, we have observed the tremendous influx of new investors into a space that has been historically dominated by pension and life funds, private equity firms and REITs. Consequently, we aim to fulfill the rapidly growing demand for a long-term strategic partner equipped with a diversified skillset needed to help clients add value throughout the investment lifecycle and across the capital stack.