Commercial Loans and Fun Blog

Marketing the Large Commercial Property

Posted by George Blackburne on Sat, Jan 17, 2009

If You're Trying to Sell a $5+ Million Commercial Property, Consider Real Capital Markets

If you are trying to sell or lease a large commercial property, consider the following: Real Capital Markets assists in the sale of a whopping 30% of all commercial properties worth over $10 million! This includes all property types, including multifamily, office, retail, industrial, and hospitality.

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"Is Real Capital Markets a real estate broker?"

No. In fact, it is the listing commercial real estate broker who usually recommends to his client that he hire Real Capital Markets to assist with the sale.

"So what exactly does Real Capital Markets ("RCM") do?"

The two big services that RCM performs are marketing and supplying a document storage/display room to share the financial info with prospective buyers (more on this in a bit).

First of all, in order to sell a large investment property, you need to find a buyer. And just like a fisherman needs bait, the seller and the listing broker needs a very attractive Executive Summary (aka: teaser) to dangle in front of potential buyers. RCM prepares this teaser for the seller. I've seen a few of these teasers prepared by RCM, and they are gorgeous.

A stunning looking Executive Summary is great and all, but its not a lot of help if no one ever sees it. Therefore the next marketing service that RCM provides is a huge email list (2,000 to 4,000) of potential buyers, including opportunity funds, fund advisors, REIT's, trusts, developers, money managers, real estate operating companies and wealthy principals.

You can't send out all of the financial data at once to these prospective buyers because some of these data files are as large as 4 gigabytes. RCM therefore sends out the teaser by email, together with an encrypted link to a "virtual war room" containing the data. The encryption is 120-key ADS, the same level of encryption used by the National Security Agency. The prospective buyer first signs a confidentiality agreement before enjoying access to the property's financial data.

From the point of view of the listing broker, the email marketing system used by RCM is awesome.  A broker can view in real time just which prospective buyers nibble on the data, allowing the broker to make targeted follow-up calls.

The second major service provided by RCM is the virtual war room, where the listing broker stores the 30 to 50 data files on the property's financial condition. There are rent rolls, operating expense histories, leases, property photo's, Argus runs, and scores of other important but private documents. The listing broker, using the RCM service, can allow one potential buyer to have only a limited access to documents and another potential buyer to have full access to all of the documents. Access for each buyer can be set to low, medium or high, and of course the broker can see who is downloading which documents.

RCM is no longer just used in connection with the sale of commercial real estate. Increasingly banks are using RCM to assist in the sale of large mortgage notes on commercial properties. REIT's and large real estate operating companies are also using RCM to store all of their financial documents on all of the properties in their portfolio's. This way the data is easily available to branch offices, shareholders, equity partners, JV partners, staff and outside attorneys, investors and shareholders.

It's no wonder that that the services of Real Capital Markets is used in connection with the sale of 30% of all commercial properties worth $10 million or more.

But what does this service cost? Surpisingly, very little. The cost is typically only $2,500 to $4,500, depending on the level of service provided by RCM. Please be sure to tell Real Capital Markets that you found out about them from C-Loans because you get a 5% discount.

You can reach Real Capital Markets by calling Jay Knowles, Real Capital Markets, 760-602-5080 x 232.


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Topics: commercial property marketing, commercial property sales, commercial real estate broker