Hi all,

I've been interested in real estate since first lurking these forums in high school. I had countless hours of real estate coursework in college and five internships in brokerage, capital markets, and private equity. I recently graduated and am now an analyst at a commercial real estate private equity firm that focuses on value-add investments of $1mm-$20mm in southwest markets. In my position, I source deals, underwrite them, make offers, and handle all aspects of due diligence till close. I absolutely love my job and the foundation its laying in eventually owning my own real estate. 

My question is for those of you who own or invest in commercial assets. It seems like there's an opportunity for me to lend my skills in underwriting and analyzing deals to those without an extensive background in commercial real estate. I'm thinking of testing this market, as I truly enjoy doing this kind of thing. I know there're companies out there who'll do this, but end up charging hundreds, if not thousands of dollars, for what I see as simple analysis on a deal-by-deal basis. For those of you who have outsourced your underwriting, analysis, etc, what incentivized you to do this? Was it worth it? Would you do it again?

Thanks for any feedback.

Sounds like you want to be a commercial real estate agent focused on serving the needs of buyers. 

Most Realtors don't work in commercial and couldn't recite the formula for cap rate if their life depended on it, so you have an automatic leg up there.

Biggest challenge will be that if you're a rock star at this or that, but have zero clients, then it doesn't matter. That is why something over 85% of new agents (residential or commercial) fail within their first two years. How's your networking-fu? Have you joined your local country club yet? 

I don't want to be in brokerage whatsoever. Agents do this kind of thing and throw a 3% fee throughout the entire deal. Just seeing if any investors outsource their underwriting. 

I work for a commercial real estate lender. Debt and Equity teams often outsource underwriting work to firms like Situs, Spring 11, Townhouse etc. DB even brings in an army of people from Situs to work on site and you could not even tell the difference between who works for DB and who works for Situs. 

@Tristan H. I have interest in speaking with you about this and even a few projects we could “practice” with. I think there’s a need here you could be filling for GPS like myself.

@Logan Freeman Sending you a PM now.