Does sub-market need to be chosen before searching for property?

[Jennifer Brown]

Before speaking with a commercial broker, is it imperative you know the exact location you'd like to invest in? By that I mean, do you need to know specific submarkets or can you just have certain cities you're interested in and then research the locations later when there is a potential deal? 

[Michael Le]

@Jennifer Brown, you can read Dave Lindahl's Emerging Real Estate Markets book but generally you just read the industry news to find markets that have job growth, population growth, and are generally business/landlord friendly. You live in Forth Worth and it meets all of those requirements. So you can start in your backyard, but just expect a lot of competition. People will chase secondary and tertiary market deals because of the high competition but then the indicators won't be as strong and so there will be higher risk. So in the end you'll have to decide what is your tolerance for competition vs risk.