Five steps, and the order is the whole method. Most people never get past the first one — which is exactly why it works for the people who do.
A company needing space sees what is listed for lease. So does the broker they hired. In most markets that is a fraction of the buildings standing.
Think about what that excludes. Every building that is for sale but not for lease. Every owner-occupied building whose owner is retiring. Every property where the seller wants out entirely and has no interest in becoming somebody's landlord.
Those buildings are invisible to a tenant, because there is no mechanism for a tenant to reach them. A company that needs fifteen thousand square feet is not going to buy a building — that is not their business, and their CFO does not want capital tied up in real estate.
You are the mechanism. Give me the specification, I will find the building, I will buy it, and we structure a lease at a number you can actually pay. You are not another landlord competing for attention — you are the only person offering access to buildings they structurally cannot reach.
Reverse any two of these and you are just another buyer hoping to fill a building. Tenant, then building, then lease, then purchase.
A company with real credit that needs space in a market you can reach. Get their specification — size, ceiling height, power, docks, parking, the geography that matters. You own nothing yet, so you risk nothing but your time. Nine out of ten people never get past here.
Now you know exactly what you are looking for, and you search what is for sale — not the small slice that happens to be listed for lease. This is the step their broker structurally cannot do for them.
You cannot sign a lease on a building nobody has identified, which is why this comes third. The lease names the property and is conditioned on your acquisition. Now you hold contracted income rather than a hope.
Take three documents to ten banks: the purchase contract, the signed lease, and a pro forma. The bank underwrites the deal and the tenant far more than it underwrites you. You buy it unleased, at a price that reflects it being empty.
Twelve months of the tenant paying on time, then refinance against appraised value instead of what you paid. That is where your capital comes back so the same money can go again.
Two sites, both free to browse. Open them once you have a tenant specification — not before, or you are just browsing.
The biggest commercial listings site in the country, and where most brokers post first. Free to browse. Create an account to save searches and get alerts.
Open LoopNet →Newer, better filters, often more detail on the free tier. Different inventory than LoopNet, so use both — it costs you nothing.
Open Crexi →Run a search with no price filter at all. New buyers cap price early and filter out the exact building that would have worked — the one that is overpriced, has sat 200 days, and whose seller is now ready to talk about terms. Days on market is a negotiating position, and you cannot see it if you filtered it out.
An appraiser valuing a leased single-tenant building leans on the income approach. The lease is what creates the value — which is why it comes first.
Say your tenant pays $10,000 a month. That is $120,000 a year. At a 9% cap rate, that is $1,333,333 of value — and that number, not what you paid, is what the bank lends against.
An appraiser does not use gross rent. They use net operating income, and they deduct even on a triple net lease: vacancy and collection loss of 2–10%, a management fee of 2–5% applied even if you manage it yourself, and reserves for replacement.
Same building, honest numbers: $120,000 gross becomes roughly $108,400 net, and $1,333,333 becomes $1,204,444. Nothing about the building changed.
Once at gross rent, once with 5% vacancy, 3% management and a reserve allowance. The second number is the honest one. If your deal only works on the first, you do not have a deal — you have a spreadsheet.