The Loyal And Wise Commercial Real Estate Investor

There is a difference you know between the loyal and wise investor. I just finished a conversation with an older gentleman, probably in his 80's and owns about 5 industrial properties in the valley.  But before the conversation could develop much further he said, "I work with x#$%^, in fact Eric I can't even give you my middle name without x#$%^ being involved.  He was probably too old to want to do anything in real estate anyways. So I moved on... 

I once heard from a very successful real estate investor in Los Angeles say (Portfolio of an excess of $500 million), "You want to know as many brokers you possibly can."   It's pretty simple; you never know when they will bring you the next bet opportunity FIRST. Should I remind you it's the broker who's on the frontline looking to uncover the property with the right story.  You always hope that when they find an interesting deal, they will immediately think of you first.

The best deals never hit the market and that's a fact! 

There are occasions when you find that one investors who will not do a deal without their own Broker and believe me they are far and few between. And most of the time there is something mentally wrong with them. There is however, a successful investor I know out there (Owns in excess of 50K multi-housing units) who has loyalty to a broker.  He's in a category by himself, and like I said mentally wrong.  But most of the deals that are executed by that one loyal investor would have already been shopped around by everyone else by the time it came to them.  They start to get that reputation. "The guy who's married to so and so". Oh, and please don't remind me of the investor who says his relative has a real estate licenses and wants a piece of the pie. Are you kidding me....

I truly believe loyalty if acted upon correctly is vital to succeed in the business, but any investor looking to grow their portfolio needs to be the wise about it.