I’ve been contacting owners of strip malls that have “for lease” signs up, or properties that look like they are crying for an upgrade. I try to target ones that have about 30% vacancy and send them letters inquiring about buying their property. I just started this so I don’t have any results as of yet. Is this a good ideal or a waste of time?
To properly evaluate your question we are going to need a little info about yourself, because this is your first post.
Any experience in REI
Any assets, cash, equity, etc.
What area
Credit rating
etc etc etc.
My wife and I have been investing for 4 years. We just started looking into commercial RE. We have 7 houses with six of them occupied, most of our houses were obtained by signs and unsolicited offers via phone or direct mail and auction. 2 of the houses where obtained by subject too, 1 by auction, 2 bank owned, 1 was solicited after the listing had expired and the last one was our first residence. We live in MD. And attended a few commercial and apartment boot camps. We also have lenders waiting to invest with us. Private money is the way to go!!! We both have very good credit and watch it very carefully. None of our houses are over leveraged and we have a good bit of equity in them. Our main goal is to buy and hold everything we close on, however everything is always for sale for the right price. Now we really want to get into commercial RE so we can both quit our jobs and continue investing for our families feature.
Is that enough? I’ve never had to give a BIO before for asking a question on a forum before. But is cool. 
Is this the wrong forum to ask this?
It sounds like you’ve purchased houses in a similar fashion, so it could certainly work. I would always try to call instead of sending letters. I would imagine that many of these owners have been approached before. One thing I’ve learned for sure - you never know where a deal will come from. So yeah, definitely keep calling. I don’t think it’s a waste of time. Just be ready to make your offer.
As far as commercial forums go, there aren’t many on the web that are visited regularly by truly experienced commercial investors. Most real estate forums are geared toward the residential side, with a little space added for commercial discussion. Even this forum is labeled “Commercial/Land/Mobile Homes/Notes.” Poor old commercial real estate couldn’t even get its own forum…it had to be packaged together with notes and mobile homes. Here are a few other forums I’ve located:
www.thecreativeinvestor.com - has a commercial forum, a few experienced individuals on this site, but answers are slow
www.creonline.com - just OK, no organization
http://forums.biggerpockets.com - again, small section for commercial discussion
Anyone’s best bet is to get out in their market and meet other investors. There are alot of newbies that think they can get all the info they need from forums. Not gonna happen. Sorry, I’ll stop now…
By the way, none of that is directed at you, just letting you about some other forums…
Cold calling does work well as long as you have a name to ask for when you call. Sending letters has also been pretty good to me. I have used these methods for 20 - 150 unit commercial properties. The fact is there are always property owners who are thinking about selling who just have not started the process yet.
There is another member on this site who got a list of properties from me last month. He said that he found a perfect property within 1 hour of calling. He seemed very happy that he went thru with getting started. His testimonial is at the top of my Apartment List page.
Anyways, I highly recommend giving it a try.
Richard Stephens
Thanks Richard,
as soon as I get your list, I’m going to start sending letters and cold calling.