How to Evaluate & Purchase a Retail Property on Your Own

How to evaluate and purchase a retail property by yourself? Where to get started? Jessica Malcomnson purchased two retail centers in the last couple of years and shares her lessons learned.

You can read this entire interview here: bit.ly/3m59g6t

How did you purchase your first retail center?

I started out with a single family investment. I then also picked up short term rentals, office, and a warehouse building. My dream was to own shopping centers, and in 2019 was when I really began the journey to invest in shopping centers. And I realized at that time that, because I had taken some time off, I knew that I had to get back in the business, my career had lost momentum from a leasing perspective. But I knew I had to get back in and start networking with the brokers who are selling the real estate that I'm looking to purchase. I started to get back in to attending networking functions, local ICSC events, just so I could get my goals out there and network with the brokers who are selling shopping center.

How did you get your first few loans because a lot of lenders don't want to lend to people who don't have a full time job.

That was one of the challenges. My first shopping center was going to be my biggest purchase to date, and the lending process was new to me. Originally when I started the process, the broker that I was working with, Joe Russo of Marcus and Millichap, was fabulous throughout the process and really held my hand in every step. I never at any point felt like he was doing this for financial gain, he referred me to a loan broker. They want to see what kind of experience do you have. And then they look at your financial statement.

What was this first opportunity and what was the upside of it?

Looking at photos of it, I was thinking that it's probably not a property that I want to purchase, but once we dove into the financials, I realized that this is something that should be of interest to me, I can't judge it just by looking at the photos. I decided to take a road trip to visit the property, I'm located in South Florida, the property is located in the Jacksonville market, that's roughly a four to five hour commute. I remember standing in the parking lot, sometime around two to three in the afternoon, seeing the amount of traffic passing by the property. It was also located at a lighted intersection, next to a McDonald's, across the street from a Walmart neighborhood market. I said, "Wow!", I was willing to pass on this property just based on photos because it's not "sexy real estate". But now I'm here standing in the parking lot looking around and noticing everything that's happening, and then I realized that this is something that I need to pull the trigger on.

What are some of the cons of retail?

One of the issues that came up, after I purchased my first shopping center was that the insurance company that I used sent an inspector out within the first couple of months. They do a full inspection of the property, and they come back with a list of items that they want taken care of in order to continue with the policy. And that was a big surprise, I never had that issue with any of the properties that I managed in the past. They wanted me to reroof the property because the roof was old, but it was also not leaking, so they accepted a seal coat of the roof. That was a huge expense that was not expected, when we didn't even have reserves yet.

Jessica Malcolmson

instagram.com/Jess_Malc

linkedin.com/in/jessica-malcolmson-8569a322/

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