Buyer representation is a different discipline from listing brokerage, and most commercial real estate brokers don’t do it well. The economics push brokers toward listings, the workflow is built around sellers, and “buyer representation” in commercial real estate often means little more than emailing public listings off Crexi. If you’re weighing what a broker actually does on the buy side, see the full breakdown here →
That’s not what we do. Our investment brokerage practice is built for investors who want to find deals that actually pencil — including the off-market deals that never hit the platforms — and to underwrite those deals rigorously before committing capital.
Tell us what you’re looking for and we’ll start working.
Who This Service Is For
- First-time commercial real estate investors making their initial acquisition
- Experienced investors expanding an existing portfolio
- 1031 exchangers sourcing replacement property under deadline
- Pre-retirees and retirees building income portfolios
- Out-of-market investors entering Atlanta and the Southeast
- Family offices and small institutional buyers in the $1M–$25M range
What Investment Brokerage Actually Means
A buyer-side engagement covers the full path from “I want to deploy capital into commercial real estate” to “I own the right asset at the right price.” Concretely:
Defining the buy box
Before we start sending properties, we work through the parameters: property type, geography, price range, cap rate target, leverage assumptions, hold period, management appetite (fully passive vs. owner-involved), and risk tolerance. A well-defined buy box rules out 90% of the inventory and lets us focus on the 10% that fits.
Off-market sourcing
Public platforms — CoStar, Crexi, LoopNet — show roughly half of what’s actually trading at any given time in the Atlanta market. The other half moves through broker networks, direct owner outreach, and pocket inventory. We tap that channel actively, both by maintaining direct relationships with the brokerage community and by proactively reaching out to owners of fitting properties whether they’ve publicly indicated they want to sell or not. See exactly how our off-market sourcing works →
Underwriting support
Every property worth a serious look gets underwritten before an offer goes in. That means modeling the rent roll, stress-testing the operating expenses, projecting NOI through the hold period, modeling exit at conservative cap rates, layering in realistic financing assumptions, and running the deal-level returns (cash-on-cash, IRR, equity multiple) under both base-case and downside scenarios. For investors who don’t want to build their own model from scratch, this is genuine value-add work. See our full underwriting approach →
Cap rate and market intelligence
The right cap rate for any given property depends on tenant credit, remaining lease term, escalation structure, property type, location, and current market conditions. We have ongoing visibility into actual closing cap rates across Atlanta and the Southeast — not just listed cap rates, which are usually 25–75 basis points too aggressive.
Negotiation
Offer strategy, LOI terms, contract negotiation, due diligence period scope, and closing terms. The asking-price-to-closing-price gap on a well-negotiated commercial deal is meaningful — frequently more than the broker fee.
Due diligence coordination
Phase I environmental, property condition reports, lease audits, estoppels, SNDAs, financing coordination with your lender. We don’t perform these services ourselves, but we run the process and the timeline. See our full due diligence checklist →
How We Source Off-Market Deals
The off-market sourcing question is the one investors care most about, so it’s worth being concrete. Read the complete walkthrough of our off-market process →
- Active broker network. Other commercial brokers — both in Atlanta and across the Southeast — know our active buyer list. When they have a pocket listing that fits, we hear about it before it goes wide.
- Direct owner outreach. For property types where we have deep specialization — auto shops, QSR, NNN — we maintain ownership databases and run outreach campaigns when buyer interest warrants. Many owners aren’t actively shopping their property but will sell at the right price.
- 1031 chain referrals. Active 1031 sellers often need a buyer fast; we sometimes match relinquished-side inventory to our buyer side directly.
- Industry relationships. Trade associations, attorney referrals, accountant referrals, lender referrals. Owners often surface intent to sell through their advisors before it surfaces publicly.
The honest framing: not every buy box can be filled off-market. Some property types and price points trade almost entirely on the public platforms. We’re transparent about what we’re seeing and where the inventory is actually coming from.
Underwriting Approach
For every property the buyer is seriously considering, we build out:
- Trailing 12-month operating statement reconstruction with line-item review
- Forward-year NOI projection with realistic expense growth and lease renewal probabilities
- Cap rate sensitivity table at entry and exit, modeling 25/50/100 bp shifts
- Financing scenarios at current market rates with realistic LTV and DSCR constraints
- Cash-on-cash and unlevered IRR under base and downside cases
- Tenant credit summary — for net-lease properties, public credit ratings; for private tenants, financial statement review where available
The point is not to produce a 40-page model — it’s to surface the two or three numbers that actually determine whether the deal works. See the full underwriting service page →
Property Types We Cover on the Buy Side
Our specializations on the buy side track our specializations on the sell side:
- Auto repair shop properties
- QSR / fast food properties
- NNN net-lease properties
- Restaurant properties (sit-down)
- Retail and strip centers
- Industrial and flex
- Medical office
If your interest is outside these categories, ask anyway — the underwriting and negotiation skill set transfers across property types, and we’ll be direct about whether we’re the right fit.
Geography
Primary focus is Atlanta and the broader Georgia market. Active in the surrounding Southeast — South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Florida — particularly for net-lease and QSR investments where the geographic constraint is looser. See our markets coverage page for details.
How the Engagement Works
There is no charge to an investor for buyer-side representation on a transaction. Commission is paid by the seller at closing, out of the cooperating broker fee already built into most commercial listings. For off-market transactions we negotiate the fee structure case-by-case before any offer goes in.
What we ask in return is a clear buy box, a real timeline, and a commitment to work exclusively with us on properties in that buy box. We invest significant time in sourcing and underwriting; that investment only makes sense in an exclusive engagement.
Not sure what to look for in a buyer’s broker in the first place? See the questions worth asking before you hire one →, or read how a broker’s role differs from an agent’s →
Learn More About Buyer-Side Representation
- Off-Market Commercial Real Estate Sourcing — how we find properties before they hit the public platforms
- Commercial Real Estate Underwriting — how we test whether a deal’s numbers actually hold up
- Commercial Property Due Diligence Checklist — what happens after a property goes under contract
- Family Office Real Estate Investment — how we work with family offices and small institutional buyers
- Questions to Ask a Commercial Real Estate Broker — what to ask before hiring buyer-side representation
- Commercial Real Estate Broker vs. Agent — what the distinction means and why it matters
- What Does a Commercial Real Estate Broker Do? — the five functions of real buy-side representation
Ready to Start Looking?
Working under a 1031 deadline? Go to the 1031 consultation page →