Commercial Real Estate: What is my role?

Let’s take a moment to talk about commercial real estate and your specific role in a deal.

Sometimes you might need a little more clarity on a situation. Say you are really unsure about the finder’s fee and what constitutes relinquishing the deal? Still not seem clear to you? The question you really seem to want to know is, at what point can you turn it over and get the finder’s fee?

Of course that is the question of the day. There are hundreds and hundreds of ways to ask this question, but it really boils down to this… when do you get paid. You really want to know and what everyone wants to know is when do you get pain the finder's fee?

The question is not when, but at what point do you become a birddog instead of becoming a partner?

It really boils down to how you work. A partner who gets a 25 or 50% interest in the project must be capable of carrying the project all the way from inception to where there is no more project. And that includes all the steps in the middle; negotiating the deal, communicating with the seller and the broker, getting it under contract, getting all due diligence done and then exiting from it. Basically you carry it all the way until there is nothing left. And most people who bring deals in are not qualified to do that so some people become finder’s fees and some of them are left in for a small piece and then they get a finder’s fee. There are a few of them that actually qualify and are getting much larger percentages. But I have to be comfortable on this end that you can handle all that stuff for you to be left in as a project manager responsible for doing all that stuff. It is much more comforting when you don’t have any money invested in the deal, I can tell you that. But even then, somebody on the other end has to be doing the hard work.

What does this really mean? This means you need to more than just the person who finds the addresses and become the person who possibly even contacts the owner and does the structuring. Once the basic information is collected, you are on your way. But yes, you will need to collect the basic information-there is no doubt about that!