Commercial real estate consulting and advisory

How an advisory engagement runs

Consulting work goes wrong when the question is fuzzy. “What should I do with my building?” is a conversation. “Should we sell this year, refinance and hold for five years, or redevelop?” is an assignment. Our first job is to turn the first kind of question into the second.

1. Scoping call: we listen to the situation, ask what decision you are actually trying to make and by when, and tell you whether we are the right fit.
2. Engagement letter: a written scope, the deliverable, the fee and the timeline. If we have any conflict, such as representing a party on the other side, we say so here.
3. Document request: leases, rent roll, operating statements, tax bills, insurance, surveys, prior reports and loan terms, depending on the assignment.
4. Site visit: Sal or a member of our team walks the property. As a licensed contractor, he looks at the building the way a buyer’s inspector or a lender’s engineer would.
5. Analysis: market data from current deals and listings, zoning review, cost estimates where construction is involved, and financial modeling of each option.
6. Written memo and review meeting: a clear recommendation with the reasoning behind it, the assumptions that would change the answer, and what to do next.

Hold, refinance or sell

This is the question we are asked most, and the honest answer usually depends on things that have nothing to do with the property: the owner’s age and estate plans, whether partners agree, how much debt they are comfortable carrying, and what they would do with the money. We model the property side carefully and then put it next to those personal factors so the owner can decide with everything in view.

We are brokers, not tax advisors. Anything in the tax row gets confirmed with your CPA and estate attorney before you act on it.

What a lease audit actually finds

Leases are long, operating expense clauses are complicated, and landlords’ reconciliations are rarely reviewed line by line. For tenants, a careful audit can turn up charges that should not be there. For landlords and buyers, a lease abstract shows exactly what income is secured and what obligations come with it.

• Operating expense pass-throughs: capital items such as roof replacement charged in full instead of amortized, management or administrative fees above the lease rate, and costs excluded by the lease showing up anyway.
• Base year and gross-up errors: a base year set in a partially vacant year without proper gross-up can inflate a tenant’s share for the life of the lease.
• Pro-rata share: the tenant’s percentage should match the lease definition of rentable area, and changes to the building’s total area should be reflected.
• Taxes: Florida’s state sales tax on commercial rent was repealed effective October 2024, and older leases or billing systems may still reference it. Confirm current treatment with your CPA.
• Critical dates: renewal option notice windows, termination rights, rights of first refusal and expansion rights. Missing a notice date can cost a tenant the option entirely.

Tenants working with our tenant representation team often start with an audit, because the existing lease tells us what to fix in the next one.

Site selection for occupiers

Picking a location is a business decision that happens to involve real estate. We start with the business: where the employees live, where the customers or patients come from, what the drive times look like at rush hour, and what the company can afford to spend on occupancy. Only then do we look at buildings.

For companies weighing Florida against New York, or one South Florida submarket against another, we compare total occupancy cost (rent, operating expenses, parking, buildout and moving), labor access, transportation, and practical issues such as hurricane exposure and insurance. A firm choosing between Brickell, Coral Gables and downtown Fort Lauderdale may find the cheapest rent is not the cheapest location once parking and commute times are counted.

Rent-regulated buildings in Brooklyn and Manhattan

Many older walk-ups and mixed-use buildings in Brooklyn and Manhattan contain rent-stabilized apartments, and the rules governing them changed substantially with the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019. Strategies that were standard before, such as relying on vacancy increases or deregulating units after improvements, were sharply limited. That changed how buyers underwrite these buildings and what they will pay.

For owners, the useful questions are practical. What is the real income today, and what can it reasonably become under current law? What capital work does the building need, and how much of that cost can ever be recovered? Are the commercial spaces on the ground floor worth more than the residential floors above? Is there unused floor area that a developer would value? We bring those answers together into a value range and a set of options. Compliance questions about registrations, leases and rent histories go to your attorney, because mistakes there are expensive.

Storm-damaged property: rebuild, repair or sell

After a hurricane, Southwest Florida owners face a decision under pressure, often with incomplete information about insurance proceeds and repair costs. The right answer depends on the gap between what the building will be worth repaired and what it costs to get there, including the delay.

• We estimate repair scope and cost from the contractor’s side, using Sal’s experience as a Florida Certified General Contractor.
• We check whether flood rules for substantially damaged buildings could require elevation or other upgrades, which can turn a repair into a near rebuild.
• We compare the as-is land and shell value with the post-repair value, after carrying costs and lost rent.
• We look at who is buying damaged property in that submarket, because in some areas the buyer pool for as-is assets is deep and in others it is thin.

The memo shows the owner each path with its timeline and risk. Some owners rebuild and come out ahead. Others are better off selling to a buyer with construction capacity and redeploying the money, sometimes through a 1031 exchange.

A hypothetical family holding

For example, take a hypothetical family that has owned a small retail strip on a busy road in Cape Coral for decades. The building is fully leased to local tenants on short leases, the roof is near the end of its life, and the siblings who inherited it disagree about what to do.

In a case like this, we would abstract every lease and estimate realistic renewal terms, price the roof and parking lot work, and test whether the zoning would support a more valuable use. We would then lay out three paths: keep and reinvest, sell as-is to an investor, or sell to a developer if the land supports more. Each path would show the cash each sibling might receive and when. That kind of side-by-side often settles a family disagreement faster than any argument about the building itself.

What our written memo includes

Independence when we might also transact

Clients sometimes worry that a broker’s advice will always end in a listing. That is a fair concern. We address it two ways. First, consulting is paid on its own fee, so our compensation for the advice does not depend on a transaction. Second, if a client later asks us to sell, lease or buy based on that advice, the brokerage arrangement is handled in a separate written agreement, and we discuss how the two relate before either is signed. If the best answer is to hold and do nothing, the memo will say so.

Feasibility studies for a proposed project

Before a developer buys land or a lender commits, someone has to answer whether the finished project will lease or sell at the numbers in the pro forma. Our feasibility work focuses on the parts we see every day in live deals: what comparable buildings actually achieve, how long they took to fill, what concessions were given, and what is under construction nearby that will compete.

We pair that with a construction reality check. A pro forma that assumes hard costs from a different market, ignores flood elevation, or underestimates site work is a common reason projects stall after land closes. In Southwest Florida we pay particular attention to utility availability and impact fees. In New York we focus on zoning capacity, inclusionary requirements and the economics of any tax incentive the project relies on. Our development sites page covers the land side in more detail.

Operating cost differences between our markets

Investors comparing Florida and New York often focus on price and rent and miss the operating side, which can change returns more than either.

• Insurance: wind and flood coverage is a major and volatile cost in coastal Florida. We ask for actual current quotes, not last year’s premium, when we model a Florida acquisition.
• Property taxes: Florida reassesses commercial property on sale, so a buyer’s tax bill can differ sharply from the seller’s. New York City classifies property into tax classes with different rules, and assessments on larger buildings follow their own methods.
• Building compliance: New York City buildings carry ongoing local law obligations such as facade inspections and, for larger buildings, emissions limits. Florida condominiums and some larger buildings face structural inspection rules.
• Labor and construction: trade costs, permitting time and access constraints differ widely, especially for work in dense parts of Midtown or Downtown Brooklyn.

These change often, so we confirm current figures for each property rather than relying on rules of thumb.

Decision traps we try to catch

• Anchoring on a price someone mentioned years ago, in a different rate and insurance environment.
• Valuing a building on in-place income without checking when leases roll and at what market rent.
• Comparing a sale today with a hold scenario that leaves out capital spending.
• Treating a redevelopment plan as certain before zoning, utilities and construction cost have been checked.
• Making a decision under a tax deadline without having talked to the CPA first.

What to send before we start

For most property assignments: the current rent roll and leases, two or three years of operating statements, the latest tax bill and insurance declarations, any loan documents, and any surveys, environmental or engineering reports. For occupier assignments: headcount and growth plans, current lease, where employees live by ZIP code if you have it, and your budget. Send what you have; we will tell you what is missing. Contact us or call 239-256-5005 to set up a scoping call.

Portfolio reviews for multi-property owners

Owners with several properties often manage each one in isolation: a roof here, a lease renewal there, a refinance when a loan comes due. A portfolio review steps back and asks which assets are earning their keep and which are tying up capital that could work harder elsewhere.

We rank each property on current return, upside, capital needs over the next several years, lease rollover risk and market liquidity. The result is usually a short list: properties to hold and improve, properties to sell in the next cycle, and properties where a specific action, such as re-tenanting a vacant space or resolving a code issue, would make them much more valuable before any decision. Owners with holdings in both Florida and New York get a direct comparison across markets, which is hard to find from advisors who only work one of them.

Entering a new market

Investors and businesses coming into South Florida from the Northeast, or New York operators looking south, often underestimate how different the markets are. Buildings are newer in some places and older in others, parking expectations are different, leases follow different conventions, and storm exposure changes the cost of ownership in Florida. We prepare market entry briefs covering the submarkets that fit the client’s goals, typical deal structures, the local approvals process and the practical costs that do not show up in listing prices. For South Florida that may mean comparing Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Southwest Florida head to head.

Lease-versus-renew decisions for tenants

A tenant with a lease expiring in a year or two has more leverage than it usually uses. The landlord knows that losing a tenant means downtime, leasing commissions and buildout costs for the next one. Before a tenant sits down to renew, we compare staying against the realistic alternatives in the market, including the cost of moving and building new space. That comparison sets the floor for the renewal negotiation. Even when a tenant fully intends to stay, a credible relocation analysis tends to improve the renewal terms. Our tenant representation team then takes the negotiation from there.

Timing and turnaround

A focused question, such as a broker opinion of value or a single lease review, can often be answered quickly once we have the documents. A multi-option study with construction estimates, zoning review and market research takes longer, mostly because outside information like survey data, utility letters or contractor pricing has to come in. We give a delivery date in the engagement letter and tell you right away if something outside our control will move it.