From Whales to One-Offs: A Guide to Finding CRE Investors

From brokers looking to source property sales, to investors looking to expand their existing portfolio, finding commercial real estate investors can be a difficult task at times.

With the right tools and resources, however, building long-term lucrative relationships with commercial real estate investors can be done with more ease and efficiency than ever before.

In this post, we’ll be discussing how to find investors of all kinds through effective commercial real estate analysis.

Commercial Real Estate Investors

From massive companies to individual people, anyone can build a commercial real estate portfolio.

Companies like Blackstone own thousands of properties nationwide, totaling more than $400 billion in value.

A small team or individual might just own a few properties for rental income.

Whatever the case may be, finding the right investor for you can be time-consuming.

With Reonomy and a few other resources, however, you can build  lasting business relationships faster than ever before. Below we’ll show you how.

How to Find Commercial Real Estate Investors

From investors in a certain area, to those who invest in a certain asset type, and on—you can now find commercial property investors of all kinds, in any region, without even leaving your computer.

You can even see the full ownership portfolios of those owners to gain more insight into their properties and owning tendencies (more on that later).

Finding Investors in Your Area

In most cases, you’ll want to find investors nearest you, or nearest to your focus market.

With Reonomy, you can search specifically within any market across the nation to find local property owners—by state, city, county, zip code, street name, or street address.

Reonomy Property Search by Location

To search for nearby property investors, visit the Location tab on the Reonomy search platform and enter a city, zip code, county, or street address.

Let’s say, for example, that you’re a commercial broker in Minneapolis, and would like to find a local office building investor to get in touch with.

In Reonomy, you can simply start your search by adding Minneapolis as your city or MSA location.

To get even more granular with your property location search, you can also add a county, zip code, street name, or exact street address.

Once you apply your property location filters, you’ll get a list of results that match your search. At that point, you can add additional filters, including asset type filters, sales, and debt filters.

Your property search can be used to find those that invest in properties in specific areas with very specific characteristics.

If you’re looking to enter a new market, a Reonomy property search can also be used to identify investors in rising commercial real estate markets.

Reonomy Property Owner Portfolio

Within the list of results you get from your property search, you can click into the profile page of a property of interest, then visit the Ownership tab to see the owning person or entity along with their associated contact information.

When using Reonomy, you can even go beyond the owning LLC to get contact information for the individuals associated with that LLC.

Below, you can see that a Reonomy owner profile on a single property includes the reported owner, then the LLC associated to that ownership, and the people associated to that LLC.

To search an ownership portfolio, copy the name of the individual or LLC that owns your property of interest, return to the Ownership search tab and paste the name into the Owner name (for people) or Owner of record (for LLCs) search bar.

Given the nature of how owners use LLCs, you can also take the individual names of those associated with a property owning LLC, and search them individually.

So, not only can you see all of the properties associated with an LLC, you can also see all of the properties associated with all of the individuals that are apart of that LLC.

Join a Real Estate Investors Association (REIA)

For those in the investing game themselves, networking is also a terrific way to find and meet other local commercial property investors.

Quite simply, networking is a necessity when it comes to commercial property investment.

Joining a real estate investors association is a great way to find local investors. In fact, it’s a great way to find investors nationally, and even internationally, as well.

Immediately getting the opportunity to speak individually to other investors is an immediate way to build rapport with them and start off on the right foot.

Once you meet someone interested in building a similar portfolio, you’ve essentially gotten a head start.

By running a quick Google search with “real estate investors association near me,” you’ll quickly find a nearby landmine for networking.

Examples include the Atlanta Real Estate Investors Alliance (Atlanta REIA), the Milwaukee REIA, Cincinnati REIA, and the Houston REIA.

You can also find a ton of local events by signing up for Meetup and searching through their commercial real estate events where investors will be present.

How to Find Real Estate Investors by Property Type

To identify property investors based on the asset type that they focus on, you can once again dive into a Reonomy Property Search.

Instead of starting your search with a location, you can begin your search with a specific asset type and work from there.

Multi-Family Investors and Apartment Investors

To find multi-family investors, start a Reonomy property search by entering the “Multi-Family” search tab and selecting the applicable multi-family property types.

Once you add an asset type filter, you can further filter your search based on a specific location (as mentioned above), and add other filters for number of units, building and lot square footage, most recent sale date and price, and more.

From there, you can use the same process mentioned above to find property owners and analyze their full portfolio.

Meetup also has commercial property investor gatherings specifically related to multi-family properties, again making that another great option for those that like to use networking to their advantage.

Land Investors

To identify and connect with land investors, go to Reonomy’s asset type filters and visit the Vacant Land tab.

In this tab, you’ll be able to select from a bevy of land types, from agricultural land, to residential vacant land, to recreational land, mobile home lots, and on.

To dive into more specific properties, you can also add filters for lot size—in acres or square feet. You can also search by property zoning, as well as sales history, debt history, and on.

Hotel Investors

When running a property search on Reonomy, you can also search for hotel investors by visiting the Commercial tab of the search platform.

Here, hotel properties can be found in two places—hospitality properties and mixed-use properties. Depending on your specific requirements, you can find investors that own hotels, motels, resorts, or hotel mixed-use properties.

Retail Real Estate Investors

Retail real estate of all kinds can also be found on Reonomy.

From car washes, to bars and restaurants, to stores, auto repair shops, to retail/residential or retail/office mixed-use, you can find and access the property owner portfolios of investors of retail property in any location.

How to Find Real Estate Investors by Size

Investment motives are based on where the investor is located, what property type they specialize in, and what type of return they are looking for from their portfolio.

There are large-scale investors, mid-size investors, and small/individual investors.

The portfolio sizes and monetary differences in each tier can be quite drastic, and so searching for them can be fairly different as well.

Large-Scale Investors

Large-scale, or “whale” investors, are the ones that have a very sizable portfolio, and likewise, a sizable income.

These companies are usually institutional entities like banks, insurance firms, and large corporations.

These investment groups may have diversified portfolios, or they may own a high volume of a single asset type. They’ll also usually own properties in many locations, sometimes across the entire country, and often in primary markets.

To find large-scale investors, you can begin your search as you always would, with a location and asset type. From there, you can add filters that would signify large properties and large portfolios.

Here, with Reonomy, you can run a property search and add filters such as sale price, building area and size, number of units, year built, and more.

You may also want to search through areas with high rates of development, as large investors are often at the forefront of building up under-developed regions.

Simply, across the board, you can search for large, mid-size, and small investors by diving into their portfolios and seeing the number of properties they own.

Mid-Size Investors

Mid-size investors usually consist of fairly sizable, but not huge investment firms. An example might be a regional bank.

Medium-size portfolios will also range in their diversification.

Geographically, however, they’ll be more localized than large firms, although their portfolio may still span across an entire city, county, or state.

To search Reonomy for mid-size investors, your best bet is to search locally for properties of a specific asset type – asset types can vary.

Mid-size investors will likely invest in offices, apartment buildings, retail, or other reasonably-sized properties.

Small/Individual Investors

Small or individual investors may be a single person, family, or business building a portfolio of only a handful of properties, and will typically be interested in rental income or business-occupied properties.

These investors will have much more localized portfolios, often times focused on a single city or town, and will also usually focus on one asset class.

Finding small investors usually requires you to search for local businesses or multi-family properties within a very confined location.

You can also search by sale price to find properties that have sold for relatively low or local prices. Small investors can be found in virtually any market nationwide.

One-Off Buyers

It’s important to distinguish property investors from property buyers, as well.

One-off, single buyers are people that are simply looking to purchase a commercial property for their own use, or for their own small financial gain—often times retail or multi-family properties.

With no ongoing need for properties, one-time buyers do not fit into the same relationship building requirements of more involved property investors.

If you’re looking to identify one-time buyers for a commercial property, visit our previous article here.

Regardless of the size of the investor, location, or type of property investor you’re looking to connect with, it’s all a matter of setting yourself up with the right data and search tools.

Pairing your existing market expertise with in-depth looks at investor portfolios can help you craft masterful conversation starters and potentially begin what could be a long-lasting, lucrative relationship.