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Transparency and landlord communication is key for selling your rent roll with success, says a rent roll broker.
MC Rent Roll Broking director Matt Ciallella said one of the most important questions he asks a potential rent roll seller is, "Why are you selling?"
“One thing I like to get out early is, are you legitimately wanting to sell? Or have you just had enough, or had a bad month or bad six months?” he told Residential Property Manager.
“It also has to be a great rent roll, so I will do some due diligence and found out key reports from their property management software, and look at files.
“I want to make sure we are transparent to the buyers we are presenting the rent roll to, because you don’t want any skeletons in the closet,” he added.
Once in the clear, Mr Ciallella said the next course of action may be running a broad, generic advert on your website to attract people.
“However, more often than not, because I know who the players are around that agency, I will say, ‘These are the five I think we should call. Who do you want at the top of the list?’ Then we will go through and approach them one at a time,” he said.
“The harder proposals are where someone wants the office to be sold, so they want someone to take over their lease or come into the office, and they want the brand to stay the same. You are narrowing your pool of eyes.
“The ones that say, ‘Matt, sell my rent roll, I am retiring, shut the office,” – very easy, you will get your buyer pretty much first or second go,” he added.
Increasingly, Mr Ciallella is finding that people wish to sell their rent roll whilst maintaining the brand and office.
“It stems from a love of their staff. They are like little family businesses and they want to look after their staff – which is great in terms of loyalty, but can be a thorn in their side. I have seen some cases where the staff have turned on the vendor. Property managers are people that don’t like change,” he added.
Mr Ciallella added that careful communication is key when notifying landlords of any business merger, as it may be viewed as an opportunity to shop around.
“You have to be so careful with that communication message – it is the most important thing," he advised. "I tell all my vendors to not send anything out until we have gone through a list of all the landlords and placed them in a list from highest flight risk to those that will have no problems and sign.”
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