A small buyer, working close to home

What "value-add" means here

It is an industry phrase, so here it is in plain words: we buy buildings that are worth less than they should be because of something fixable. Empty units. Rents that have not moved in a decade. A roof, a boiler, a parking lot. We pay for the building as it is today, then spend the money and the time to fix it.

"Opportunistic" is the harder end of the same idea — a building that is not really working at all right now, where the plan is bigger than a repair list.

How purchases are funded

On projects under $1,000,000 we have historically paid for both the purchase and the renovation ourselves. Nobody had to approve a draw request before a contractor could start.

Between $1M and $2M we bring outside financing in. That adds a few weeks to a closing, but the decision still gets made by the same small group.

How we decide

Somebody reads every submission. We look at the county record, the location, and what nearby buildings have actually sold for. Then we work out what the repairs would cost us and what the building would earn afterwards. If those two numbers leave room, we make an offer. If they do not, we say so.

We try to answer inside two business days, because a slow maybe is worse for you than a fast no.

Why only three states

Ohio, West Virginia and Maryland. Knowing which street matters and which one does not is most of this job, and that knowledge does not travel. We would rather turn down a good building in Indiana than pretend we understand it.