The Dahlem Difference!

A few years ago we were introduced to a gentleman who had an interest in owning his own office building for his business and lease the rest to tenants.  The company is based in Southern Indiana across the Ohio River from Louisville and he was looking for an investment opportunity there.  The market was extremely tight.  Wes Elmore, one of our leasing agents began to canvass the market by driving it and searching the internet to see what opportunities were available.  Charlie Dahlem began to search for off market opportunities that might exist.  Charlie came upon a building that had obviously not been maintained and had significant vacancy.  He found out the owner has passed away and the owner’s widow owned the building and lived in Florida.  A quick obituary search for the man who had passed away generated the name of his wife.  Charlie searched for the name in Florida and came up with several individuals with that name.  He left messages for all of them and received a return call from the lady who owned it.  She put him in touch with her CPA who seemed to be eager to offload this deteriorating asset.  

The building had two tenants with leases nearing expiration.  The first step was to meet with those tenants, explain that we had a contract on the building, describe the common area improvements that the new owner planned and measure their intentions to renew.  Additionally, we developed a conservative proforma for our client so he could see the return he could generate purchasing the building, making the intended capital improvements and over time bringing tenants into the building.  He purchased the building and hired Dahlem to lease it for him.  Not only did we lease it to 100% we substantially beat the timing we had in the proforma for leasing, thereby making the client’s return significantly better.