It wasn't a whim and it wasn't really a plan. A few deals were on the table, so the team loaded up and hit the road. In this episode of The Route from The Price Regulator, Jason and Abe ride through South Florida to put eyes on every deal in play: a stop in a gated city that turned into a drone mission, and a Fort Lauderdale warehouse bought vacant that became one of the best deals the company has done. Along the way you get the full playbook on triple net leases, cap rate analysis, and why real estate due diligence starts with showing up in person.
Why We Touch Every Single Property
The rule never changes: touch every property. Whether it is an acquisition or a deal on the financing side, someone from the team drives out and walks it. Photos flatter, listings leave things out, and numbers on a screen never trip over a pothole. Walking a property means checking the paint, the landscaping, the parking stops, the signage, and every hazard that could hurt a tenant or a visitor. If something is off, it gets fixed. That habit is the same discipline behind the walkthrough checklist from the first ride along, where the walkthrough tells you what the listing never will.
The First Stop: Asset, Character, Exit
The first stop was a deal that came through a broker relationship, the second one done with him. The philosophy is simple to say and lengthy to run. Look at the asset. Look at the character of the person you are working with. Look at the exit strategy: what is the plan at 12 months, at 24 months, and what happens to the property after. Bricks and land are the physical items that hold value, which is why the focus stays on houses and commercial real estate used for business purposes only, never anyone's own home. It is the same framework the team argued through on the Burger King deal.
Real Estate Due Diligence: Research Before You Show Up
The property sat in Sea Ranch Lakes, and the team learned at the gate what commercial real estate due diligence would have flagged first: it is its own city, with its own police department, private streets the homeowners literally own, and no entry unless an owner authorizes you. The guard was polite, informative, and immovable. The lesson stuck: put "who controls access" on your real estate due diligence checklist, because most of the time nobody knows you are coming. The team's answer was to go around the corner and put the drone up. Ten minutes later they had the roof, the driveway, the pool, and the whole neighborhood on footage, and a reminder that due diligence rewards the people who find a way to see the asset anyway.
What Is a Triple Net Lease? The Fort Lauderdale Warehouse
Next stop was a property the company already owns, bought in 2023, and on paper it looked terrible: a vacant warehouse in bad condition with no income. Then they drove it and understood the location. Today it runs on a triple net lease, and if you have ever asked what does NNN mean, this deal is the answer landlords compete for: the lease passes the expenses down to the tenant. Taxes, insurance, maintenance, the tenant carries it, and the landlord's management load drops to almost nothing. If you are wondering how to buy a warehouse as your first industrial deal, this is the episode's answer: buy the location and the lease structure, not the paint job. It is the same lesson from the live deal analysis in the last Route episode: the numbers only mean something once you understand the property behind them.
I-1 Zoning and Industrial Outdoor Storage
The warehouse sits on I-1 industrial zoning, and that detail carries real money. I-1 allows industrial outdoor storage, something plenty of industrial zoning does not. A tenant gets the inside of the building plus the yard, and for the businesses that need to stage equipment, vehicles, or materials outside, that combination is exactly what they are hunting for. Zoning is one of those line items that never shows up in a listing photo, which is one more reason the team walks every property before any money moves.
How to Calculate Cap Rate, and What a Good Cap Rate Looks Like
The team runs the same cap rate analysis on every deal: simple, efficient, and holding all the relevant financial information on one page. A cap rate is the return on investment: what the property makes after all expenses are paid, measured against the price, and no cap rate calculator replaces knowing whether those expense numbers are real. What is a good cap rate depends on the asset and the market, which is why the team treats location as a completely separate question from the cap rate math. A great number on a bad corner is still a bad deal. Small operational moves feed the same math: a roof coating that adds ten years of life at a third of the cost of a new roof protects the income side of the equation before a replacement ever hits the books.
Systems Keep the Portfolio Standing
The ride ends where the operations begin. Owning the property is the start; running it is the job. Garbage picked up, hazards fixed, vendors handled, and every request tracked, which is exactly the machine Abe breaks down in the 9 step maintenance request process. The properties that perform are the ones where the process, not anyone's memory, does the work.