Thinking about selling your commercial property?

One side of the table. Yours.

For a tenant, that means there is nobody across the table I owe anything to.

For an owner selling, it means the same thing pointed the other direction. The people who will bid on your building are the same ownership and investment community a landlord-side broker depends on for their next listing, their next renewal, their next referral. I am not in that trade. When I work your sale I am working that pool for your number, and there is no relationship I need to protect on the other end of it.

It is one principle applied twice: single agency. It is why both services sit under one roof without contradicting each other.

Most South Florida owners are past year six

Commercial property changes hands on a rhythm. Debt matures, partnerships reach their term, depreciation schedules run out, and estates get settled. Here is how long current owners of the 63,273 commercial parcels across the three counties have held them, measured from the last recorded sale:

44,069 commercial parcels — well over half — have been held more than six years, and 15,856 of them for more than twenty. None of that says any particular owner should sell. It says the question is live for a very large number of them, and most will never get a straight answer to it because nobody offers one without a listing agreement attached.

Counted from county property appraiser records across Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach. Commercial parcels only; vacant land excluded. Hold period is measured from the last recorded sale, so a parcel transferred between related entities reads as a shorter hold than the family has actually owned it.

What your building is worth is a range, and the range is knowable

Every owner who calls me wants a number. What I can honestly give is a range and the reasoning behind it, which is more useful than a number anyway — because the number a buyer will actually pay depends on things a spreadsheet cannot see, and the range tells you whether it is worth finding out.

Here is the starting point, from county records rather than from anybody’s opinion. Across 6,186 qualifying single-parcel commercial sales in 90 South Florida municipalities between 2021 and 2026, the median traded at $321 per square foot of building area. The middle half fell between $212 and $528.

That spread is the whole point. A 2.5x gap between the bottom and top of the middle half is not noise; it is the difference between buildings, and closing that gap for your specific property is most of what a valuation is.

Where your asset type actually sits

Find your row and you have a defensible bracket in about ten seconds. If somebody has offered you a number outside it, that is not automatically wrong — but it is a question worth asking out loud, and it is the reason I would rather you had this table than took my word for anything.

Two things this table is not. It is not an appraisal, which is a licensed, regulated work product with a different purpose. And it is not your number, because a median is a middle and almost nothing is exactly average. It is the frame you argue inside.

Six reasons owners sell, and only three of them need a sale

Almost every owner who contacts me opens with the asset. What actually decides the right move is the reason, and the reason usually turns out to be one of these.

You want the capital out. A sale does that. So can a refinance, and so can a sale-leaseback if you still need the space — which gets you the capital without moving the business. Which of those is right depends on your rate, your remaining term, and what the money is for.

You are done being a landlord. Fair, and common. Worth separating the asset from the management before you sell the asset, because third-party management is cheaper than a capital gain event.

You are retiring or exiting the business. If the real estate and the operating company are both in play, the sequence matters enormously and the two are frequently worth more apart than together. That is its own conversation: selling a business that owns its building.

Someone made you an offer. An unsolicited offer is information, not an event. It tells you somebody wants it. It does not tell you what it is worth, and the first number is rarely the best one available. I have written about what to do when a developer approaches you.

The building no longer fits. Outgrown it, shrunk out of it, wrong configuration now. Sometimes the answer is a sale, sometimes a relocation with the building sold behind you, sometimes just a better use of the space you have.

Estate, partnership or divorce. Here the timeline is usually set by something other than the market, and the job is getting the best result inside a constraint rather than picking the moment.

Three of those six — the capital, the exit, the offer — can end somewhere other than a sale. That is not me talking you out of business. It is the reason I ask why before I ask what.

What I actually look at, in order

When you send me an address, this is the sequence. It takes a couple of days, not a couple of weeks.

First, the record. Building area, land area, year built, use classification, zoning, assessed value, last recorded sale and what it was. All public, all verifiable, and it is the frame everything else sits in.

Second, comparable sales. Not everything nearby — buildings a buyer would genuinely weigh against yours, which means similar use, similar size band, similar vintage, similar submarket. Our comp set filters out multi-parcel assemblages, because one portfolio trade can otherwise drag a small market's median somewhere it has no business being.

Third, what makes yours different. Condition, clear height and power if it is industrial, parking ratio, frontage and visibility if it is retail, and the single biggest one on a leased asset: the income. A building with three years left on a below-market lease and a building with ten years at market are not the same asset even if the walls are identical.

Fourth, who would actually buy it. Owner-user, private investor, institution, or a developer buying land with a building in the way. Those four pay differently for the same property, and on a building where the land is worth more than the improvements the answer can differ by a lot.

Fifth, the range and the reasoning. You get both. If the range is wide I will tell you why it is wide, because that is usually the most actionable part.

Then you decide what to do, including nothing. A broker opinion of value is free and it is not a listing agreement.

Common questions

What does a broker opinion of value cost?

Nothing, and it does not come attached to a listing agreement. You get a supported range and the comparable sales it is built on. If the read is that you should hold, that is what the document will say.

How is a BOV different from an appraisal?

An appraisal is a licensed, regulated work product usually ordered by a lender and paid for by you. A broker opinion of value is a broker's supported estimate of what a property would bring in the current market. It is faster and free, but it is not a substitute for an appraisal where one is formally required.

You represent tenants. Why would I use you to sell?

Because of what that means structurally. I do not broker space on behalf of landlords, so I am not managing a relationship with the same ownership and investor community that will bid on your building. There is no other party in the transaction I need to keep happy for the next deal. That is the same reason tenants use me, pointed in the other direction.

What do you need from me to start?

The address, and permission to pull the county record. That is enough for a first read. Anything about leases, condition or your timing makes it sharper, but none of it is needed to get the conversation started.

Which markets do you cover?

Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties — office, retail, industrial and flex. There is recorded sale data on this site for 67 municipalities across the three.