We just went under contract to buy a reasonably large non-rent control building in an area we like.
The price isn’t a steal by any means, but it’s fair.
The reason is that there was no auction.
The broker, a reader of this blog, has been managing the building for the seller for a long time. When the seller decided he wanted to sell quickly to someone who would pay cash and not screw around, the broker reached out to me.
We haven’t inspected yet, so there’s no guarantee that this deal will go through. But I expect it will.
And the seller will get his money, we’ll get a great new project, and the broker will make probably ~$50-100k for about 10 hours of work, because he knew the right guy to call.