From a property perspective, we stress internally, externally, and to all parties we deal with that not all properties are created equal, for better or worse. With this thinking as foundational to each project, we put together detailed information on our properties so we have the ability to most effectively market our projects. Each property has positives and negatives – no property is perfect. Through an upfront understanding of each asset, we will know what attributes to highlight and just as importantly, prepare ourselves with educated responses and data to respond to any flaws with our marketed properties. We would rather know these issues upfront and be able to effectively respond to any prospect’s questions than to be unprepared, resulting in a potential loss of interest from a prospect. This difference is a key differentiator for us. First impressions are everything. We have seen countless transactions falter as representative brokers have been less than prepared to respond to basic questions. An example being the presence of environmental contamination on a property. An uneducated broker may simply agree with a prospect that an environmental issue exists, which opens up an endless amount of possibilities in terms of time, cost, and overall challenge for a prospect – resulting in a strong possibility the prospect becomes scared of “the unknown” and elects to walk from a transaction. In addition, a lack of education on this item would put our clients in a similarly difficult position. In this instance, we would be prepare before this conversation even arose with any prospective purchasers. We pride ourselves in not only knowing the issues exist, but also educating ourselves on any issues by taking the extra steps to know the cost, timing, and effort required to resolve any existing issues.

An example being: A recent transaction of ours saw a small soil contamination problem. We put ourselves ahead of the market by having a third party conduct a cursory review of the supposed contamination. The review concluded the contamination was a minor spill from a truck, resulting in a cost of $2,000 to remove soil in 2 weeks – an understandable and achievable item for any Buyer. By preparing ourselves for this, we salvaged many potential lost prospects while also saving time, money, and aggravation for the seller and any prospects.

Another example being a recent deferred maintenance issue we found during our initial property walk through. The subject property was in beautiful interior shape but began to show signs of water infiltration on the top floor – easily visible in the attic and beginning to show in the drywall on the ceiling of the top finished floor. We took the initiative to have the roof evaluated by three outside contractors who each provided a quote and roof condition feedback for our review. After receiving each document from all contracts, we held a call with all three so we could understand the depth of the problem, the cost of the issue, and the time associated with any necessary repairs. We quickly found out that all three parties stated we had an immediate problem that needed to be fixed or major issues would result as the water infiltration had a direct path to lower level foundational supports for the building. Our client was able to salvage this potential disastrous item through a $ 4,000 repair taking one week of work. If our team had not taken this initiative, the leak could have cost the client hundreds of thousands of dollars as well as major marketing issues as a prospective purchaser would have found the same issue but months later after damage had been done. In the case of this property, we successfully resolved the issue prior to bringing the property to market. This same property received 3 bids at asking price and closed with no inspection issues 60 days later. This example shows Yellowtail’s work ethic is second to none.