KEYZ Commercial Real Estate
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Investor / Developer
LA to San Diego, and the Inland Empire
Retail · Industrial · Office · Flex

Anyone can send you a
listing. We'll tell you
which ones not to buy.

Acquisition, disposition and repositioning for investors and developers across Southern California. We underwrite before we pitch, we bring the off-market inventory the portals never see, and we say no out loud when the numbers don’t work.

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Three things worth knowing before you talk to anyone

This page is for private capital and small-to-mid developers: the 1031 buyer with 40 days left, the family office rolling out of a tired retail strip, the operator who wants to own the building instead of renting it, the developer looking at a functionally obsolete office box on land that wants to be a warehouse.

You already know what a cap rate is. What you actually need is inventory you haven’t seen, underwriting that isn’t decorated, and a broker who picks up the phone on a Saturday when the seller’s attorney sends a redline.

  • 1031 exchange buyers on a clock
  • Private capital and family offices, $1M–$25M
  • Owner-users who want the real estate, not the lease
  • Developers hunting land, teardowns and change-of-use plays
  • Portfolio owners repositioning or trimming
  • Out-of-state capital that needs boots in Southern California
If you are buying a building for your own business to occupy, the buyer representation page is the better fit.
Why deals die

Five ways an acquisition goes sideways

01

You only saw what was public

By the time an asset is on LoopNet with a price, it has been shopped. The deals worth owning move between people who talk to each other. If your broker isn’t calling owners who never listed, you are shopping retail.

02

The rent roll was a story, not a fact

Month-to-month tenants presented as stabilized. Percentage rent counted as base. A guarantor who dissolved two years ago. Estoppels exist for a reason and most buyers order them too late to renegotiate.

03

The use wasn't actually allowed

Zoning permits it. The city’s conditional use process, parking ratio and the neighbours do not. Finding this out in escrow costs you the deposit or the deal.

04

The debt didn't show up

A term sheet is not a commitment. Rate moves, DSCR shortfalls and a lender who discovers deferred maintenance at week five will blow a 45-day close.

05

Nobody modelled the exit

You bought the going-in yield and never asked who buys it from you in year seven, at what cap, with what tenant credit. That’s not investing, that’s collecting.

What we actually do

Sourcing, underwriting, debt and the exit

01

Off-market sourcing

Direct owner outreach built from our
proprietary research database plus CoStar. We call owners who never listed, in the submarkets and size bands you specify.

02

Underwriting review

Rent roll and CAM reconciliation, lease
abstracting, expense normalisation, and a sale & lease comp set from actual closed transactions, not asking prices.

03

Broker Opinion of Value

Complimentary BOV with the reasoning attached, not just a number. Third-party certified appraisal coordinated when the
lender requires one.

04

Debt through KEYZ Capital

Conventional, SBA 504 and 7(a), bridge, refinance and working capital through our in-house finance desk. Quoted early, so financing isn’t a surprise in week five.

05

1031 exchange coordination

Identification strategy, back-up properties, and QI coordination. We work the 45-day list backwards from the deals that will actually close, not the ones that look good on paper.

06

Disposition & marketing

When you sell: professional photography, video, Matterport 3D, drone, a dedicated property website and paid placement across CoStar, LoopNet and Crexi to force a competitive bid.

We will tell you the deal is bad. Our founder has talked clients out of deals on more than one occasion. A broker who agrees with every offer you want to make is a broker being paid to agree with you.
Development & repositioning

Industrial is eating office. We can show you where.

Across Southern California, functionally obsolete office product is being taken down for warehouse and last-mile distribution. The land basis works, the tenant demand is there, and the power requirements are completely different from what the existing building was built for.

We help developers find those sites, model the change-of-use, and pressure-test what the city will actually approve before you tie up capital.

Read our analysis

Site identification

Land, teardowns and underperforming assets in the corridors where demand is moving.

Entitlement reality check

Zoning, CUP exposure, parking, and how long the jurisdiction actually takes.

Power and infrastructure

Warehouse and office electrical specs differ by an order of magnitude. We flag it before you underwrite it.

Pre-leasing strategy

Our tenant rep and landlord teams start sourcing occupiers before the shell is finished.

Process

From buy box to close

01

Buy box call

Asset type, size band, submarkets, return threshold, debt appetite, timeline. Thirty minutes, no deck.

02

Inventory sweep

Listed, quietly available and never-listed. You get one consolidated list, not a forwarded email chain.

03

Underwrite the short list

We model the two or three that survive and tell you what’s wrong with each.

04

LOI and negotiation

Price, deposit structure, due diligence period, extensions, seller credits and who pays for what.

05

Due diligence

Estoppels, service contracts, PCA and Phase I coordination, zoning verification, CAM audit.

06

Due diligence

Estoppels, service contracts, PCA and Phase I coordination, zoning verification, CAM audit.

07

Close and hand off

Estoppels, service contracts, PCA and Phase I coordination, zoning verification, CAM audit.

Questions we get asked

Straight answers

What size deals do you work on?

Most of our investment work sits between $1M and $25M across retail, industrial, office and flex. We will look at smaller if it’s a strategic fit and larger if we can bring the right capital relationships to it.

Then the first question isn’t whether to switch, it’s whether the current arrangement is working. Ask for two numbers: how many enquiries the space has had in the last ninety days, and how many of those were toured. If nobody can produce them, the space isn’t being marketed, it’s being listed.

If you’re under an exclusive listing agreement we won’t approach you about that building until it expires, and we’ll tell you the date. If you’re not, or if it’s close, we’ll show you what we’d do differently and you can decide. No obligation and no pressure.

Then the first question isn’t whether to switch, it’s whether the current arrangement is working. Ask for two numbers: how many enquiries the space has had in the last ninety days, and how many of those were toured. If nobody can produce them, the space isn’t being marketed, it’s being listed.

If you’re under an exclusive listing agreement we won’t approach you about that building until it expires, and we’ll tell you the date. If you’re not, or if it’s close, we’ll show you what we’d do differently and you can decide. No obligation and no pressure.

Yes, and at the start rather than after nine months of silence. An agent who agrees with whatever number you say is an agent planning to be unemployed in six months.

You’ll get a written rent opinion with the reasoning behind it: what comparable space nearby actually leased for, not what it was asked for, and what the concessions and TI packages in those deals looked like. If your number is optimistic you’ll hear it, with the evidence. If it’s low, you’ll hear that too, because five years of below-market income also damages the value of the building. No obligation and no listing agreement required.

Same machine, different outcome. Full media, an offering memorandum, outreach to our database and the investment brokerage community, and a stated offer deadline so buyers bid against each other rather than against you.

Start with a Broker Opinion of Value: our number and the reasoning that produced it, weighing recent sales, the income the property throws off, replacement cost and what buyers are currently paying in your submarket. Free and no obligation.

One thing we’ll raise before you commit: if you’re selling to free up cash rather than to exit, a refinance or cash-out may get you there while you keep the asset and the income. We’ll show you both sets of numbers. Losing a listing to a refinance is a good outcome if it was the right one for you.

Before a lease is signed, not after. We ask for the entity and who’s actually behind it, two to three years of tax returns and recent bank statements, a credit report on the entity and the guarantor, trade and prior-landlord references, and the business plan for the space.

Then we look at the things that don’t show up on a credit report: whether the use is permitted and what the permitting timeline looks like, whether the rent is a sane percentage of what the business realistically does, whether the guaranty is personal or corporate and worth anything if it’s corporate, and how much of your capital the build-out asks you to put at risk.

You see the file and the recommendation, including our reservations. You sign the lease, so you make the call.

Then it’s a financing problem being mistaken for a leasing problem. The TI allowance is often what decides which building a tenant picks, and losing a deal over it is expensive twice: you lose the tenant, and the space goes back on the market stale.

KEYZ Capital, our capital division, arranges construction, bridge and refinance debt, so that conversation happens here rather than being handed off. We’ll also model whether the improvement is worth funding at all — some build-outs raise what the building is worth to the next tenant, and some are a write-off the day that tenant leaves. Those are different decisions and should be priced differently in the deal.

You’ll know why long before it becomes a surprise. You get the enquiry and tour numbers whether they’re good or not, and where an offer sits against comparable deals nearby, so a slow month gets diagnosed instead of explained away.

There are only a few reasons space sits: nobody knows it’s available, the price is wrong, the capital isn’t there for the build-out, or the market has genuinely moved. Each of those has a different fix, and we’ll tell you which one you have. If the answer is the price, we’ll say so and recommend the reset. If it’s the market and there’s nothing to be done, we’ll say that too — and we’ll show you what the sale or refinance numbers look like instead.

Proof

The deals we talked a client out of

5 out of 5 star rating

He’s helped me through numerous deals and I’ve seen him provide the same exceptional service for dozens of my friends and business associates. It’s truly a pleasure to work with him because I know he always has my best interests in mind. In fact, he’s actually steered me away from a couple of deals that would have put considerable money in his pocket but would have been bad for me. That kind of integrity is rare these days.

Jeremy Knauff · Google, 5 stars

There is no transaction to point at here, which is the point. The deals worth telling you about on this page are the ones that did not happen.
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Tell us what you're hunting.

Send the buy box. We’ll come back within one business day with what’s available, what’s quietly available, and what we’d talk you out of.

Prefer to talk?

1-888-KEYZ-101

See current listings

Already have a deal on the table?

Send us the OM and the rent roll. We’ll read it and tell you what the seller left out.
No obligation, no listing pitch.

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1-888-KEYZ-101
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