he's an appraiser... or more accurately, he owns an appraisal firm.
Last year, after learning about all the condo conversions going on in Bham, and finding that the Commerce Building was for sale, I decided I wanted to try to get involved in someway. Now since I have no money or real estate experience, I couldn't just walk into a bank and say, "I need $8,000,000 to fix up this old building over here", so I had to rely on my 'connections'.
So I called one of my high school buddies (all the $$ my parents spent to send me to a private school finally paying off
) who I knew was an appraiser. My questions to him were going to be, how do you do an appraisal with nothing to compare it to (the Commerce conversion would work at $200/ft but not at $150), and do you know anybody who'd be interested in pursuing something like this?
Well, it turns out he was interested. We pursued the Commerce building, I drew up proposals, got pro forma and renter info, did the leg work, while he pointed me in the right directions. Unfortunately, by the time he got serious, the building was under contract. The buyers strung it out to the end of the contract period (we were asked to prepare a new offer), but finally got it last month.
So now we're looking for something new. I did leg work again, tracked down properties, got prices, contacts etc... We settled on a project idea, but he's tied up with his current business stuff for a couple of months, and I've hit the end of my expertise (which was none to begin with).
Which kills me. Mtgy is a small market. I don't think it could support more than 100-150 condo's/apts downtown right now. But there is very little out there. My thoughts are that somebody is going to hit it big with the first large offering, and then the market will glut in a big ole hurry.
keep your fingers crossed.