Commercial real estate
The building is a second asset, and it has its own buyer
Commercial property across Western Pennsylvania — valued on its own terms, then listed and sold by a broker who spent twenty years building them.
Commercial property across Western Pennsylvania — valued on its own terms, then listed and sold by a broker who spent twenty years building them.
An owner-occupied building is not part of the business. The company that runs inside it and the property it stands on sell to different people, on different terms, at different times — and valued as one they are almost always priced wrong. The error usually runs in the buyer’s favor.
The correction that moves most valuations is rent. A business operating out of a building its owner also owns typically pays itself nothing, so its profit is overstated by roughly what rent would have cost. Put the rent back in and the business figure falls — but the building now carries an income of its own. Nothing is lost. It just moves to the asset that actually earns it.
Both approaches are shown in full in the report, with the arithmetic printed, so a reader can follow every line to the one below it.
Square footage against recent closed sales of comparable commercial property in the same submarket, adjusted for condition, use and location.
The rent the space would command on the open market, less vacancy and management, then valued on the return an investor in that market expects.
Figures from a real report. In that case the two approaches landed within one percent of each other, and the concluded value for the building was $579,333 — set out beside the business figure rather than blended into it.
Owner representation on the listing and the sale — industrial, retail, office and mixed use across Allegheny, Beaver and Butler counties.
Representation on the other side of the table for owners and operators looking for space, or for the building their business has outgrown.
Where an owner is selling both, the two are valued separately and then taken to market as one conversation rather than two disconnected ones.
Sharon Scheidemantle spent the first half of her career in construction — drafting, then managing retail buildouts, then Vice President of Construction for a national chain’s Northeast division — before thirty years selling commercial property. When Scheidemantle Commercial says a roof is worth more than it costs, that is a former construction VP talking rather than a broker guessing. More about Ron and Sharon →
Start with the free range for your business, your building, or both — then decide whether you want the written opinion of value behind it.