Residential and commercial investment properties are bought by people who read. The buyer’s offer, and more importantly the buyer’s willingness to hold that offer through conditions, depends on how quickly and completely you can answer questions.
Missing documents do not usually kill a sale. They do something more expensive: they create delay, delay creates doubt, and doubt creates a price reduction request in the last week of conditions.
The core package
- Two to three years of income and expense records. Financial statements if you have them, or a clean annual summary reconciled to bank deposits.
- Current rent roll. Per unit: tenant, rent, lease start and expiry, deposit held, arrears position.
- Copies of every lease, including renewals, amendments and any side agreements. A verbal arrangement a previous manager made is still an arrangement.
- Property tax assessment and the last two notices.
- Utility histories for anything the landlord pays.
- Insurance policy and claims history.
- Certificate of title and copies of anything registered against it.
- Real property report or survey, with compliance, if one exists.
The capital file
A schedule of every significant capital item: what was done, when, by whom, and what it cost. Roof, boiler and furnaces, windows, electrical, plumbing stacks, parking surface, building envelope.
This file does two jobs. It tells a buyer what they will not have to spend in the next five years, which supports the price. And it demonstrates that the building has been run deliberately rather than reactively, which supports everything else you say.
Service contracts and operations
Snow removal, landscaping, elevator, fire and life safety inspections, pest control, waste. Note which contracts transfer, which have notice periods, and which the buyer would need to replace on possession.
Fire and life safety records matter more than sellers expect. A buyer’s lender and insurer will both ask.
For commercial property, add
Operating cost reconciliations for the last three years, the current year’s budget, a stacking plan or site plan showing demised areas and measurement, zoning confirmation, and any environmental reports. Estoppel certificates from tenants confirming rent, term and deposits are standard on larger assets and worth obtaining early.
Handle the problems before the buyer finds them
If there are below-market leases, arrears, a disputed area measurement, or deferred maintenance an inspector will flag, the choice is to fix it, or to disclose it and price for it. The one approach that reliably costs money is letting it surface in week three of conditions.
Buyers are not unreasonable about known issues. They are unreasonable about surprises, because a surprise makes them wonder what else they have not been told.
What this is worth
A complete package shortens the conditional period, narrows the range of things a buyer can renegotiate, and widens the pool of buyers who can actually finance the purchase — because their lender is working from real documents rather than estimates.
Talk it through with Rimrock
Rimrock Sales & Leasing works with owners, investors and tenants across Calgary, Edmonton and Lethbridge. Get in touch or call 403-910-4611.