How to Find Off-Market Commercial Properties to List

The most valuable commercial real estate deals rarely come from listing platforms. By the time a property shows up on CoStar or LoopNet, you're competing against every other broker in the market. Off-market deals are where the real advantage lives: less competition, more flexible negotiation, and the opportunity to position yourself as the broker who made the deal happen rather than just the one who showed up.

Finding off-market commercial properties isn't about luck or connections you were born with. It's a systematic process. This guide breaks down the specific approaches that generate off-market deal flow consistently.

Why Owners Sell Off-Market

Understanding why an owner would consider an off-market transaction helps you target the right people with the right message. Owners pursue off-market sales for several reasons:

• Privacy: They don't want tenants, employees, lenders, or competitors to know they're considering a sale.
• Simplicity: A publicized listing process is time-consuming and disruptive. If the right buyer can be found without the full marketing campaign, many owners prefer it.
• Speed: A direct buyer-seller connection can move significantly faster than a broad marketing process.
• Relationship: Some owners would rather sell to someone they trust than run a process that attracts unknown buyers.

Your job is to identify owners who might have any of these motivations and be present when they're ready to act.

Start With Public Records

County assessor and recorder records are the foundation of off-market prospecting. They're public, they're comprehensive, and most of your competitors don't use them systematically. Here's what to look for:

Long Hold Periods

Filter for properties that haven't transacted in 10 or more years. Long-tenured owners are statistically more likely to be approaching a decision point - whether due to age, estate planning, changing financial needs, or simple fatigue with the management burden. In most counties, this data is accessible through the assessor's website or a paid data provider like ATTOM or CoreLogic.

Out-of-State or Out-of-Area Ownership

Owners who don't live near their property often have a weaker attachment to it and fewer local ties that might influence their decision-making. Out-of-area owners are also more likely to be underinformed about current market conditions - which means they may not know the market has moved in a way that makes this an excellent time to sell. The assessor's mailing address for property tax bills will show you where the owner receives correspondence.

LLC and Trust Ownership

Properties held in LLCs often involve multiple partners or members. Partnership dynamics change over time - partners die, retire, disagree, or need liquidity. Trust-held properties often signal estate situations or older ownership. Neither guarantees a motivated seller, but both are worth investigating as higher-probability targets than a single individual who recently purchased the property.

Distress Signals

Notice of Default filings, code violations, delinquent property tax records, and lis pendens filings are all public records that signal potential motivation. Owners in any of these situations may prefer a clean, direct sale to a prolonged workout process. Approach these situations carefully - the goal is to offer a genuine solution, not to exploit someone's difficulty.

Use Lease Expiration Data

Single-tenant properties approaching lease expiration are one of the highest-conviction off-market listing opportunities. When the anchor tenant's lease expires in 12 to 24 months, the owner faces a clear decision: negotiate a renewal, find a replacement tenant, or sell. Many owners would rather sell than go through the uncertainty of re-tenanting.

CoStar tracks lease expiration data for properties in their database. Build a filter for single-tenant assets in your target property types and submarkets with leases expiring in the next 12 to 24 months. Reach out to owners with a message that acknowledges the lease expiration and offers to discuss options - including the sale option they may not have fully explored.

This approach works because it's timely. You're not cold-calling with a generic pitch. You're reaching out at the exact moment the owner has a real decision to make.

Network With the Right Professionals

Off-market deals often surface through intermediaries who have early visibility into an owner's situation. Build genuine relationships with:

Property Managers

Property managers know which owners are frustrated with their assets, which buildings have chronic vacancy or maintenance issues, and which landlords have been discussing exit strategies informally. A property manager who trusts you will refer clients when the timing is right - not because you asked once, but because you've invested in the relationship over time.

Commercial Lenders and Bankers

Lenders often have early visibility into owners who need to refinance, sell to cover a maturing loan, or exit because they can't service their debt. Relationship bankers who cover commercial real estate clients are valuable referral partners. They can't always share client details, but they can facilitate introductions when a client is actively looking for options.

CRE Attorneys

Estate attorneys, divorce attorneys, and business attorneys frequently have clients with real estate assets that need to be disposed of. The disposition decision is often driven by a life event the attorney is managing - a probate, a divorce settlement, a business sale. Building relationships with attorneys who regularly deal with these situations creates a steady source of motivated seller referrals.

Accountants and CPAs

Tax events - particularly 1031 exchange deadlines and year-end planning - often drive real estate decisions. A CPA who specializes in real estate clients may have investors who need to sell and redeploy capital on a specific timeline. Accountants who understand what you can do for their clients will refer them when the tax situation creates urgency.

Direct Owner Outreach: The Systematic Approach

Once you've built your target list from public records and identified the owners with the highest potential motivation, you need a consistent system for reaching them. One cold email followed by silence is not a system. Here's what works:

Initial Contact

Lead with value, not a pitch. Your first message to an owner should offer something useful - a recent comp, a market update specific to their submarket, or an observation about a trend that affects their asset. Avoid asking for anything in the first message beyond permission to share more information or have a brief conversation.

Multi-Touch Follow-Up

Most owners will not respond to your first outreach, even if they read it. This is normal and doesn't mean they're not interested. A well-timed follow-up sequence over 30 to 90 days - alternating between email, phone, and sometimes direct mail for higher-value targets - significantly increases conversion rates. Each touchpoint should add new information or a new reason to talk, not just repeat "just following up."

Stay in Long-Term Contact

Many off-market deals come from owners who were contacted 6 to 18 months before they were ready to move. A broker who sent three emails and gave up won't get that call. A broker who sent a quarterly market update for two years, always with relevant information and never with high-pressure sales tactics, becomes the natural first call when the owner's timing changes.

Off-market deals don't find you. You find them, and then you stay present until the timing is right for the owner.

Keep Records and Work the Pipeline

Off-market prospecting is a long game. You need a system for tracking which owners you've contacted, when you last reached out, what you discussed, and what signals they've given about their timeline. A spreadsheet works at low volume. At any meaningful scale, you need a CRM or outreach platform that manages the tracking automatically.

The brokers who generate the most off-market deal flow aren't the ones with the best single pitch. They're the ones who maintain the most consistent presence with the most owners over the longest period of time. That requires a system, not heroic individual effort.

MogulAim was built specifically for this workflow - helping CRE brokers build targeted owner lists, run personalized outreach sequences, and track engagement across hundreds of contacts simultaneously. If off-market prospecting is a priority for your business, having a platform that handles the administrative layer makes it possible to run the process at scale without it consuming all of your time.

Off-market deals are available in every market, in every cycle. The brokers who find them aren't lucky. They're systematic.