Commercial Real Estate Acquisitions and Investment Sales

Maven CRE advises buyers and sellers on commercial property across Minneapolis and St. Paul. Mike Finkelstein has completed more than $50 million in transactions since 1992, and the firm has been acquiring and repositioning its own buildings since 2015.

We underwrite the way we underwrite our own deals

The difference between a broker and an owner-operator shows up in the underwriting. We look at a building the way we would if we were signing the note ourselves: a realistic rent roll, an honest capital reserve, and the deferred maintenance nobody put in the offering memorandum. That is less fun to hear before closing and considerably more fun to have heard afterward.

What we advise on

• Acquisition search and off-market sourcing
• Disposition strategy, pricing and marketing
• Financial analysis, underwriting and hold-versus-sell modeling
• Investment advisory for owners weighing a repositioning against a sale
• Broker opinions of value
• 1031 exchange coordination alongside your tax and legal advisors

Where we are strongest

Small to mid-size commercial assets in Minneapolis and St. Paul: retail, office, mixed-use and adaptive reuse candidates. We are not the right firm for a downtown tower. We are the right firm for a 20,000 square foot building in a neighborhood where we can name every tenant on the block.

What we look for in an acquisition

Most commercial real estate acquisitions fail in the assumptions, not the arithmetic. A rent roll that looks stable hides three leases expiring in the same quarter. A cap rate that looks generous reflects deferred maintenance nobody priced. We underwrite acquisitions the way we underwrite our own: walking the building, reading every lease, and pricing the capital plan before the offer rather than after the inspection period opens.

Property acquisitions for owner-operators

If you intend to hold and operate rather than flip, the questions change. Property acquisitions for operators turn on whether the building can be managed profitably at scale, whether the tenant mix survives a downturn, and whether the mechanical systems have another decade in them. We have made those calls on our own balance sheet, and we have been wrong often enough to know where the traps sit.

Commercial property for sale in Minneapolis and St. Paul

Not everything worth buying is listed. We see off-market commercial property for sale in Minneapolis through the same network that brings us our own deals — owners winding down, partnerships splitting, buildings needing work the current owner will not do. If you are looking for commercial real estate for sale in Minneapolis at a basis that makes sense, that network is worth more than any listing platform.

On the sell side the work runs in reverse: making a building legible to a buyer before it reaches the market. That means a clean rent roll, a documented capital history, estoppels gathered early, and a realistic view of what a lender will underwrite. Deals collapse in diligence far more often than they collapse on price, and most of what kills them was knowable in advance.

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