A high cap rate is a warning, not a gift
The 7.25 cap that was really a countdown timer
Everybody at the table loved this one. 7.25 percent, single tenant, a clean-looking flyer. On yield alone it was the best thing in the market, and I could feel the room leaning in.
So I did the boring thing and read the lease.
Four years left. Not fifteen. Four.
The guarantee wasn't the national brand you'd recognize. It was a single-store LLC, basically a promise from one location's checking account. And the roof? Landlord's problem, which is a polite way of saying the buyer's problem. It was old.
That juicy 7.25 wasn't a yield. It was a countdown timer on a building you'd be re-tenanting and re-roofing yourself somewhere around year four.
What to take from it
A high cap rate isn't a bargain, it's the market whispering "there's a reason this is cheap." Your only job is to find the reason before you wire the money. Usually it's hiding in the term, the guarantee, or the capex.
More where this came from. Read the rest of the teardowns →