Our Services
Advisory Services
Overview
Strategic Real Estate Guidance
Flake & Company advises clients with the perspective of seasoned real estate owners and investors. Our role is to help buyers and landlords evaluate opportunities, mitigate risk, and make informed decisions that support long-term investment performance.
Every recommendation is approached as if the property or investment were our own—ensuring thoughtful analysis, strategic positioning, and disciplined decision-making.
Services We Offer
Specialized Advisory Expertise
Appeals of Property Tax Assessments
Assistance with Investment Due Diligence Process
We apply our long-term steps of evaluating a property. It is MUCH more that considering the income stream from the previous year and just applying a “market cap rate.” This is exactly what gets landlords into trouble. We look at the much bigger picture of deferred maintenance, rollover in tenancy that requires leasing commissions and improvement allowances, along with months of vacancy, long-term viability of that location and much more!
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Building Area Determination
Fully accounting for all building areas is essential to professional management and maintenance of commercial buildings. Different elements, such as janitorial expenses, of managing a property rely on determining different areas of the property. Benchmarks of key performance indicators in utility usage and other operating costs are commonly expressed on a per square foot basis. To understand one properties performance compared to another relies on properly measuring and understanding building areas. Lease agreements are often structured with pass-through of certain, or all, property expenses. Proper allocation of expenses relies on the accounting of all floor areas and the expression of those areas consistent with the floor areas of the leases. Various components in the accounting of floor areas include: Gross Area, Rentable Area, Useable Area, Net Area, Cleanable Area, and Gross Leasable Area. The Rentable / Useable Ratio expresses the building’s efficiency of the floor area utilization and factors into the leasing strategy. It is integral to the leasing process to understand how a building’s R/U ratio, or the property’s common area maintenance costs, compare to competing properties. Our team has decades of experience and understanding all facets of building area accounting.
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Lease Structuring
Like assistance with due diligence process, lease structuring is not simple. What is the investors time horizon for the investor? Does the investor want to provide a tenant improvement allowance and how much? Most important is to underwrite the tenant and creditworthiness. If the tenant is a proven operator who is a draw to the building overall, and / or has a strong balance sheet, there will be different consideration. In today’s market, it not always possible to get both.
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Litigation Support For Property Value
Between Jeff Yates as a licensed instructor and 30 plus years of experience, and Jessica Dearnley with her c.v, we can provide litigation support that is backed by multiple credentials. There is no one in our market with this level of backgrounds.
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Receivership Services
Loans that default normally go through a period of a Court Appointed Receivership where a neutral third party will manage and lease the property while the Borrower and Lender are in court. We have had decades of Receivership experience. It is a balance of asset preservation, managing cash, while also leasing the property so it is not a “zombie” asset and performing.
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Refinancing Services
Most real estate is financed through some type of debt. Commercial real estate loans almost always have amortizations periods that do not match up to when the loan balloons and this creates the need for the loan to be re-financed. A typical real estate loan would amortize over twenty years but only have a rate that was fixed for five years. At the end of that period (5 years) the loan would need to be refinanced. Our firm has long-standing relationships with many lenders, but also individually we have worked in credit analysis and can see through the potential Lender’s lens. Today, there are many forms of real estate debt to consider from private credit to conventional to CMBS loans. While it is essential to engage an attorney who is an expert in loan documents, attorneys do not necessarily the operational and administrative aspects of a loan. There are many details when financing to consider that can make a property extremely challenging to manage. These details must be worked out during the negotiations.
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Development Management
Our team has decades of experience in project management. Ideally, we are involved from the very start in assisting with site selection and a market survey to determine building size. We will handle all aspects from interviewing and engaging architects to the general contractors and making sure the project comes in on time and on (or under!) budget. We have also come in at a later point, to assist in value-engineering and assisting with reducing the cost, changing the quality or other aspects of the project.
Our Approach
Owner-Focused Advisory
Our asset management experience spans a wide range of property types, including medical office buildings, luxury retail developments, office towers, and large retail centers. This breadth of experience allows our team to develop strategies tailored to each property’s market, tenant base, and investment objectives.
Let's Talk
Discuss Your Real Estate Strategy
Whether you’re assessing property value, refinancing an investment, or managing development opportunities, our team provides the insight and experience needed to guide every step.
