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Shoutout to the run down laundromat on 5th that taught me cap rates can lie
Everyone in my local investing group told me to pass on this 2,800 sq ft laundromat because the seller wanted $385k and the place looked rough. I sat in the parking lot for three Saturdays just counting cars and watching people walk in with their own soap, and the numbers on paper didn't match what I was seeing at all. Turned out the seller was reporting income from 2019 and the coin machines alone were pulling close to $4,100 a month, which nobody bothered to check because the building looked tired. I put in an offer at $340k with the real deposit and closed in 41 days, and the place has run itself since. So maybe stop trusting the pro forma and go sit in the parking lot, or am I the only one who thinks the numbers people care about are usually the wrong ones?
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oliviabennett1mo ago
What made you pick three Saturdays specifically, like was that just a gut thing or did you already know weekends would show the real traffic? I'm asking because I've done the parking lot thing before and almost got fooled, the Saturday crowd was solid but when I went back on a random Tuesday it was dead quiet, so the weekday numbers were way uglier than what I saw on my first visit. Did you go back on slower days too or was the coin machine revenue enough to tell you the seller was just lazy with his books? Also curious how you got him to hand over the actual machine counts, since most sellers I've dealt with guard that stuff like it's a state secret.
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