Lessons Learned From a Decade of Deal Sourcing in the Northeast

TLDR: relationships determine your success in acquisitions.

What is acquisitions?

I think of acquisitions as being a broker, but harder. In brokerage, you can sell a property to many buyers; in acquisitions there is only one.

You also need to understand the actual business plan - development, value-add repositioning, etc. - not just sales, no matter how specialized or siloed your role is. Unlike brokerage, the job doesn't end when the deal closes. You have to think about whether the deal can be executed on and turn a profit and that requires a different skill set than sourcing or negotiating the transaction alone.

Finally, there are different versions of the role. Some run high-volume, automated strategies – mass mailers, texts, cold calls at scale. My focus, and the focus of this article, is on high-value, high-touch point relationship-building and deal sourcing.

Why I chose acquisitions

I started my career on a large investment sales team as an analyst, then moved to the principal side and tried a few different roles – project management, asset management and acquisitions.

I found that acquisitions checked every box that was important to me: I’m good at it, I enjoy it, people will pay me for it, and the compensation structure fits how I’m wired – stability with upside, where my effort (generally) correlates directly to the outcome.

Why development specifically, rather than existing buildings? It’s more fun. While more stressful and difficult (entitlements in the Northeast can be truly insane), I get through it by telling myself I’m playing a small part in solving the housing crisis. Essentially God’s work - you’re welcome, everyone. This might change one day, but for now I’ll take interesting over easy.

Where deals come from

I have always experienced deal flow fall into three buckets.

Brokers. Widely marketed email blast deals as well as quietly marketed deals where the goal is to be the  “first” call, or on the “short list”. While more competitive, brokered deals typically mean a motivated seller, which has considerable value when taking opportunity cost into consideration.

Off-market / direct. Less reliable and far more time-consuming, but you don’t have to compete – and cold calling is fun! Sometimes (I have only received a death threat once). One site I sourced in suburban New York started as a cold call. I built a relationship and tracked the owner for years before it came together. We paid about $55K/unit for the land compared to nearby comps at $65–90K/unit. That spread makes this strategy worth it.

Referrals. The network effect. The deal that comes from the architect, engineer, land use attorney, economic development person, title folk, subs, competitors passing along something that doesn’t fit their box, etc. My favorite example of a referral source was a porter at a hotel. My most valuable referral source is an architect who regularly shares his list of dead yield studies from other clients and asks if any would work for me.

What ties all three together? Being someone people think of. Likeability drives top-of-mind, and top-of-mind drives the real first call.

My informal test for whether you’ve gotten there in a relationship is when you get invited to hang out nonprofessionally (the gym, a concert, etc.) The pinnacle? Their wedding.

My informal way of knowing I'm performing my job at the highest level: there are no deals I see hit the press for approvals that I hadn't already seen.

How exactly do I execute on each of the strategies above? I have a step-by-step guide that you can access as a member of DealNav or Best Ever CRE’s Inner Circle, or if you just shoot me an email, here! 

How to stay top of mind

One way is to follow up until you (or they) die. Which I do via the “reminders” function in my CRM. I make the follow up calls and emails as personal as possible, so I become more memorable vs. an automated generic poke.

Other ways include attending industry events, hosting events, engaging with the press, and creating a personal brand on social media that people can follow.

My theory is that the first call by the seller / broker is always to the first person that comes to mind – not necessarily the most qualified, and that’s determined by, you guessed it, the quality of your relationship!

Tools are infrastructure, not strategy (yet?)

I have not found any technology that finds new, good deals. There are tools that show you listed deals from brokers you should already know. There is also software – specifically for land – that can find you parcels that fit your criteria, but the challenge here is that there will never be a filter for true seller motivation such as “building with a tenant that broke their lease last week” or “spouse just died” or “competitor dropped their contract yesterday”.

Tools can surface or resurface deals at best, but taking it to the next level entails your relationship with owners and brokers and consultants.

The one tool I do consider essential is a single source of truth for both deals and contacts. As you source across brokers, direct outreach, referrals, software, etc., the value compounds when all the intel is connected in one place. As public parcel and building data gets democratized, it loses its edge; but proprietary information, gathered through relationships, organized simply and visually so you can manipulate and leverage it, is what matters most.

Reputation is everything.

My reputation, both personally and professionally, has always been important to me. But obsessing over it and pouring time and energy into it is something I learned from a past employer - and watched pay off firsthand.

Half his deal flow came from widely marketed deals - not because he’d said the biggest number, but because of his reputation. Brokers sold him to their clients like this: if surety of closing and no retrading matter to you, this is your guy.

It's something I remind myself regularly. Being top of mind is, of course, always the goal, but being top of mind is most productive when it's for the right reasons. 

How to amplify the work

You can extend yourself in many ways, AI being the obvious one, but also through analysts, interns, and virtual assistants, or a combination of them all.

But the thing that lands deals can’t be delegated. The one-on-one relationship work stays with you and is the only way to create and build a flywheel effect.

The other obvious way to amplify is social media. I started an X account with 20 followers where I strictly chirp/complain about real estate and while it’s only grown to 10,000 in the last several years, I have received hundreds of inbound leads for my Saas platform DealNav as well as dozens of multifamily development site leads due to its existence. Well is well worth the brain rot it may be inducing.

The part nobody really talks about

Not everyone you need to have a relationship with is someone you’d choose to have a relationship with. But that’s the job – anyone who could be a source of deal flow should like you and be thinking of you. Somewhere early on in life I picked up the habit of digging up something I genuinely find interesting in a person – however pleasant or unpleasant they are – and then letting them talk about it. People like talking about themselves.

Second - you don't need to play golf to do deals. Believe it or not, not everyone in the industry plays, and the people who do likely have other hobbies you can relate to. Skipping golf is arguably the better use of your time. Instead of spending five hours sweating and angry with the same three people, you could be going deeper (one-on-ones) or wider (events) in that same window of time.

Lessons learned

Get out there, and keep showing up. Go to the event. Set up that meeting with the broker. It’s really just a numbers game and the work compounds through both the relationships built and the deals tracked.

Start on social media sooner, and lose the shame. “It’s not who you know – it’s who knows you.” (BK I think). I’m still working on this one myself. Most recently with an embarrassing amount of podcasts I’ve invited myself onto. But it works – I’ve received development sites and DealNav customers from listeners!

A “no” is rarely permanent, and timing is everything. Follow up and stay top of mind. Eventually you will win.

Know your criteria. Being disciplined and spending time only with brokers that sell your product or on opportunities that fit your box is a superpower when your most valuable resource is time.

Close

Consistency, discipline, and clarity all matter. But above all of them: relationships.

I’ve spent 10 of my 15 year career in acquisitions – mostly buying land for ground-up multifamily development in the Northeast. As I write this, I have five sites under contract totaling 1,613 units across 60-plus acres and roughly $700 million in total development costs. How many deals did I look at to find and win those five? About 425. Where did they come from? Social media DM’s, competitor relationships, and broker relationships.

You may have noticed I didn’t talk about any of these deals closing. You’re right – that’s next.

Patrick Carino is a Vice President of Development at The NRP Group, where he focuses on market-rate multifamily development across New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. He previously worked for a regional multifamily and hotel developer and as a member of an institutional sales brokerage team. He also built DealNav, a simple and affordable map-based CRM for real estate professionals to track dealflow.

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