- Get a real number first. Everything after this step is built on it, and an automated estimate cannot produce one for industrial.
- Clear your paperwork before a buyer asks for it. Documents you cannot find turn into price reductions.
- Choose off-market or open market on purpose. Both work. Drifting into one by accident does not.
- Broward zoning is set by the city and not by the county, so the rules that govern your building depend on which municipality it sits in.
- Expect a retrade attempt during due diligence, and keep a second buyer warm until the deposit goes hard.
This guide is written for Broward. If your building is anywhere else in Florida, start with how to sell a warehouse in Florida, which covers the statewide process and how the buyer pool changes between markets, then come back here for the South Florida detail.
The seven steps
This is the sequence, and the order matters. Owners who start at step four, with a price in their head and a sign on the building, spend the next four months negotiating downward from a number nothing supported.
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Get a real number
Not an online estimate, not the neighbour's rumour, not the county tax assessment. A number built on what comparable industrial buildings closed at over the last 24 months, what tenants pay per foot NNN in your submarket today, what your zoning permits, and which buyers are active in your asset class this quarter.
Most of that data is private. Industrial sale comps are not on the MLS, and rent comps sit inside brokerages rather than on a public site.
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Clear the paperwork
Pull all of it before you go to market: the survey, the title commitment, permits and the certificate of occupancy, zoning verification from your city, environmental history, roof and structural records, tax bills, and every lease with every amendment and side letter.
A buyer who finds a gap in due diligence prices the gap, and they price it higher than the fix would have cost you. An unpermitted mezzanine, a lapsed certificate of occupancy, and an outdoor storage use nobody ever recorded are the three that show up most.
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Decide off-market or open market
Off-market means a named list of buyers who already own this asset class, approached under NDA where the property warrants it. Your tenants, your staff and your competitors hear nothing. Open market means exposure to every buyer, and the competition that comes with it.
Neither answer is right for every building. A stabilised asset with a clean rent roll often does better with wide exposure. An owner-occupied building where the staff do not know, or a property carrying a tenant problem, usually does better quietly.
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Price it, then market it
In that order. The marketing gets built around the buyer who will pay the most for your specific building, so the material for an owner user looking for possession is not the material for a fund underwriting income.
A price set above the underwriting does not get you more. It gets you sixty days of silence, and then the same offers you would have had on day one, from buyers who now know the building has been sitting.
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Run the buyers against each other
Set a date for offers. Then compare more than the headline price: deposit size and when it goes hard, length of the due diligence period, whether the offer carries a financing contingency, proof of funds, and what that buyer has actually closed.
The highest offer is not always the best one. A lower price with a short inspection window and a non-refundable deposit closes. A record price with a ninety day study period and a mortgage contingency is an option, and you paid for it with your time.
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Survive due diligence
Assume a retrade attempt. It tends to arrive late in the inspection period, framed as a roof, an environmental finding or a lease question. Answer it with evidence, hold the deposit schedule you agreed at contract, and keep your second-place buyer informed until the money goes hard.
A seller with a backup offer negotiates from a different place than a seller without one.
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Close
Estoppel certificates from every tenant, prorations for taxes and rent, the payoff letter from your lender, transfer of security deposits, and the documentary stamp tax on the deed. Your attorney runs this part. The broker's job is to make sure nothing on that list arrives as a surprise.
What sets the price on a Fort Lauderdale industrial building
Six things move the number more than anything else, and a residential model measures none of them.
- Clear height. A modern tenant racks vertically. The gap between an 18 foot clear and a 28 foot clear changes who can use the building at all.
- Loading. Dock high doors, grade level doors, how many of each, and whether a 53 foot trailer can make the turn in your yard. Truck court depth kills more deals than square footage does.
- Power. Available amps and service type. Manufacturing and cold users need it and pay for it. Adding it later is slow and expensive in this market.
- Yard. Paved, fenced, usable outside area, and whether your zoning permits you to store on it. In South Florida the yard often outprices the building sitting on it.
- Position against the freight network. Reach to I-95, Florida's Turnpike, I-595, Port Everglades and Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International. Last-mile users buy drive time to their customers, not an address.
- The lease, if there is one. Remaining term, escalations, who pays taxes, insurance and maintenance, and whether the tenant is a covenant a lender will underwrite.
Broward absorbed 136,663 square feet net that quarter, reversing a two-year contraction. That is a county figure for buildings and it describes a market rather than your property. It is useful for one thing: when a buyer sends you a market report to justify a low offer, check which market it measures and which quarter it covers.
The Broward zoning trap
This one catches out-of-town buyers and their brokers, and it is worth understanding before you go to market.
Broward County has no single countywide zoning code governing industrial land. Zoning here is set by each municipality. A building on one side of a city line and a building on the other can sit in districts with different permitted uses, different outdoor storage rules, different height limits and different parking requirements, while looking identical from the road.
So the question is never what Broward allows. The question is what the City of Fort Lauderdale allows, or Pompano Beach, or Oakland Park, or Dania Beach, or the unincorporated district your parcel falls in. Get written zoning verification from that city before a buyer's attorney asks for it.
The place this hurts most is outdoor storage. A yard use that has run for twenty years without anyone recording it is not the same thing as a permitted use, and a buyer's lender treats those two very differently.
Three mistakes that cost the most
- Pricing off a residential model. Automated valuation tools are trained on house sales. They read your building as square footage on a lot and miss clear height, loading, power, yard and permitted use. Owners who anchor on that number either leave money behind or sit unsold for a year.
- Renewing a lease without asking who your buyer is. Signing a five year renewal at a below-market rent, weeks before going to market, can cost more than the brokerage fee. If selling is on your mind, settle the sale question before the lease question.
- Letting the buyer set the timetable. An open-ended inspection period with a refundable deposit hands a buyer a free option on your building and every incentive to use it. Deadlines and a deposit that goes hard are what turn interest into a closing.
Who is actually buying industrial in Broward
Four pools, and your building probably belongs to one of them.
- Owner users. Local businesses buying their own premises, often with SBA financing. They pay for possession, clear height and loading, and they care least about cap rate.
- Private investors and 1031 buyers. On a clock, looking for stabilised income. Speed matters more to them than to anyone else in the market.
- Funds and institutional capital. Underwriting income, covenant and rent growth. They pay well for clean, and they retrade hard on messy.
- Developers and yard buyers. Buying the dirt and the entitlement. If your building is old and low-clear on well-located industrial land, this pool may outbid everyone, and a broker who markets only the building will never find them.
What a valuation needs from you
Six things, and gathering them costs nothing.
- Address and parcel number, so the governing zoning code can be read rather than guessed at from the district name.
- Building size and lot size, with usable yard separated from the total.
- Clear height, dock high and grade level door counts, and the electrical service.
- The leases, with term, rent, escalations, options and who pays what.
- What has been done to it: roof age, paving, sprinkler, HVAC, and any permit history you hold.
- Anything recorded against the property. Covenants and restrictions surprise everyone late.
Phil concludes every valuation himself, after he has seen the site. It costs nothing, it carries no obligation to list, and you get the number and the comparable closings whether you sell this year, in five years, or never.
Read next: What is my industrial property worth, then how to choose an industrial broker in South Florida.