How We Price — Confidentiality-Weighted Pricing

What "How We Price" Means

Most brokers won't put their pricing logic in writing. We will. Pricing a commercial property is not a single number pulled from a comp set — it is a judgment about which sale process produces the highest amount the seller actually keeps after fees, taxes, marketing cost, tenant fallout, and the risk of a buyer re-trading after due diligence.

Skyline runs both public and off-market processes. Our specialty — and our default recommendation when the asset supports it — is the confidential off-market process. The framework below is how we decide, asset by asset, which path leaves the most money in the seller's pocket.

The Confidentiality-Weighted Pricing Framework

We weigh six variables on every assignment. Each one can move net proceeds up or down independent of the headline price. A high public auction number that triggers a 2% marketing tax, a tenant exodus, and a post-diligence re-trade can net the seller less than a clean off-market close at a slightly lower gross.

1. Gross pricing power — the institutional comp set for the asset class, submarket, and condition, not an aspirational list price.
2. Marketing cost — what a public campaign actually costs the seller (offering-memorandum production, listing-platform fees, advertising) versus a curated confidential teaser.
3. Tenant and operational risk — whether public exposure leaks to tenants, employees, or lenders and damages the very income the buyer is paying for.
4. Re-trade risk — the likelihood a buyer renegotiates after diligence, which is materially higher in auction processes where the winning bid is the outlier, not the consensus.
5. Timeline and carry — months of additional holding cost, interest, and uncertainty in a 4–8 month public process versus a 60–120 day off-market close.
6. Confidentiality value — what discretion is worth to the seller (estate, partnership, or repositioning situations where a public process is itself a cost).

Where Net Proceeds Come From — Off-Market vs Broad-Market

The headline price is only the starting line. What a seller keeps depends on the line items below the price. This is how the two processes compare on the variables that actually determine net proceeds — Skyline runs both, and recommends the one that nets more for the specific asset.

Source: Skyline Properties process economics across $976M+ closed since 2006. Net-proceeds outcomes are asset-specific; Skyline models both paths before recommending one.

The marketing tax nobody itemizes

A broad-market campaign is not free, even when the listing broker frames their commission as the only cost. The seller pays for the offering memorandum, the listing-platform exposure, the advertising, and — less visibly — the comp leakage that tells every tenant, lender, and competitor the building is in play. We call this the marketing tax, and on a typical Manhattan commercial sale it runs roughly 1–3% of gross before a single dollar of disruption to the underlying income.

Confidentiality-weighted pricing simply makes that tax explicit and asks the only question that matters: does the wider public buyer pool generate enough additional gross to overcome the marketing tax, the carry, the re-trade risk, and the disruption? For trophy assets, ground-lease fee positions, rent-stabilized portfolios, and conversion candidates, the answer is frequently no — which is precisely why those assets so often trade off-market in Manhattan.

When Off-Market Nets More — and When It Doesn't

We are not dogmatic. Off-market is the right call for most of what we handle, but a public process genuinely wins in specific situations, and we will tell you when yours is one of them. Honesty about this is the whole point of publishing a framework.

• Off-market usually nets more when: the asset has a defined institutional buyer pool, confidentiality has real value, tenants or income are exposure-sensitive, or speed and certainty matter.
• A public process can net more when: the asset is broadly desirable to an unpredictable buyer universe, there is genuine scarcity that a competitive field will bid up, or a fiduciary/estate context requires a documented open-market test.
• Either way, we model both paths to a net-proceeds number before recommending one — and the recommendation is the seller's objective, not our preference.

How Our Fees Work

Skyline is a premium brokerage and prices like one. Our value is senior-level execution — Robert Khodadadian is on every assignment, not a junior team — combined with a confidential buyer network that public-market brokers cannot replicate. We do not compete on the lowest commission, and we are transparent about that.

Sell-side mandates are a negotiated success fee, agreed in writing before we begin and earned only on a closing the seller accepts. There is no marketing-cost pass-through to surprise you at the closing table, because an off-market process does not incur one.

Buy-side mandates can be structured as a retainer plus a success fee. The retainer filters for serious principals and funds the dedicated sourcing work; the success fee aligns us to closing the right acquisition at the right basis. It is a structure few in the market offer transparently, and it exists to protect the buyer's time as much as ours.

Start with a confidential BOV — no exposure, no obligation

The first step in pricing is a Broker Opinion of Value. Skyline provides confidential BOVs at no cost and with no commitment. We will not pitch your building to anyone, we will not run comps in a way that signals a process, and we will not put anything in writing that creates a paper trail until you have decided you want to engage.

If you are an owner weighing a sale — or an advisor (attorney, accountant, or family-office principal) with a client who is — request a confidential BOV and we will walk you through both the off-market and broad-market net-proceeds numbers for the specific asset before you decide anything.