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 starts with the comp set and ends with a judgment call: which sale process leaves the seller the most money after fees, taxes, marketing cost, tenant fallout, and the risk of a buyer re-trading after due diligence.

Skyline Properties 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 regardless of the headline price. A big public auction number that comes with a 2% marketing tax, tenants heading for the exits 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, rather than an aspirational list price.
2. Marketing cost: what a public campaign actually costs the seller (offering-memorandum production, listing-platform fees, advertising) compared with a curated confidential teaser.
3. Tenant and operational risk: whether public exposure leaks to tenants, employees or lenders and damages the income the buyer is paying for.
4. Re-trade risk: the likelihood a buyer renegotiates after diligence. It runs materially higher in auction processes, where the winning bid is the outlier rather than the consensus.
5. Timeline and carry: months of extra holding cost, interest and uncertainty in a 4–8 month public process, against a 60–120 day off-market close.
6. Confidentiality value: what discretion is worth to the seller. In estate, partnership and repositioning situations, a public process is itself a cost.

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

The headline price is where the math starts. What a seller keeps depends on the line items underneath it. Here is how the two processes compare on the variables that decide net proceeds. Skyline Properties runs both and recommends whichever nets more for the specific asset.

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

The marketing tax nobody itemizes

A broad-market campaign costs the seller money even when the listing broker presents the 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. 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 puts that tax on the page and asks one question: does the wider public buyer pool bring in enough extra gross to cover 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. That is why those assets so often trade off-market in Manhattan.

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

We are not dogmatic about it. Off-market is the right call for most of what we handle, but a public process does win in specific situations, and we will tell you when yours is one of them. Being straight about that is the reason to publish a framework at all.

• 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 follows the seller's objective. Our own preference doesn't enter into it.

How Our Fees Work

Skyline Properties is a premium brokerage and prices like one. What you pay for is senior-level execution (Robert Khodadadian is on every assignment, with no junior team in between) and a confidential buyer network that public-market brokers cannot replicate. We do not compete on the lowest commission, and we say so up front.

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 Properties 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 own a building and are weighing a sale, or you advise a client who is (as an attorney, accountant or family-office principal), request a confidential BOV. We will walk you through both the off-market and broad-market net-proceeds numbers for the specific asset before you decide anything.