Blog

This gap between gross income and NOI is where commercial real estate gets humbling. The costs that shrink your returns don’t announce themselves all at once. They accumulate quietly - a property tax bill that crept up after reassessment, an insurance renewal that surged 18 percent without explanation, a management fee structure that charges on gross rent instead of what […]

Raw land in San Diego is a fundamentally different investment than an improved property, and treating it otherwise is one of the more expensive mistakes a buyer can make. An existing building - even a tired one - comes with a readable income story, a zoning baseline, and utilities already stubbed to the site. Vacant or underutilized land comes with […]

For buyers, sellers, and investors trying to make decisions right now, that complexity isn’t just noise - it’s the whole story. Treating San Diego CRE as a single market moving in a single direction is how capital gets misallocated. The opportunity in 2026 is in which asset classes are expanding, which are correcting, and which are at an inflection point […]

The numbers give that thesis some weight. According to Real Capital Analytics data from Q4 2024, San Diego recorded roughly $55.4 million in self-storage transaction volume over the trailing twelve months. The market spans approximately 83 buildings and 6.6 million square feet of rentable space distributed across a county where new development faces actual zoning and entitlement friction. That supply […]

The California commercial insurance market is making coverage gaps harder to ignore. In 2024, State Farm non-renewed approximately 42,000 commercial apartment policies across the state, pushing a growing number of landlords into the Excess and Surplus lines market - a segment that now accounts for roughly 20% of commercial property placements in California. E&S carriers can fill coverage gaps. But […]

In San Diego, the stakes vary sharply depending on what you own. Office landlords are navigating a market where vacancy sits at 13.6% as of Q1 2026, according to Kidder Mathews - a number that gives tenants leverage and makes retention a genuine priority. Retail is a very different story. With vacancy hovering around 4.3% as of Q1 2025 per […]

What many California commercial property owners don’t realize until that call - or until they’re staring at a closing statement - is that the IRS has been keeping a running tab on every depreciation deduction taken over the years. When the property sells, the government wants a part of the deductions back; called depreciation recapture, and it operates separately from, […]

San Diego’s commercial market presents its own layer of complexity when it comes to financing decisions. Elevated property values, a competitive lending environment, and a rate climate that’s still shaking out from the past few years of volatility mean that what worked for a buyer in 2021 doesn’t necessarily work today. Lenders have tightened underwriting in some categories while loosening […]

The challenge is that each of those factors is moving on its own timeline. Cap rates on industrial assets in San Diego don’t behave the same way as those on retail strip centers or office buildings. The interest rate environment that’s compressing the buyer pool for one asset class may be creating opportunity for another. And a choice that makes […]