01 Aug How ELIFIN® Sold a Baton Rouge Dry Cleaners Property for an Overseas Owner
Noah Loveland of ELIFIN® represented the seller in the successful sale of a freestanding retail building located at 14027 Perkins Rd in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Challenge
The two parties on the ownership side lived out of town, one in China and one in California, so communication wasn’t as easy as it would have been with a local seller. Reaching them meant coordinating across time zones running anywhere from two hours behind to twelve hours ahead, and their travel also made some communication more complicated at points during the deal. The building itself came with its own complications. A dry cleaning and laundry business had operated there for years, but the tenant had no formal lease in place, just an informal arrangement with the owner. The property also carried a meaningful amount of deferred maintenance. Selling it meant coordinating with an ownership group spread across time zones, a tenancy with no paper trail, and a building that needed work, all at the same time.
Strategy
Noah Loveland set fixed call windows to reliably reach both parties across the time difference, keeping paperwork and decisions moving even as their travel schedules complicated communication at points during the deal. He marketed the property, a freestanding dry cleaners and laundromat building with a drive-thru, to the retail and owner-user buyer pool and generated strong interest, with multiple groups touring the property and competing for it. Rather than chasing the highest number from a buyer who might not perform, Loveland screened for buyers who could handle both the property’s condition and the tenant transition without derailing the closing. He coordinated the tenant’s move out of the space so the sale could proceed cleanly. Loveland closed the deal with Kean’s Fine Dry Cleaning, an established Baton Rouge cleaner with several locations already in the market.
Result
The sale closed on the building and the equipment inside it, with Kean’s Fine Dry Cleaning set to run dry cleaning operations at the address. The property went under contract in 63 days, a solid pace for a specialized retail building in the Baton Rouge market. It closed at roughly 96 percent of asking price, despite the deferred maintenance buyers had to price in. Loveland got the deal done without either party’s travel or the tenant’s undocumented lease ever slowing the timeline down.
Leading Agent
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