Succeed in investment sales without really bidding.

To say that today's real estate market is competitive is stating the obvious. Prices are escalating, propelled by low interest rates, abundant capital and the publicity surrounding the real estate boom which has attracted buyers from all quarters.

As a result, savvy real estate investors are looking for every avenue to improve their ability to close deals and deploy capital. One strategy that can often be effective is to work with a buyer's representative. Let's look at how a buyer's rep can help an investor find--and close--ransactions in new markets and minimize competition for good deals.

In a typical transaction, where the seller has listed the property, there are a myriad of buyers who engage in an auction process to secure a deal. This process is usually very efficient if you are the seller. Prices are reaching ever higher as the auction process pits one buyer against many others, tending to make a huge difference in valuations being achieved.

By contrast, a buyer's rep can help investors to sniff out good deals. In a typical buyer rep engagement, the investor will engage the representative for a particular product type in a particular geographic market. The buyer's rep then quickly works the market by establishing leads, networking, examining property records, calling owners, and ultimately, identifying properties that meet the investor's stated criteria.

While the process can be complex, it can also be as simple as calling a property owner and discussing his interest in a sale. While owners today are generally quite savvy and have probably considered a sale or a refinancing, they may not have chosen to move in any one direction. That call, from that out-of-state buyer's rep, is sometimes all that is needed to get the ball rolling and spark a seller's interest.

My first transaction as an out-of-town buyer's rep provides a good case study. A client--a large REIT--called and indicated that they had capital earmarked for investment in an up-and-coming city in the Southeast. While they had established a recent position in the market, they needed eyes and ears on the ground, beyond their own people, to uncover some other deals--not just those deals the market's brokers would eventually get around to bringing them. While I didn't have experience in that market, I had used the buyer rep approach many times in local markets and certainly thought it could be employed elsewhere. The client knew that I had a discerning eye and would not chase after just any property--so the skill set they sought not only entailed finding properties, but finding the right properties.

I traveled to the market and built my own database of properties; I sifted through property records to learn about owners and then called on them to discuss my client's interest in their assets.

One property that stood out was a "B-" office building that needed some capital investment and had additional land on which to build extra square footage.

By approaching the owner and discussing my client's interest, and by indicating I was being paid by the client, I was able to get the owner hooked. It was the perfect scenario -they could sell to a qualified buyer, yet the locals wouldn't be aware of their interest in exiting the market. This was a case where a quiet approach was much more attractive to the seller than the typical broad marketing exercise.

The upshot: my client acquired the property and it was never listed for sale. Today, in the hands of my client, the office building is a fully-leased class "A" property in one of the best cities in the Southeast U.S. Since that first deal, we've done over $100 million of transactions together.

In today's competitive market, it's a strategy that both private and institutional players may employ as a supplement to their day-to-day property acquisition strategy.

ASHER HYMAN, PRINCIPAL, CORVEST REALTY GROUP, INC.