Net Lease Investing Explained by a Top Commercial Broker

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Show Summary

In this episode of the Real Estate Pros Podcast, host Micah Johnson interviews Dan Lewkowicz, a seasoned commercial real estate investment sales broker. Dan shares his journey into real estate, highlighting his focus on net lease properties and memorable deals that have shaped his career. He discusses the transition from house flipping to commercial brokerage, emphasizing the importance of adding value to properties and leveraging business operations. The conversation also touches on market insights and Dan’s excitement for future opportunities in the real estate sector.

Resources and Links from this show:

• • • Investor Fuel Real Estate Mastermind
    • Investor Machine Real Estate Lead Generation
    • Mike on Facebook
    • Mike on Instagram
    • Mike on LinkedIn
    • Encore Investment Real Estate’s Website
    • Dan Lewkowicz on LinkedIn
    • Dan Lewkowicz’s Phone Number: (248) 943-2838

  Listen to the Audio Version of this Episode

  Investor Fuel Show Transcript:

  Dan Lewkowicz (00:00)
  So I said, okay, great. What price did you have in mind? So he told me that he had had in mind the number of $32 million. So, you know, some brokers would have taken that number and run with it. I didn’t, I went and did some market analysis, really sharpened my pencil, did a lot of research and came back and told him that I thought that we would go to market at $45 million. Which is what we did. We went to market at 45 million. We ended up selling the properties for him for 47 and a half million dollars.

  Micah Johnson (00:20)
  Wow.

  Hey everyone, welcome to the Real Estate Pros Podcast. I’m your host, Micah Johnson. And today I’m joined by Dan Lewkowicz who’s been making some serious moves in the commercial real estate investing industry for quite some time now. Dan, welcome in, man. Glad to have you.

  Dan Lewkowicz (02:12)
  Yeah, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.

  Micah Johnson (02:14)
  Absolutely. I think our listeners are really going to take away some great information from our talk today. First, I’m excited. I’ve followed you on LinkedIn for a long time, seeing what you have going on and now I’m getting to talk to you today. So that’s pretty cool. I always think that’s interesting. And two, just your path to real estate. Another thing I’m big on this show about is showing people it’s a big umbrella, finding your way in it until you hit that thing that just, boom, it does it for you, pays that emotional paycheck and that financial one and gives you that just momentum to grow. So let’s dive in, man, for people may not know you yet.

  What’s your main focus right now and what markets you currently operating in?

  Dan Lewkowicz (02:48)
  Yeah, appreciate that. So I am a net lease investment sales broker. I work nationwide. What that means as a net lease investment sales broker is that I assist and advise buyers and sellers in the purchase and sale of net lease investment sales, real estate all across the country. So I focus primarily on two different types of a net lease property. The first bucket is single tenant net lease property. So you can think about your Chick-fil-A’s, your McDonald’s, your Walgreens.

  your Taco Bells, your discount retailers like Family Dollars and Dollar Generals, single tenant medical office buildings. On the other side, I work ⁓ with multi-tenant properties as well, like your neighborhood shopping centers, larger multi-tenant malls or larger shopping centers, anywhere from 20,000 to 200,000 or 300,000 square feet. I also sell multi-tenant medical office buildings. I have veered out of those boxes as well.

  into vacant office buildings as well as waterfront resorts. But the majority of what I do falls into those two categories of single tenant net lease properties as well as multi-tenant net lease properties.

  Micah Johnson (03:57)
  Interesting. So you get to see a variety of deals come across your desk. What’s been one that sticks out for you in a good way? A deal that was cool to work on, everything flowed. What was your favorite one?

  Dan Lewkowicz (04:59)
  I mean, there’s been so many, I mean, I’ve got so many different stories over the years of, ⁓ you know, fascinating properties. I would have to say that ⁓ there was definitely like a series of deals that came about in an odd fashion. At a certain point in time, you know, we do a lot of different outreach in terms of sourcing our deals, but at a certain point in time, I had an intern as well as an assistant that were both working for me and we were doing a lot of outreach via email and I had sold.

  about a half a dozen quick service restaurant properties, fast food properties over a series of a few months. So we had an outreach campaign sending out emails to Wendy’s owners in the state of Michigan, reach out to one Wendy’s owner via email, let him know about some Wendy’s properties that we had sold recently in the state of Michigan. And he had mentioned that he was interested in selling ⁓ his property, put together a pricing evaluation for him. He was interested in selling at

  price you know that was in line with what we had proposed. Put his property on the market. think we had 10 or 11 offers within the first few weeks. Got the property under contract, closed the deal, really enjoyed getting to know him. kept his cards pretty close to his chest, didn’t let it be known exactly what he owned, but I got the feeling that he owned other property as time went on. As we got to closing, made mention that him and his family owned a number of hotels.

  And I kept in touch with him. And a couple of months later, I was actually recording my podcast. during the podcast, I saw that I missed a call from him, couldn’t answer, missed another call from him, walked out of the studio, picked up my phone, called him. And I said, what do you want to sell? And he said to me, how do know I want to sell something? I said, because you rarely call me, let alone two times in a row. So he said, yeah.

  My brother and I, want to sell the resorts.

  So I said, okay, great. What price did you have in mind? So he told me that he had had in mind the number of $32 million. So, you know, some brokers would have taken that number and run with it. I didn’t, I went and did some market analysis, really sharpened my pencil, did a lot of research and came back and told him that I thought that we would go to market at $45 million. Which is what we did. We went to market at 45 million. We ended up selling the properties for him for 47 and a half million dollars.

  Micah Johnson (07:14)
  Wow.

  Dan Lewkowicz (07:22)
  Right? So, which I love because here’s an individual who I got to know who trusted me with, you know, family heirlooms, with real estate that had been in the family for a long time. And we were able to, you know, keep an extra, you know, tens of millions of dollars in his family’s pocket. And just because of the fact that we, you know, went and did our homework and gave him a valuation that we really believed in and that we felt the market was supporting it. And it really did. So.

  Really great individual, I’ve gotten to know him over the years and I’ve learned a lot from him over these ensuing years.

  Micah Johnson (07:53)
  Beautiful.

  That’s beautiful, man. I love hearing it, because that’s what a true real estate professional does. We’ll dig into your history in a second, but I just want to talk about that thing you talked about right there. You got a number that is a big number. Some people, like you said, will run right to it, but it wasn’t, you saw it as, this is the opportunity to do this. So let me do all my homework, really put it together. And you’re talking about selling for $15.5 million more than he was originally at. That’s not a little bit, man. That’s significant.

  Dan Lewkowicz (08:25)
  No.

  Micah Johnson (08:26)
  And it’s just the value that people like yourself really bring to the deal. Why I believe in it so much, getting true professionals out there. Cause some folks get a bad rap in real estate and it’s to the detriment of the rest of us. Cause there are a ton of folks here that dedicate themselves to what you’re talking about, doing the right thing. And it works out and it works out like you’re saying most of the time. Well, back us up for a second. How did you get into real estate? What led you to being able to close a 47 and half million dollar multiple hotel deal?

  Dan Lewkowicz (09:31)
  Yeah. So I mean, I, have to back it up a whole lot. I could tell you my story of how I personally got into real estate, but I think it goes back a lot further than that because, you know, my Bobby, my maternal grandmother who is alive and well, ⁓ super close with her. She’s an incredible individual. She’s actually a hundred years old. She’ll be 101 this year. And, ⁓ I’ve always been really close with her. She actually, she came to this country when she was, gosh, in her.

  She came to this country in 1948. So she was 23 years old, I believe. And she came with my mother. My mother was a few months old. They came on an oil tanker after World War II. Barely spoke any English. And ⁓ at a certain point, ⁓ she ⁓ had an inheritance from her aunt, a few thousand dollars. And I believe she bought a four-family flat, if I’m not mistaken, in Detroit.

  And when it came time to move from that property, she bought another property, but she didn’t sell the first one. She kept the initial property. And so she’s like the OG house hacker, right? She kept the first one, bought another one. And then when she went to move the family into another property, she kept the second one. And then she kept doing this until at one point, I believe she had 10, 10 units that she was managing, running all over the city of Detroit. So, you know, my Bubbie had this entrepreneurial spirit in her DNA.

  And my father was an entrepreneur. He’s a pharmacist and he had pharmacies in the city of Detroit. So I grew up my whole life watching my father and my ancestors having this like flair to work hard and achieve. And I think that that, although it was never told to me that I had to be an entrepreneur myself, I think I saw it by osmosis and it was something that I always wanted. So that’s the preamble, that’s the backstory. In terms of me, ⁓

  Back in 2005, when I was, graduated college in 2006. So back in 2005, ⁓ I helped my friends start a business. Their father, this is my best friend growing up, so my best friend’s father was diagnosed with ALS, which is Lou Gehrig’s disease. Incredible man. ⁓ So unfortunately, in addition to the difficulties of going through a degenerative illness like that, he had the frustrations of dealing with so many different contractors.

  to modify his home to make it handicap accessible. He had to deal with someone for the grab bars, someone for the roll in shower, someone for the stair-glides, someone for the ramps. And it was just one headache after another. So my friend’s older brother decided to start a company and I had a lot of sales background and love people, love doing sales. So we kind of teamed up at the time and I helped him to start this company. And my role was sales and marketing.

  One of the things I like to do was to go out with our project manager and to get a little bit of experience in the field and to see what he, you know, see what he would do. So one of the experiences that I had that I’ll never forget, that was a big aha moment for me was that we went out to visit a specific site to see, uh, you know, to put, put a bit out and see what we could do to help somebody. So we got to this site. was real far away. I remember that. And we got there. It was a small house. got to the property. Individual had been in an auto accident 20 years prior.

  And was wheelchair bound, got into the property and went inside. Project manager looked around. I kind of scratched my head. was like, what are we going to do here? Like this guy can’t even move around this property. Like we can’t do anything for this guy. So I walked out of the property. Project manager walked out. I said, Hey, let’s go. Let’s get in the van. Let’s get out of here. He didn’t say anything. He just took out his graph paper.

  took out his pencil and started sketching. And I’m thinking to myself, what is he doing? Like, what are we going to do? This is a lost cause. There’s nothing to do here. And he starts sketching a new front elevation and a new layout for the property. Because what I didn’t realize, you know, at 22, 23 years old was that this guy who knew what he was doing, he could make a few changes and take this property and make it actually work for this individual, make some changes.

  change some things around and make it functional for this individual. So at that moment, I recognized that you could buy a piece of property, make some changes and add so much value that you now have something that’s more valuable than the property and the changes that you made. So fast forward a few years when it came time for me to buy a home, my first home for my family, and this was in the middle of the recession so that I wanna give some context of the numbers I’m about to share. I went to buy, you know,

  I was looking at a roughly 1700 square foot, you all brick three bedroom, bath ranch with a basement. I found a property for $175,000 move in ready, right? Which today that sounds like a joke, right? But those were real numbers. So I found a property ready to move in. I was ready to sign a contract. I got word that a couple of streets over there was a bank on property, three bedrooms, two baths. I think it was also right around 1700 square feet, full basement.

  Not move in ready. Okay. It was distressed, but it was $81,000 cash. So I borrowed some money from some, a friend of my parents and I bought the property. And instead of hiring a general contractor, I hired out every single individual trade and I paid them a little bit more. And I told them, I’m going to stand here. I’m going to annoy you. I’m going to ask questions, but I want to learn what you’re doing so that I can, I didn’t tell them this, but so that I can do this myself.

  Micah Johnson (15:12)
  Gotcha.

  Dan Lewkowicz (15:13)
  so I can manage

  you moving forward. And what that did was that enabled me to learn how to flip a house myself. So I did that, I managed the whole process, I learned, and by the time I was done renovating that house, I ended up buying another house and another house and another house. And that was my entrance into real estate investing. That was my entrance into house hacking and later house flipping. And that’s really how I got my feet wet and how I got into real estate investing.

  Micah Johnson (15:40)
  I love that story. Deep connection goes with it. then then seeing I love how it’s care about family then care about somebody else leads you to a world like this that then opens doors to you where you’ve gone a long way from doing single family homes now to selling the kind of projects you do. So lead us more into that direction. How’d you get from single family to where you are today? And then what what all do you dig into?

  Dan Lewkowicz (16:46)
  Yeah. So look, I’m not one of those guys that hides the mistakes and hides the pitfalls because it has not been all glamour. And the real way that I got into where I am today is because I took that route of house flipping, which by the way, I was doing it on the side. had, you know, I have a background in, in resource development, in fundraising.

  in title in sales. was a business development executive at Amazon. was doing this on the side. I was flipping houses on the side until finally, eventually I just said, you know what? I’m going to jump in with both feet. I’m going to go 100 % into house flipping. And I started buying trucks and dumpsters and jackhammers and floor sanders and paint sprayers and building crews. And I got, really got into it and I started really trying to scale and I started buying, you know, a lot of houses at a time and I started

  renovating a lot of houses at a time. And I started, you know, getting into flips that started going sideways and I started getting broken into and I started getting, you know, equipment stolen and cabinets stolen and things started going, you know, in directions I didn’t like. And, you know, I had some bad deals and some bad flips and, ⁓ and I got, and it got burned out and I got, got burned on certain projects. And that’s really what got me into commercial real estate brokerage is when I, when I, when I finally realized that

  you know, I could do a commercial real estate brokerage deal and make more money on a deal that I didn’t have to really invest my own capital. Now, where I am today in my business, I do invest a lot of my own capital in my own business. But especially in the beginning, it’s not a capital intensive business. It’s not a high risk business. Your risk is your time. Your capital is your time, right? But but relative comparing that to, you know,

  house flipping, it’s not nearly the same. Right? So, you know, that’s really how I got into commercial real estate brokerage is by just recognizing how risky and how, you know, time intensive and capital intensive, you know, single family house flipping is. And it is a very difficult and risky business to scale and to take to a, know, a high, a much higher level.

  Micah Johnson (19:00)
  It is, it is. It’s a unique personality type that does it, that gets it to the highest levels. I know a few of them that do it big. And one thing I want to point out that I love to say about real estate is just how big the umbrella is, right? Where someone in it, you can change without leaving the industry behind. There’s no greater wealth generators than the American real estate market. And it allows you a lot of ways to plug into it, like you’re experiencing. So if you’re out there listening to this and you’ve…

  Maybe you’ve done the flips and those things and you don’t like that part of your experience, part of that Dan experience. You don’t just have to trash everything you’ve done. It’s beautiful to say your life experience leverages in. Just use that to the next thing. Which part did you enjoy? What’s the interactions that you like doing? Go start doing those. Cause I used to do the low acquisitions part, right? Talking to distressed homeowners all the time. And then it got to a point where that’s not the conversation I wanted to have anymore. I just didn’t want to do that each day. I found myself not able to care about it.

  And if I can’t care about it, then I don’t want to take your stuff because now I’m manipulating you. That’s the side of sales where you learn some ways to get people to do things that they may not have wanted to do or would have done normally. And if you don’t actually care, you’re just taken from people. And that’s the part that makes me want to shift. again, enjoying that room inside the industry to have that. So for 2026, what are you excited about this year? What’s on the horizon for you?

  Dan Lewkowicz (20:27)
  Yeah, you know, I’m excited for kind of to touch on what we spoke about a few moments ago. I’m excited for the ability to leverage my business and take those lower level tasks and outsource them and be able to focus more on what I love, which is speaking to clients, moving deals along and escrow and closing deals. So if I’m able to devote more of my time to those higher level activities.

  that’s going to mean more production for me and more of doing what I love doing. I love those days when I’m in flow and I’m just moving those deals around and I’m solving problems and I’m tapping into that creative side of myself. So I’m definitely looking forward to that. Market-wise, I am excited at the potential of what’s going to happen with the federal funds rate. I don’t want to say that.

  I am convinced that the federal funds rate will continue to decrease. I I believe, what are we? We’re 48 hours away from another Fed decision, right? So again, I’m not gonna say that the federal funds rate will continue to decrease, because we don’t really know what’s gonna happen. If Jerome Powell’s glasses-less Twitter video was any indication…

  He’s not going to bow to presidential pressures. So maybe they won’t lower the funds rate, but who knows? We’ll see. I do think that the markets are in a relatively healthy position. especially the space that I’m in, investment grade real estate, I believe is strong. So I’m excited to see where things go in that regard. ⁓

  And I feel like you know we’re in a strong position and I think there’s a lot to look forward to.

  Micah Johnson (22:21)
  I agree, man. I agree. I’m interested for this year. I like to remain curious. There’s lot of things, there’s good ingredients out there for some great stuff. So I’m hoping that it comes out around as well. Well, Dan, man, I really appreciate your time today, your story, your perspective. Thanks for sharing with us. You know, if you’re listening out there and you’re interested in learning more about Dan, what he has going on, Dan, what’s the best way for them to find you?

  Dan Lewkowicz (22:45)
  Yeah, so I’m definitely active on LinkedIn. You can always ⁓ follow me on LinkedIn, reach out, shoot me a DM. My first name is Dan, last name is Lewkowicz, L-E-W-K-O-W-I-C-Z, again, L-E-W-K-O-W-I-C-Z. If you have commercial property, net lease property, you want to know what it’s worth, or you would like to discuss potentially selling that property.

  Or if you are interested in getting into the brokerage space or investing, you would like to just chat or bounce some ideas off of someone who’s been in the industry for quite some time. You know, feel free to reach out. I will provide my direct cell phone number. It’s 248-943-2838 again, 248-943-2838. there’s anything I can do to add value, it would be my absolute pleasure.

  Micah Johnson (23:32)
  Love that, thank you. And so if you’re listening or watching, please check the show notes. We’ll make sure we have Dan’s LinkedIn link and his phone number there for you to reach out to him. Like I said earlier, I followed him for quite some time on LinkedIn. Definitely give him a follow. You’ll see a lot of great stuff. As always, touch base with professionals in the industry. One thing I’ve loved about Dan’s story so far today, the way you’ve educated yourself, man. You went and learned, you didn’t just…

  You went and intentionally taught yourself, which I think is the greatest skill you can have in this industry. Cause if you know, then you can play the game even better. reach out to someone who actually knows, take advantage of that. Again, Dan, thanks for being here. Thanks everybody for listening. If you got value out of today’s episode, please like this episode, share it with someone else you think can get value as well. As always, please don’t forget to subscribe. We appreciate every single one of you out there that follows along with us. We have more conversations coming up with operators just like Dan.

  who are out there building a real business in the industry. Thanks for joining. We’ll see y’all next time.