Despite the pandemic, the commercial real estate property market remains stable.
Market fundamentals are solid and real estate developers are continuing to grow, both during and post-pandemic.
This is great news for commercial real estate properties. However, the challenges lie in encouraging investors to choose and fund your property.
Persuading an investor always requires a strategic approach. With this, one of the marketing materials you will need is a persuasive commercial real estate pitch deck that will lead to sealing the deal.
Let’s dive deep into why you need an effective real estate pitch deck and what it takes to create one.
But first, let’s review some basics.
Commercial real estate pitch deck development and design by Launch Module Media.
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What is the purpose of a Commercial Real Estate pitch deck?
A real estate pitch deck is commonly used to present a commercial property or a development project to investors.
Its main purpose is to encourage investors to finance a proposed project. This is essentially the sales pitch to potential clients and if done correctly, it will lead to more sales. An investor will want to see all of the details of the property presentation in a sleek, informative, and direct manner.
Commercial real estate properties are often developed to be leased for business use. This includes offices, both industrial and retail. These types of properties often make an attractive investment opportunity, as they can offer investors long-term investment returns.
To highlight this opportunity, pitch decks are critical during presentations.
This means you must display an opportunity of the listing and property type, the financial process, your strategy, your team, and more to a potential client, flawlessly.
This is where strong real estate pitch decks are needed, allowing you to provide an overview of the project and the opportunity it offers.
When do I need a great pitch book?
If you have a lead and need to display the opportunity, you would achieve this through a comprehensive pitch book. This is standard procedure.
It serves as a visual representation of the whole opportunity you can offer to investors.
For commercial real estate property owners or any business opportunity, a great pitch book can be used as an introduction and for opening communication with prospective investors.
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How do you structure a pitch deck?
A real estate pitch deck, especially for residential and commercial projects can be complex.
It may require financial analysis and feasibility studies to strengthen the opportunity you are presenting.
Commercial real estate properties are often referred to as a high-yielding source of income and a great proposition is required to get your points across. This is why delivering a property presentation is usually the first step on the road to gaining approval and building out an investment plan.
A pitch presentation is no simple document. It can be a decision driver and creating it requires a thoughtful process.
Structuring your property presentation correctly needs to be a strategy-based part of the process. These are the steps we take.
Follow these guidelines and get your structure perfect:
Title Page
Title pages are pretty straightforward. But remember, this is the first thing your potential investor will see so it is important to make it pop.
Primarily, it will contain the commercial real estate asset name, property type, and its location along with a high definition picture of the opportunity.
We also recommend making this slide with a sleek theme combined with aligned images of both your company and the investor’s names and logos, along with contact information including email, phone number, website, and of course, the date of the presentation.
This page is not to be overcrowded, simplicity is key!
Executive Summary
Dive right in and introduce your company and your general business plan and strategies.
Executive summaries can be written in bullet points, to make them easier to break down and understand.
This slide should provide a quick overview of your proposal including key metrics, projected returns, and investment strategies.
Portfolio
If you have other commercial real estate properties or other projects, you can cite your track record and present a portfolio.
This will help you establish a brand and build trust with an investor or syndicator too.
Team
Describing who will handle the project can also affect investors’ decisions. Include a page for the team who will lead the project and cite a bit about their background.
Let your prospective investor know who they will be working with, in a clean and sleek slide.
Property Overview
This portion of your property presentation is one of the main courses.
This is the opportunity and the reason for your pitch, so don’t sell it short! The way your listing is presented can be a make-or-break decision indicator for your clients.
Make sure to include high definition photographs of the property and cite supplementary details, like property type, location uses, metrics, occupancy rate, maps & location, and amenities.
Market Analysis
Among the key highlights of your pitch deck should be your market analysis as this will highlight and strengthen the opportunity you are presenting.
The market conditions will help investors make more sense from the predictions, so be sure to have an accurate and correct market analysis.
Business Plan
Next to your market analysis is your business plan.
Whether this is a leasing opportunity or a sale, you want to go into this property presentation with your sales pitch and process it down to a T.
Use bullet points or timelines to display events.
This portion explains what would you want to do about the market opportunity based on your analysis.
It includes your business strategy, which shows how will you generate income through the commercial property.
Financials
Displaying the financial details is a vital part of a commercial real estate presentation.
Accurate financial data will help build trust and encourage your investors to consider your opportunity.
Transparently present current and projected income and expenses, also provide a detailed financial analysis. Commonly, for real estate companies, it is good to include a sensitivity analysis.
You can also discuss your financing options or funding goals.
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You already have a pitch deck, but you need to “beef it up”
If you already have an existing pitch deck, check if it’s structured properly by using the tips above.
A great practice is always having a colleague check if it has a good flow and comprehensive content.
Beef up your deck using the following points:
Highlight market analysis and opportunity
Research the property market and other sectors that can be considered determinants for the opportunity you have in hand.
Emphasize the market analysis, as well as this, will be one of the major supporting information topics for the opportunity and strategy.
Utilize graphs
Pitch decks are highly visual. Facts are backed by data.
This is why you should maximize the use of graphs. Figures can be easier seen, compared, and interpreted when displayed in graphs.
Make sure your photographs are high quality
Commercial real estate projects or any other real estate property are best visualized through pictures.
Include an image or computer-generated plans for the project to help your prospective client or investors understand what you are presenting.
Please, make sure any photographs you use are high quality!
What makes a pitch deck enterprise-grade?
Several key factors can easily make or break your commercial real estate pitch deck.
Generally, it is a must to keep your presentation professional and formal.
Here are the significant factors in making your pitch deck enterprise-grade:
Conciseness
The first and most important factor in ensuring that your pitch book is enterprise-grade is its conciseness.
It should be simple, short but highly comprehensive. A pitchbook should have between 15 to 20 slides complete with the necessary information.
Brevity is always key. No matter how great the investment opportunity is, no investor will read a 35-page document.
This may sound simple but, make sure to spell check your presentation.
Organization and flow
Pitch books follow a certain structure that is meant to ultimately persuade and convince the readers or receivers.
The way you organize the flow of information, from introducing your company to laying out your basis, plans, and hypothesis will help your audience get a clearer picture of the opportunity or project you propose.
To keep your pitch deck professional, strive to make it comprehensible and easy to follow.
Layout and color schemes
A commercial real estate pitch deck should exhibit a project as an attractive opportunity.
While presenting such a proposal through a pitch deck, it is still a must to set a sleek and professional layout with color schemes and combinations that are equally pleasing to the eye and represent your company or brand.
The layout and colors will help put the pitch deck together, making it coherent, exciting, and easy on the eye.
A correct approach to a clean layout and color scheme should make your deck pleasing to look at and can be supplementary in actually presenting and emphasizing information.
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How to separate yourself from others?
With the property market showing continuous growth maps, there will always be competitors in all industry categories.
So how do you stand out?
You do not actually need to go too extravagant with your commercial pitch deck or your proposal. Investment opportunities emerge by keeping the categories professional, realistic, and factual.
This way, you can establish the quality of your proposal while demonstrating how big the opportunity is that you are offering.
Here are a few best practices that you should live by while creating your pitch deck.
5 additional best practices
Review these tips and consider implementing them into your process:
1 – Know your target audience
Who are you reaching out to?
Make it a point to customize your pitch deck based on your target audience. Most likely, you will need to reach out to high net worth investors and real estate syndicators.
These are business-focused executives and will likely only provide limited time for you to pitch to them. Every investor is unique. Knowing who exactly you are going to be presenting to will help you prepare your pitch presentation better.
2 – Make a strong introduction
Put in the extra effort of crafting your executive summary and make sure it presents you, your company, and your goals.
It’s a good idea to create a one-sentence summary for your company. Keep it short, sweet, and powerful.
It is important to establish a foundation of trust with your prospective investors and to do this, you will need to express your company identity clearly while including your visions and values.
You should also emphasize your strategies and methodologies for transparency.
Adding a portfolio of previously successful commercial real estate projects can also help you establish your brand.
3 – Highlight your investment opportunity
Your commercial real estate pitch deck should lead and focus on one thing: the long-term investment opportunity.
To attract investors, you should help them visualize the project and understand how you can get results.
Your goal, at the end of your presentation, is for your audience to appreciate that investment proposal and to turn them into investors.
You can do this by presenting substantial hypotheses and strategies coupled with in-depth market analysis.
4 – Keep your presentation up-to-date
It is highly important to always read, review and revise your pitch deck often. Ensure that the information it contains is accurate, timely, and up-to-date.
If you are creating a deck yourself, keeping a PowerPoint presentation file that can be edited will help you save plenty of time.
5 – Invest in your pitch book
Among best practices when it comes to creating a pitch deck is to put in effort into it and personally invest in its design.
Invest your time in the graphics and research for market analysis and content. Pay attention to details and make sure it is organized.
You can also invest in seeking professional help to create a great commercial real estate pitch deck.
If PowerPoint presentation software is not one of your strengths, you may want to consider outsourcing this task to specialized professionals.
Most of the time, you only get one chance to display a commercial property pitch deck to an investor. There aren’t usually any second impressions when it comes to this industry.
If you find that you are struggling with getting the property presentations key details to be left out and you aren’t sure where you are going wrong, maybe it is time to approach a specialist.
What to avoid?
Crafting your pitch deck is a vital part of starting your commercial real estate project.
Watch out for some commonly made pitch deck pitfalls and get the property you are representing moving!
Don’t overload your presentation with data
Keep the relevant market data that will help you present your market analysis and hypothesis.
Other than that, try to not cite more figures and information that can diverge investors’ attention. You are in control of the presentation, make every piece of data support the next.
Keep your pitch deck straightforward, sharp, and realistic.
Don’t oversell it
Gauge the opportunity you are offering based on the current market conditions and factual property market predictions.
Don’t try to make your proposal bigger than it is as this will only make it difficult for you to provide the results that you presented.
Know when to engage a pro
Efficiency includes delegation and when you do not exactly have the time or expertise to create your own pitch deck, delegate.
Ask someone for help, or better yet, hire a professional team to do it for you.
Closing remarks
The real estate industry is evergreen, growing as the world relentlessly develops.
The commercial real estate sector is also set to advance. Don’t get left out of the race by having a mediocre pitch deck.
Get started on your pitch deck and be ready to win investors and clients for your next commercial real estate project.
Creating a pitch deck can be a tedious process, especially for real estate. From layout to design, down to the market and financial analysis, it will require effort, time, and creativity. Don’t get discouraged, and stay focused on the funding.
If you still need help in creating the perfect pitch deck for your commercial real estate project, contact us today to see how we can help you create a deal closing commercial real estate pitch deck.
Ready to get your Pitch Deck working for you?
About the author
Leslie Morales is the CEO of Launch Module and a Certified High Performance Coach. Learn more about Leslie and her team on our About Us page.
