Building real estate deal flow: how Don Tepman gets brokers to call him first

Building deal flow has never been harder. In a recent Agora webinar, 70% of real estate GPs reported that sourcing qualified deals is their biggest challenge right now, while another 21% said they only see opportunities after competitors. In an environment where the buyer-seller spread has widened, and capital costs have risen, relying on passive inbox deal flow isn’t enough. 

To break down what works today, Agora sat down with Don Tepman, known to his 350,000+ followers on X as StripMallGuy. Don spent over two decades buying neighborhood strip centers, completing his first 30 acquisitions before building an online following. Below, we break down how Don gets deals in front of him before anyone else, what he looks for on-site, and what GPs should be doing differently today.

What real estate deal flow is and why it got harder

Don’s view is that finding deals that make sense is supposed to be hard, and that most competitors underinvest in it. While many GPs rely on free broker blasts, Don’s firm spends well over $1 million a year on sourcing, funded mostly by management fees.

Geography also stopped protecting local buyers. The old rule of buying within an hour’s drive faded once Google Maps arrived, since an investor in Chicago can pull an aerial of a Florida strip center in two minutes and bid against you the same afternoon.

How to build a pipeline brokers want to feed

Don’s approach starts with what you say and then turns to who hears it and how often. Each step below came straight from his own deals.

1. Write messaging a busy broker can remember

Brokers may know who you are, but they are not thinking about you. Don’s buy box fits in one line: Class B strip malls anywhere in America. He repeats it constantly because there are roughly 40,000 retail brokers in the US, and he wants the ones working strip centers to picture him the moment a listing lands on their desk.

The second line of the message explains why a broker should call you first. Don uses the word principal on purpose and often, because it tells a broker their fee stays whole with no buyer-side broker taking a cut. “Don’t assume brokers think that you’re not going to touch their fee,” he said.

Don’s message also tells brokers he will close. Sellers worry about being tied up in a contract and then hit with made-up reasons to lower the price or walk away, so brokers bring deals to buyers they trust to perform. Don remembered a buyer in the Bay Area from his brokerage days who wasn’t the easiest person to work with. Brokers kept bringing her deals anyway, because everyone knew she always closed.

Being easy to work with is part of the message too, and Don admits he doesn’t always get it across. When he recently went into escrow on a property in California, the broker offered to get inspections started. Don told him to just send the leases and information, and he’d see him at closing. The broker’s surprise told Don he hadn’t made that clear enough beforehand.

2. Name your audience and put it on a list

Once the message is set, decide exactly who hears it. Early on, Don’s entire market was Santa Clara County. He listed the 500 to 600 brokers handling retail sales and leasing there, plus about 3,000 owners, and pointed all of his resources at that group.

Owners received letters with a photo of their own property printed on the envelope. Don still sends a lot of outreach by FedEx, and he says those envelopes get opened almost every time.

3. Be the radio ad they can’t get out of their head

Growing up in California, Don heard the same jewelry store ad on the radio about ten times a day on the way to baseball practice. He was a kid with no plans to buy a diamond, yet he knew exactly where he would go when the day came. Brokers and owners work the same way: most have nothing for you today, and the buyer who stays top of mind gets the call when something comes up.

4. Measure the inputs you control

A target of ten deals a year depends on things you can’t control. Don’s team tracks activity instead, with every broker contacted at least once every 90 days and each acquisitions team member speaking with 50 different brokers a week. Your numbers will differ, so pick the inputs that matter for your firm, such as offers written per week.

A clean CRM makes this measurable. Don’s team recently used AI with their CRM to find active brokers they hadn’t spoken to in six months, and one check-in email surfaced an owner preparing to sell several properties. The other signal he watches is inbound calls. “If I go a week and no broker’s calling me, I’m freaking out,” he said.

How to screen deals without burning credibility

By Don’s estimate, 95% to 99% of the deals that come in are mediocre, so it isn’t worth digging into most of them. His firm filters at the top of the funnel using one number: price per foot, checked against an aerial of the property. That number only makes sense in local context. A deal at $400 a foot in Chicago would be high, but the same property in the Bay Area could be reasonable, with rent potential of $30 to $35 a foot.

If your outreach is working, you should have already seen most of the good deals before they hit the market. That way, the broker email blasts become a quick scan, and your underwriting time goes to deals you already know.

The harder call is moving fast without skipping homework. Don’s firm now pays for some due diligence before going into contract, which lets it offer sellers a shorter diligence period. He has also moved his own 90-minute deep review to before the offer goes out. Backing out after an offer gets around quickly among brokers, and it damages the surety-of-close reputation the whole system runs on.

How capital readiness changes your deal flow

Launching his first fund in 2021 changed who called Don. Larger, more institutional sellers started bringing him deals because a fund signals money that has already been raised and is ready to deploy. A fund usually carries a subscription line of credit as well, which Don sized at about a quarter of committed capital, secured by investor commitments and available within about a day.

One of his best deals came from a large institution whose executive got on the phone and asked questions only a real fund manager could answer, such as which lender held the credit line and how much capital had been called. Three years earlier, as a deal-by-deal buyer, Don says he would not have known how to answer, and the seller would not have picked him.

Committed capital brings its own pressure. Anyone can deploy money by being the highest bidder, and Don sees the real pressure as deploying it responsibly. He passes when a seller wants deposits to go non-refundable on day one, and he compares deal-count targets to retailers that promise 100 new stores a year before checking whether 100 good locations exist.

Advice for GPs earlier in their career

The audience Q&A drew answers worth keeping close if you are building your first pipeline:

• Treat every broker as a potential source. A leasing broker in a small market who closes one sale every five years may be as valuable as a high-volume institutional team, since bringing the deal to one buyer can let them keep their full fee.
• Get good at one niche in one area first. Pick the 50 to 100 brokers who cover it and talk to them as often as you can.
• Add owner outreach alongside broker outreach, especially when no leasing sign tells you which broker represents a property.
• Consider selling an early win after about a year. Realized results give investors a track record they can see, which makes the next raise easier.

How Agora helps GPs show up with capital ready

Don’s playbook has no shortcut in it. Clear messaging gets you remembered, and steady outreach to a defined list keeps your name in front of brokers on the day they have something to sell. The firms that win deals in this market are the ones still making calls after their competitors stopped. As Don put it, it’s supposed to be hard.

Agora makes the rest of running a fund easier, so more of your team’s time can go toward finding deals. Agora is the global operating system for real estate investment management. GPs use Agora’s fundraising and investor onboarding tools to move investors from interest to signed subscription faster, the investor CRM to keep LP relationships organized, and the back office for accounting, payments, distributions, and compliance. With those pieces in one place, a GP is 

Watch the webinar replay to hear the complete interview. If you’re preparing to raise or run a fund, talk to an Agora expert.

This article is based on an Agora webinar and is provided for general informational and educational purposes only. It does not constitute investment advice.