How a commercial sale-leaseback works for operators

A commercial sale-leaseback is a two-step close, not a listing with a lease taped on later. First, you sell the fee interest in a cash-flowing property. Second, you lease that same property back, usually on a long-term triple net lease or absolute net form. Both steps happen together. If they do not, you have sold a vacant box or leftover landlord paper — which is a different, usually worse, trade.

You keep occupying and operating. The buyer owns the real estate and collects contractual rent. That split is why operators use the structure for expansion capital, a maturing loan, or a clean separation of the operating company from the dirt — the same two-step on restaurants, car wash, and auto service. American Net Lease advises on that trade. It does not make the loan.

Who holds what after closing

The operating company still runs the store. The investor holds the deed. Your occupancy cost becomes rent you authored, not a mortgage payment a lender reset. Residual value of the dirt moves to the buyer. Proceeds move to you, after existing debt is paid off at close.

The guarantee on the lease — operator or corporate — is what a net-lease buyer underwrites. The fascia on the building is not a substitute for that obligor.

What you are really selling

You are not selling “a building.” You are selling a lease the store can carry. Lease engineering — primary term, rent, rent coverage, escalations, and master versus individual leases — happens before marketing. The lease-terms brief walks those levers. The process page is the order of work: Read, Model, Structure, Market, Close.

A headline cap rate is not a price. Price is rent the unit can earn, capitalized. Size a first pass in the sale-leaseback calculator; do not paste a brochure band onto a store that has not been modeled. The commercial sale-leaseback guide is the pillar next to this walk.

Size a first pass in the sale-leaseback calculator, read the commercial sale-leaseback guide and the operator hub, then the Restaurants & QSR franchisees , Car wash , and Auto service & collision . When you want a confidential read on your own roofs, request a Portfolio Capital Analysis.