The Acquisition Process: How I Grow a Real Estate Platform

It is September 8th. You have 16 weeks left in the year, and if you are like most operators I talk to, you are behind on the growth you planned in January.

Here is the math. A deal you see for the first time this week almost certainly does not close in 2026. An operating asset with a 30-day diligence period and a 30-day closing could close this year if everything goes perfectly. A land deal that needs city approvals is a 2027 story. So the rest of 2026 is not decided by what you find. It is decided by what you already have in hand, and by what you walk away from to focus on the deals that will close.

That is the first lesson of growing a platform. The second I learned inside institutions: capital will fund a deal once, and it comes back for a process. Your process is your credential. I have grown 3 ways, developing on land, acquiring operating assets, and partnering with other operators to do both, and every one of those paths runs through the same acquisition process, built on 20 years of experience. Here it is.

In 2024 I closed 165 keys across 2 Choice branded hotels in Georgia on the process below. I have run a similar process throughout my career at Brookfield and Lidl platforms and refined it over time. Every deal moves through the same steps, right-sized to the path. A land development deal takes longer than buying an operating building. Here it is on the longer path, land.

Stage 1: site identified to a signed letter of intent (LOI). Typically 4 weeks. Find the site, run a market study, and build 3 things a committee can read in 5 minutes: a one-page summary, a first-cut operating plan and budget, and a financial projection (the proforma). Committee says yes or no, then you negotiate the LOI. Signed, or walk away.

Stage 2: LOI to a signed purchase and sale agreement (PSA). Typically 4 more weeks. The PSA goes out and gets negotiated while diligence is planned in 4 parallel lanes: real estate, development and construction, asset management / operations, and legal. One owner per lane. The investment memo goes to the board before signing, not after. Board says yes, or the deal dies.

Stage 3: under contract to closing. On land, typically 6 months to more than a year. Due diligence first, typically 30 to 60 days, cheap items before expensive ones, with the financing contingency, your right to exit if the loan falls short, inside that window when you can get it. Before diligence expires, the committee decides to proceed or exit. After it expires, you are obligated to close once the remaining conditions, mainly city approvals, are met. Entitlements, the city's approvals to build, take 90 days to a year. Closing follows, typically 30 days after approvals, behind the biggest vote in the process: buying the land and committing to build.

One note across all 3 stages. The more authority the committee gives you in advance, the faster you move, for example submitting an LOI without a vote. That trust is built over time, and the more capital a step commits, the more the committee will want its approval rights.

The 4 weeks to an LOI and 4 more to a PSA apply to an operating asset too. Only stage 3 changes: a stabilized hotel, apartment building, or shopping center comes with a package, you can offer within days, and under contract you typically get 30 to 90 days of diligence and a 30-day closing, about 120 days at most. Every timeline depends on what you negotiated in the PSA.

Bad deals should die as early as possible, at the cheapest point on the cost curve, because every stage costs more than the one before it. Two checks make that possible, most operators skip them, and both belong before the LOI.

Capital certainty.

1. Is the equity committed in writing, from a named source, or is it still a conversation?
2. Has a lender quoted this deal at today's rates, in writing?
3. If the lender comes in short, does the equity cover the gap?

Hope is not a source.

Post-closing capacity.

1. Who runs this asset on day 1, and is that person named in the plan?
2. If the answer is you, what stops, or what capacity do you add, and is that cost in the projection?

This week, 3 questions.

1. Which live deal can still close in 2026? Only one with a signed LOI, and more likely one already under contract. Be honest about the equity, lender, and city approvals.
2. Which deals do you walk away from this week? You know which deals you are stretching to close and cannot execute if December 31st is your deadline. Extend the closing date or cut them.
3. Who owned each delayed step on your last 3 deals? If the same name appears each time, that person is the constraint. If it is your name, you are.

Here is what changes if you run this.

The goals you missed this year were missed when the deals that would have closed by December never entered stage 1. Growth lags the process by the length of the process: about 4 months on the shortest path, 8 months to more than a year on land. That is the reason to start now, with 16 weeks left.

Run it this fall, and here is what you can check in January.

1. You enter January with deals in stages 2 and 3, not a blank pipeline and a resolution.
2. Your committee, your lender, and your equity see the same file every time. The second equity check does not need a second pitch, because you proved the process the first time.
3. You stop being the constraint. The process carries the deal between decisions, and your time goes to the 3 things only you can do: the relationship, the negotiation, and the decision to walk away.

Deal flow is not growth. Closed, funded, and repeatable is. The operators who hit their 2026 and 2027 goals will be the ones who put the right deals into stage 1 this fall and walked away from the rest.

-Damon

Damon C. Healey, Founder, Eternal Companies

I help proven real estate operators build the institutional platform that makes capital come to them.

If you want to pressure-test your platform against an institutional standard, that is what a Platform Edge Session is built for. Book a Platform Edge Session | Get the 2026 IC Stress Test​

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