The next morning, he drove out to the property and parked on the far side of the street. The temperature was hovering near 20°. Light snow moved sideways in the wind. He sat in the car and looked at the building for approximately 15 minutes without moving. From the outside, it was, objectively, not impressive.
The roll-up door was visibly warped. Two of the four small windows on the side wall were boarded over. The roof had a visible sag at the eastern corner.
But Caleb was not looking at what was visible. He was calculating the dimensions, noting the concrete foundation, observing the way the structure sat on the lot and most importantly registering the address. He knew this intersection. He had driven through it dozens of times. He knew what was around it, what was adjacent to it, and he had a quiet but precise suspicion about what was coming to this part of the city within the next 12 to 18 months.
He called the number on the sign staked at the gate. He got a Harmon Capital assistant. He asked to arrange a viewing. The appointment was set for the following week.
Giselle arrived with three people, her assistant Adrian Cole, a structural engineer from a contracted firm, and a real estate attorney. She wore a caramel colored wool coat, heeled boots, and carried the particular expression of someone who has already decided the meeting is a formality. Caleb arrived alone. He wore his standard work jacket, carried a small spiral notebook, and showed up 2 minutes early.
When Giselle's car pulled in, she stepped out, looked around the property briefly, then looked at Caleb with the kind of assessment that takes about 3 seconds and draws conclusions from the wrong data. She asked him, in a tone that made her assistant smile, whether he was a mechanic or a scrap hauler. Caleb did not answer the question directly. He asked if he could see the inside.
Giselle unlocked the side entrance because the roll-up door was unusable and gestured for him to go ahead, then followed with her group. She narrated the defects almost immediately, the way a real estate agent narrates features, but in reverse. The roll-up door had been jammed for 3 years.
There were three visible structural cracks in the ceiling joists. The electrical was fully non-functional. A site assessment had identified possible foundation settling in the northwest quadrant.
She said her team valued the property, accounting for demolition costs, at negative $15,000. She said this clearly and without softening, as if making sure Caleb understood that he was not being offered a bargain, he was being offered a problem with a price tag attached to it to make the problem go away faster.
Caleb nodded slowly and walked into the interior. It was dark. He used the flashlight on his phone. He moved methodically from wall to wall, corner to corner, running his hand along the concrete block walls, looking up at the ceiling, crouching down to check the floor surface. He spent 12 minutes inside.