From Half-Vacant to Owner-Occupied and Fully Leased

A practice that needed a building — and a building that needed a plan

The client was a veterinarian who wanted to own the real estate under the practice, not rent it. The building that fit — 1740 Waukegan Rd in Glenview — came with a complication: a main floor suited to the practice, seven offices upstairs, and roughly half the building sitting vacant. Buying it meant taking on vacancy, a build-out, and a leasing problem all at once. Most owner-occupants never get that far, because it takes more than a purchase contract to make a half-empty building work.

One broker carried every phase

Instead of splitting the project across a buyer’s agent, a project manager, and a leasing broker, Jason ran the whole arc himself: he located the property, negotiated and closed the purchase on behalf of the veterinarian, then managed a full build-out of the space. With the main floor secured as the owner’s practice, the upstairs stopped being a risk and became the upside.

The leasing strategy kept it simple — Hick’s law for tenants, too: rather than marketing seven small offices to seven separate users, Jason leased the entire top floor to one property-management company. One lease, one relationship, zero scattered vacancy.

A stabilized building that pays its owner twice

The result: a fully built-out building with an owner-occupant on the main floor and a fully leased, income-producing top floor. The veterinarian owns the practice’s home — and the seven offices upstairs work as an income stream instead of a carrying cost. Half-vacant at purchase; fully occupied at stabilization.