On Wednesday, January 6th we kicked off the 2021 NextGen year with our broker session. Many thanks to Mike Testa with Wangard Partners for his hard work with the NextGen program and for moderating this session. Thank you to Alyssa Geisler with CBRE, Jeff Hoffman with Cushman Wakefield | Boerke and Ross Koepsel with Founders 3 Real Estate for participating in the panel.
All panelists agreed that creating value is of utmost importance for your clients. To provide value, you must become an expert in your niche, your vertical and your field. In order to be the best facilitator and conduit for information, you must understand your local communities, processes, governments, policy etc. Take this potential “downtime” to study and research your market becoming an expert behind the scenes.
When asked what the reoccurring hurdles are in CRE, panelists felt that it was related to relationships. It is important to take the time and create relationships with your clients, but you must understand that this industry is volatile and people move on. Understand that a deal that you’ve invested a lot of time in, may fall apart to no fault of your own…you just need to understand this is your job. You are there to assist and guide people to their own conclusions. Do not tell them what to believe. Give them the assistance and guidance to get a deal done.
When asked what is the outlook for the next two months and two years, the answers varied greatly by asset class. Industrial is the current darling with a massive inflow of investor driven funds. People who have assets are coming out stronger than ever and looking for investments. With the push to e-commerce industrial is booming and will likely stay that way for the next two months and close to two years. Retail is a mixed bag, there is now overlap into industrial that we’ve never seen before. Many tenants can no longer pay rents which is a negative, but they are seeing an increase in coastal investors. Ross felt that two months from now will be ok as long as there are no other shut downs and two years from now should be even better. Office probably has the toughest outlook as two months don’t look very different from today. Buyers are always looking for the value add deals. There is currently a lot of inventory that needs to be filled. Milwaukee is currently seeing only 20% occupied space of what is leased. Hopefully in two years, you will see absorption in the market. Suburban Milwaukee will likely remain stable and downtown tenants will return to downtown once they can safely return.
What makes a successful broker?
- Good communication and always being prepared
- Look at problems from all different angles and find ways to solve problems to get deals across the finish line
- Creativity and flexibility
- Being motivated is great, but being disciplined is better. Discipline is what differentiates long term success between temporary motivations
- Be humble, you are only as good as your current actions, what you did in the past no longer matters