Pushing Dirt

I haven’t seen many residential agents make the transition successfully to commercial real estate. I believe it can be done, but you need to consider the following guidelines:

1. You need to make a clean break of it. Successful commercial agents don’t do any residential work. None. Never say never, but none of the top agents in my market try to do both.

2. Take your picture off your business card, even if you are cute

3. Determine an area in which to specialize. First, sales or leasing? Next, what product type? Retail, office, industrial, etc?

4. Take some professional training. SIOR, CCIM, and ULI all offer great basic training for commercial agents.

5. Train under a senior agent. We used to call this job a runnership (run for coffee, run for dry cleaning, but mostly just run to show property again and again and again). You won’t make much money for that year of running, but if you’re working under a capable agent, you’ll learn everything you need to know.

6. Remember to think big. It takes the same time and energy to execute a 10,000 sf or 100,000 sf lease as a 1,000 sf lease. In the first year work on whatever you can get, but once you ramp up, focus on finding transactions or listing assignments that will bring in a least $100,000 in gross commissions.

7. Dial for dollars. Cold calling works wonders in commercial real estate, and business to business calling I believe is much easier and more pleasant than calling on homeowners at their houses.

8. Remember that unfortunately the commercial real estate business is still dominated by men. It’s a shame, but if you’re a woman, you may find some advantage in negotiating with men because of it if you’re not intimidated. CREW (Commercial Real Estate Women) is a great organization providing networking opportunities for women in the business.

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They never appreciate in value. Never never never. Research research research. buyer beware.

I spoke with a REIT executive who confirmed my impression that the days of bidding wars for commercial real estate, even in the hot Washington DC market, are over for now. Where once brokers set bid deadlines and were assured of a dozen offers, brokers are now “quietly marketing” properties to a handful of buyers. The fear? No one wants to strike out, end up with no offers for their building, and be embarrassed.

The parallel is the residential side where once brokers could have an open house on Sunday, set a bid deadline of 7 pm on Monday, and count on a bidding war.

I made a foray into trulia.com. can’t see using it to search for my next home.

maybe the same people who make their own beer will enjoy slogging through these incomplete listings of a handful of the properties that are on the market on their own, drifting through the wind without a sale (no pun intended).

Amazing that even in this day and age they have managed to raise $18 million that has clearly been squandered on worthless gimmicks like a “heat map.” Exactly what value does the $18 million heat map have to me as a home buyer? Zilch. Smoke and mirrors, ladies and gentlemen.

The realtor.com (found via Microsoft’s MSN real estate site) has 52 listings in my zip code. Trulia? 15.

The grand total of real estate experience on Trulia’s leadership team? Two years and 10 months.

The commercial world needs a free service like this because there’s no true multiple list in our world. Trulia defines superfluous.

Go ahead. Persuade me I’m wrong.

I have every exclusive listing professional photographed.

Jim Oesch, one of the best commercial real estate photographers in the country, charges me well less than $1000 to shoot a building. Jim is flown all over the country to shoot buildings.

He makes buildings look so good, I’ve actually got complaints from prospective buyers: “the building doesn’t look nearly as good in person!”

I argue your marketing materials not only sell your listing, but win you your next one. Whether we’re talking about a residential commission (in the five figure range) or a larger commercial sale, it’s money well spent.