What are 3 tips you can share with our readers as it relates to your industry?
When it comes to commercial real estate, careerwise, it isn’t location, location, location – but rather: persistence, persistence, persistence. Many well-intentioned professionals have ventured into commercial real estate brokerage, but without persistence – it’s really, really, really difficult to have complete achievement. Ultimately, and in all fairness, there are instances when extenuating circumstances are such that the attainment of success, even moderate success, becomes exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to complete.
What inspired The Broker?
Unlike my first book, which was about the real estate implosion of 2008, The Broker takes a unique turn and focuses on society’s ills as it relates to racial relations – which could not be timelier. Much of this having to do with me being raised by an Italian Jew Mother and Black Christian Father. In the mid-nineties, the brokerage I worked for in Los Angeles, Marcus & Millichap, wherein I was in the running for Rookie of the Year in 1997, had a potpourri of ethnicities. I actually wrote it in 2008 in just three weeks, but quickly put it aside and wrote and published The Flip in 2010.
And to be clear, The Broker is more real estate book than society ills. It epitomizes the 80/20 rule in terms of reading content. There are many stories on brokers stealing deals from each other, undermining clear-to-close escrows, and other entertaining situations. It’s 436 pages, for Christ’s sake! With its own glossary of terms. In some respects, the book might be boring to some – if you’re not into cold calling techniques, listing properties, and other fun stuff.
Tell me a little bit about your background and how you ended up choosing your field?
It comes down to three market expertise areas, if you want even to call it that and can be grouped in a broad umbrella. Underneath that umbrella is the following: 1) Mortgage operations, 2) Residential real estate investment, and 3) Commerical real estate brokerage.
Will commercial real estate brokerage be affected by the plague?
Short answer, Yes. Long answer, Yes again. This especially so in the shopping center retail space. Restaurants are dependent on the residual income of an affluent society. America is an affluent society. The per capita for nearly every societal accouterment is off the charts. The overabundance of restaurants, gyms, spas, grocery stores, and even tire repair shops pale compared to other societies and even Western Democracies. Ergo, America has suddenly realized it doesn’t need as many restaurants as it thinks it needs, when you consider eating at home is more economically sane – in a time of uncertainty.
My informational sources, such as quarterly reports from Deloitte & Touché and the CCIM (Certified Commerical Investment Managers), indicate that office space (for very obvious reasons), retail, multi-family are in for a rough patch in the next 18 months to mid-2022. But for industrial and warehouse space, life is exceptionally great. The need to stockpile resources and provisions for consumers is fairly apparent.
On a miscellaneous note, home sales – which is not connected to commercial real estate, but is residential real estate, is doing exceptionally well. This robust disposition results from many Americans with abundant resources (and job stability) that enables the purchase of homes and/or an upgraded home. This is also part-and-parcel in fear of rising interest rates; the need for ownership, personal space, and solitude; and likely a bunker mentality – wherein existentially some fear that hordes of people will desperately roam for food in a Dawn of the Dead fake realism (and from the overload of cable news) – but superficially there is no threat, but only in one’s own psyche. It’s important to keep in mind that despite the chaos, the unemployment rate is still only 6.7% as of November 2020.
The Broker is available on Amazon: Hardcover, Paperback, and Kindle Edition.
