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Society of Industrial and Office Realtors® Foundation.
Promoting and supporting initiatives that educate, expand, and enrich the commercial real estate
community for 48 years. Sponsorships made possible by charitable contributions.
The SIOR Foundation is a 501 (c) ( 3) not-for-profit organization. All Contributions are
tax-deductible to the extent of the law.
The Evolving Role of a
Commercial Real Estate
Brokerage Company
By Steve Lewis
Whether it’s the economy or the maturation of the real
estate business—or perhaps both—many commercial real
estate brokerage firms are evolving to ensure their ongoing success. But while change is the constant, their strategies vary, as do their opinions of where brokerage firms
in general are headed. Some see the need to become more
global; others see a demand for more specialized expertise. They all agree that greater sophistication is required.
“We see more client-focused services over brokerage,”
says J. Rex Thomas, SIOR, CPM, chairman and chief exec-
utive officer of Grubb & Ellis|Thomas Linderman Graham,
in Raleigh, North Carolina. Our approach “has involved
the evolution of several different companies put together
through a series of transactions,” he says. “Professionals
within Grubb & Ellis Real Estate have been called ‘advi-
sors’ for about 10 years, and that says a lot about how they
view the world—client-focused, heavy on relationships,
not selling but helping people solve problems.”
“The days of the generalist have gone by the way-
side,” adds his partner John Linderman, SIOR, Grubb
& Ellis|Thomas Linderman Graham, in Raleigh, North
Carolina.
Real estate firms realize they have to have a multidisciplined approach, including geographic coverage and
actual professional services,” says David A. Bercu, SIOR,
a principal with Colliers International in Chicago. “As the
[business] world continues to be globalized, corporations
are looking for service providers to handle their real estate
needs around the world and disciplines including facility management, project management, capital markets,
receivership, investment sales, [and] distressed sales. All
are more prominent than they’ve been over the past 10
years.”
A more sophisticated, comprehensive approach is nec-
essary to succeed today,” Bercu continues. “The asset
management function of the business requires you to be
able to deal with distress situations and to rectify the prob-
lem and operate the property, create value, and dispose of
it or refinance it, and then do it again for another owner.”
“The most prominent trend I see,” says Geoffrey
Kasselman, SIOR, LEED AP, of Op2mize, Inc., in Des
Plaines, Illinois, “is a bifurcation of companies. On one side
is a globalized ‘good-at-everything depth-of-resources’
type of company—like CB Richard Ellis or Jones Lang
LaSalle, where they can really do anything and quite well,
have a lot of resources, and a sense of professional practice safety, which some brokers and clients really like.”
On the other side, Kasselman continues, “You have niche
firms with extreme expertise in fewer numbers of services
or skills. In the second mode you have an entrepreneurial
approach and can move quicker, and you can be profitable on small to mid-size pieces of business, where the
globalized firm needs a larger house split to be profitable.
Both are doing very well,” he notes, “and there’s room in
the market for both,
but the firms in the
middle seem to be
where the struggle
is, and individual practitioners
increasingly have to
align themselves.”
“The days of hanging
around the club
playing golf or going
to Rotaty meetings to
win business are over.”
