My Experience As A Commercial Real Estate Broker

malincapital

Hi, 
I wanted to take the time to share my experiences, since most of this site is about those in high finance and not so much about CRE Brokers. 

Part A: 

I started university at age 18 studying biology, took me 2.5 years to realize I hate this and instead enjoyed business. My father encouraged me to get my realtor licence as a way to make a few bucks selling homes while I was in university. After I took the commercial realtor course I quickly enjoyed the content and knew that I'd rather sell income producing assets rather than homes. While I studied for my realtor license, I was also studying to transfer into a top 8 business school in Canada so that I can have a better shot at private equity/investment banking out of undergrad. 

Took me around 4 months of speaking with many CRE brokers as I was trying to land a position at a top 4-6 brokerage while I was in school. Not surprised that everyone of them said to come back once I graduated. At this time I 1,000% believed that I needed to be at a prestigious brokerage in order to do well and ignored the unknown brokers, until I met a broker who didn't care about brand and ran a one-man brokerage house out of his home (little did I know ~ He was well connected). 

I worked as broker for my first 1-2 years while in university and spent another 2-3 years after graduation as a broker. 

Part B ~ 

I started as a CRE broker with 2 industry veterans with AMAZING connections, this is the biggest edge you can have in an advisory industry. 

To give you an idea ~ My partners were well connected to guys who can buy up $4B worth of properties in a single year. 

This was one of the luckiest opportunities I got so I had to take it over a gig at CBRE. 

We 3 formed a team at a no-name brokerage and started finding good properties to sell across Canada, US, & the UK via soliciting real estate funds, it took me 9.5 months of soliciting, have deals fall apart and making embarrassing mistakes to finally close $250m at 2% commissions in my first year (I walked away with $1.25M). This was a huge moment for me and at this point I realized that I don't need to get a gig at a Investment bank or a Private Equity firm after graduation. 

2nd year in the business ~

I wanted to create a business and become an operator and so I did what many do... form a boutique brokerage house. 
Long story short, I formed a brokerage house of only 6 brokers (including me) and hired a handful of ex-REIT guys.

In 4.5 years since starting the brokerage, our team sold approx. ~ $2.6B in total sales and maintained a profit margin of over 79% 

Some metrics about our firm

Annual revenue ~ $15M

Annual profit ~ $11-12M 

Annual personal income ~ $4.8M 

Sold for $144M w/ 40% ownership 

Walked away with $78m after leaving the business 

We sold Multifamily, Industrial, Office, & Retail assets 

My partners and I ran the firm for a few years until we decided that we wanted to leave and do other things. So, we started soliciting PE funds for a acquisition, our operations had been running well from the beginning and so it wasn't too difficult to sell the business at a 12X EBITDA multiple. 

Part C ~ Where I am now ~ Age 28+

Now, I'm currently take a break since I sold my firm a  month prior. Currently at home with my extended family and wife. 
I plan on buying value-add properties and companies as Joint partner with PE funds with $500M - $1.5B in total AUM. 

I too had many ups & downs during this job and would like to openly talk about some.

My biggest loss:

My team and I got an opportunity to represent a foreign fund to sell their $1.75B multifamily portfolio of 14,000 multifamily units in the US. 

It was a difficult ask and we couldn't transact, although we did get a fund to put in an offer. 

    - We lost out on a huge deal which still stings to this day. 

My biggest win: 

My team was able to convince a MD at Brookfield Asset Management on how we would to bring offers on their portfolio of asses. 

Brookfield decided to allow us to sell a portfolio of $600m worth of diversified assets across the US. This deal took us only 2 months to transact on as we had buyers ready to deploy the capital asap.  

Lessons learned, 

Opportunity knocks on your door only a few times in your life and at VERY unexpected times and so you need to be ready to open to door. 
Opportunities can come to you while you're in school or when you're in your 40s, BUT don't say no without listening! 

Thank you for reading, 

Have a great day 

Nicely done troll