Starting a Real Estate brokerage

Hey... 

So, I'm working with some friends I used to work with in private equity and a few other brokers to open a brokerage firm. We're all currently located across the country and are looking to co-locate somewhere.  As you can imagine, everyone thinks their hometown is best (well, not the Detroit guy, but office space is cheap there). We're planning on working on national retail and industrial assets -- probably for the larger family office/institutional side. 


So, the questions are as follows: 

1.) Which city do you think is best to open our first office? Current list is:

  • Newport Beach, CA
  • Century City, CA
  • Chicago, IL
  • Birmingham, MI
  • Bloomfield Hills, MI
  • New York, NY
  • Boston, MA

2.) We're currently torn on the vibe of the firm. 90% of us come from stuffy finance firms so we're pretty comfortable with that. However, there's definitely some interest in giving the firm a more friendly, start-up vibe. We're thinking of this from a client's perspective, recruiting standpoint, and a personal sanity viewpoint. What's your thoughts?

 
Most Helpful

As far as Office, that question is nearly unanswerable as it's going to depend entirely on where most of your business will come from.

As for the culture, I couldn't care less what your office does when I'm not there. Personally I favor the more casual approach, but there are definitely some old timers who value the suit/tie or at least business casual aesthetic. Our firm is more casual unless we have clients coming, which has seemed to work well.

Edit: I'm personally biased toward the west coast so I would open in CC/Newport for the lifestyle/weather, but again really matters more where your clients are going to be.

 

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