Entrepreneurial Real Estate, Brokerage, Development, and Site Services

My LA Info

… a licensed California Real Estate Broker since 1986

What I Do

What I Do

I am available, preferably by introduction, to provide select types of client services. I have an existing book of business with a number of closely held private partnerships - this steady foundation allows me to choose to work only with clients I respect and in situations where I am proud that I add value.

My independent brokerage allows me to offer different compensation structures unavailable to brokers who do not own their firms.

Experience: I have 30 years experience in Property Ownership, Development, Management, and Leasing for all classes of real estate.

Commercial Real Estate Brokerage and Oversight Experience

  • Office Building Leases of suites, floors in high-rises as well as office building sales to owner-users

  • Industrial Building Sales and Leasing

  • Retail Property Sales and Leasing from freeway frontage to Malls to Main-street Boutiques

  • Special use properties like Schools and Gas Stations

Residential Real Estate Brokerage Experience

  • Luxury Homes, especially where I grew up in or live now. Beverly Hills, Marina Del Rey/Venice, and Malibu.

  • Moderate and Low income apartments and rental homes - I have owned and know these types of properties from the time I spent cutting my teeth on them in my first 10 years out of Berkeley.

  • Vacation homes and rentals - These are viable options for investors to get their feet wet or to park money when good quality investment properties are overpriced or unavailable.

My Past Client Types:

  • Local Governments: I served been the sole representative in site acquisition for the County of Marin, helping them located multiple Library and Health and Human Service branch locations

  • Corporate Operations: Relocated and re-leased office floors for fortune 500 companies, and national chains.

  • FDIC and Banks: liquidation sales of repossessed properties

  • Entrepreneurial Business Owners: both buying and leasing their business locations - from building contractors to motorcycle dealers to insurance brokers to tech company owners

  • Highly Experienced Real Estate Investors: finding buildings with the best intrinsics for their investment partnerships to acquire - I am most flattered when the professionals call me to represent them - they understand the role a broker adds (like a good attorney will never have himself as a client) but they also have an enormous list from which to call from.

Ad-hoc Property Management Services

  • Event-based assistance and professional oversight assistance services (as described further in it’s own section)

  • I would like to grow this area of my daily efforts in ways that stretch and leverage my life-experience to the edges of the traditional real estate manager stewardship role.

My Enthusiasm:

I enjoy situations that draw upon my multi-faceted experience.

Ultimately, my satisfaction is as important to me as the money that I earn; My satisfaction is the greatest when my experience-derived input enhances value.

Real Estate Brokerage Services

Real Estate Brokerage Services

Full Service Investment sales and leasing services for experienced clients

  • Quality services take time and attention of the best people you can find and sometimes a cooperative arrangement between a local or specialist and a generalist.

  • Special properties need special attention, and don’t sell themselves and may benefit from consulting long before being brought to market.

  • The best values aren’t always listed or values as listed. Flawed Buildings are not good investments. Finding valuable properties often means finding a building not yet on the market or a plan to locate a tenant for a vacant building with a creative re-development plan that will always be in demand or more than meet your own companies or life needs if changes are made.

Negotiated commission brokerage services - “discounted” services or more aptly ‘fee allocations’:

  • direct transactions between owners of unlisted properties to facilitate an arms length transaction

  • ‘point and shoot’ situations where an experienced buyer has researched a market but desires an agent to share fee’s favorably with listing agent or licensed partners

  • add-value selection of local agents and property utility, amenity, and potential assessments compensated by referral fees.

(I do not “rent” my license or allow agents to ‘hang’ their license. If I am being paid as a broker, I need to be aware of the entirety of a transaction.)

On-Call Ovesight and Support

On-Call Ovesight and Support

a site related MacGyver?

Ad-hoc services.

Where I know I can add far more value than a pre-negotiated fee I offer

  • I have found that it is the most experienced investors who best understand the value in this type of service. Less experienced investors tend to think they know more than they do. The successful investors and developers that I learned most from over the years were always soliciting thoughts and ideas from experts around them, whether architects or plumbers or agents of all types.

  • Experienced investors have the self-confidence to want to hear what they might not be thinking of or various other ways someone else has seen things done - too many “yes men” are no help at all to them - they prefer to hear ideas that might run contrary, parallel, or augmenting to what they already knew.

  • Investors should have their attorneys review all deals of course. It is not always feasible to pay an attorney $400 an hour to be there when you visit sites, meet with contractors, or host events with potential partners. Nor do many attorneys really want to expand their advice beyond legal affairs to broader affairs like helping ask questions of your landscape architect or contractor to help catch misses or misconceptions in communications.

Value added examples

Cost Avoidance + Quality Enhancement On your Projects

20/20 hindsight and “if we had only known” - those were the “opportunities” to avoid mistakes I believe foreseeing those moments are where the lowest hanging fruit of long term wealth enhancement lies !

A very broad range of Roles

excerpts from California Department of Real Estate handbook’s guidance on the roles of a property manager:

Our role is to aid in maintenance and selection of contractors but not to warranty their work. Experience helps one know a few extra questions to ask a contractor for a more complete job and help even architects double check their plans.

Familiarity and training tenant service roles in buildings and mediating of tenant disputes and behavior is part of the job of the manager.

Some services might be as simple as receiving deliveries for tenants or transportation between owned properties. When these need to be discreet or require an extra experience based understanding paying more for experience is worth every cent.

Good Guy, Bad Guy and beyond - a “Consigliere” ? :

For established clients and partners there are services within the property manager role that walk a line between the skills of a transactional broker and those of the manager the agency role of collecting and transmitting information to and from ownership.

Without ever dipping into the specialized role attorney’s are trained for, a real estate broker can facilitate finding shared consensus between egos of entrepreneurs. Examples: serving as the social fall guy to ask the embarrassing questions that must be asked, be the one bearing bad news, and generally test waters without risk of implying his clients consent.

Additionally, an extra suit in the room can have it’s symbolic advantages and a second set of ears to answer a principals “did I hear that right, was that what he was getting at?” questions allows priceless input even for a principal of vast experience not looking for business advice.

Fees:

  • I am not currently offering hourly consulting, however, as of Spring 2019, my interest in participation starts at roughly of $1000 per 8 hour day of attention. Frequently that means a partial day at a location with subsequent follow-up discussions or research. At any given time I am to limit my involvement to a small handful of clients each using my services 10 to 20 times a year: an established rapport and familiarity with client priorities adds the most value and, my satisfaction comes from adding value. If it were not for the satisfaction of working with people I respect and enjoy, this rate would be too low.

  • all services will be invoiced as a business licensed in both Beverly Hills and as a California Real Estate broker.