Fuller Commercial Real Estate Greg Morris states that Commercial Real Estate is a In It For The Long Haul business. In other words, Commercial Real Estate- Long Time Commitment For Brokers

BrokerIPTV : We are talking today with Greg Morris, President and CEO of Fuller Commercial Real Estate. Greg thanks for being with us.

Greg Morris: Sure.

BrokerIPTV : Good to see you. If someone is out there thinking about getting into commercial real-estate, wants to be a commercial broker. How do they get started now?

Greg Morris: Well, first of all, it’s a long term commitment, its not something you go in for 3 or 5 years and then get out, because its not of residual value to it. The primary reasons people get into commercial brokerage is the upside in the incompetently number one, but also the autonomy. You are independent contract, you are out there on your own, you are almost your own boss, but the key to, two criteria for entry level brokerage is:

1. You have to specialize. It’s very very specialized, so its by product type. I am going to be industrial broker. I am going to work in the office market or in retail.

2. Just critical is being associated with mentor. Somebody’s experience chose in the business that can teach you the ropes, because there is not lot of structure training.

BrokerIPTV : I was going to ask you pros and cons. You have answered some of those is the con out there that people think when they think commercial still too long of a lead time. Its going to be a long time before I sell a property, how am I going to support myself?

Greg Morris: Well, there is no question about it. The entry level brokers will go two years before making any money at speaker and so the barrier to entry is very very difficult. So, it also a very left brain business, it’s a quantitative analytical business and coincidentally 90% of the commercial brokers are male and that’s because they are left brain thinkers and so, when you get in that business you better be in it for the long hall because its intensely competitive and its lot of times along between paydays.

BrokerIPTV : Who is the demographic that you are looking for in recruiting, or who is just the overall demographic of today’s commercial real-estate broker?

Greg Morris: We have a lot of success with universities. University of Denver has got a wonderful program, the real-estate construction management does cool as great and must have 5 or 6 people from there. Also University of Colorado provide some good hirers for us and then most recently CSUs Everitt School of Real-Estate, they are on the map and they are growing and so that’s what we primarily get our brokers and possibly rate the other brokerage houses be right.

BrokerIPTV : Is it difficult to find good town, right now?

Greg Morris: It all depends on your momentum, at Fuller we have a lot of great momentum, we have a great culture, we are great organization. So, we have a lot more demands than we have supply for slots, but in some brokerage companies who are not as strong or as present in the market, they got or had a tough time recruiting, I would imagine.

BrokerIPTV : You were just talking about specialty areas and I want to end with this. If I am a commercial broker watching this today and I got to come up with the business plan for ’08, what specialty should I be heading for?

Greg Morris: That’s a good question, I don’t think its important to pick the specialty, but once you get in and have getting associated with a team or a group to make sure they have a good force. We have saying at Fuller “A good broker makes money in any market.” So, the market you pick is not important.

BrokerIPTV : Got you. Greg, thanks for being with us, always enjoyed talking with you.

Greg Morris: All right sure.

2007

I was taking a look at the Upper end (Million Dollar Plus Denver Single Family Homes) housing market for Metro Denver and comparatively speaking, Denver's Million Dollar Plus market has only seen a slight edge down in pricing of just three (3) percent. The three quarter total sold average in 2007 was $1,622,550 and it looks like only a slight price dip to $1,568,801 for the first three quarters of 2008. Compared to areas in California, Nevada and Florida and soon New York, Metro Denver Million Dollar homes have fared fairly well.

The big negative numbers are really in the Denver Single Family sales volume and total housing units sold. Over all, the change in total number units sold is down 24% over all and the total sales volume is down almost 35%. That could explain that over all, the total days on market (DOM) has decreased overall from 161 to 156 days on the market. The 3 Million dollar and above Denver Housing market seeing a huge decrease for total days on market.

So it seems like the home owner equity is hanging in there. However, what I wondered was how much the Real Estate brokerage fees have dumped as a result of the 35% decreases in total sales volume. I used the recent Real Trends statistical average brokerage transaction commission of 5.1% and came up with $16,091,231 worth of real estate brokerage commissions. There you have it, about 16M of commissions into thin air! Thats a lot of cash to be absorbed by the high end real estate business community.

Based on 20-30% splits and 6% franchise fees....a whole lot less full page color newspaper advertising and color magazine inserts. Funny, the market conditions may actually help these companies dump the ego ads and go to where the buyers really are.

BrokerIPTV: We are at Inman Connect in San Francisco 2008 and I have Mike Bradley here and Mike I understand you were at... you were in the bulls[phonetic] session today.

Mike Bradley: Yeah, that was very interesting. Three positive people on the economy and three not so positive people talking about the economy.

BrokerIPTV: So, you remember the names of the one of the positive speakers?

Mike Bradley: I've no idea what their names were, but they are right along the same lines what I've been thinking. market is going to turn eventually. It is going to take another year or two, but you know one guy said something very interesting. He was talking about how banks are finally accepting short sales, foreclosures, and being much easier to work with than in the past and that is totally true.

BrokerIPTV: Wow. So, tell me about the pessimists in the group then.

Mike Bradley: Pessimists said that while that is open, it is still going to be three years to clear up the inventory and that is probably the case. You know there is a lot of foreclosures on the market and that has got to get cleared up and it has got slowed down with what is coming on the market at the same time.

BrokerIPTV: So, would they be in local market specifically they say in the US in general or were they picking on California, Florida?

Mike Bradley: They are pretty general. That is neighborhood specific. There is always hot spots that continue to go up, but even in New Port Beach and San Francisco Bay area, they are saying there is plenty of foreclosures and yeah, five years ago we had five year arms[phonetic] and record levels. Those are adjusting right now. So, there is just as many coming on the market where banks are finally working to clear them out the books.

BrokerIPTV: So, what do you see in say in your local market in Denver? You work Littleton, Highlands Ranch right?

Mike Bradley: Yeah. Littleton, Highlands Ranch, we are not nearly as bad as the nation. I think that the Denver area is one of the top communities to invest in right now, but we do have the same impact. Now, there are a lot of houses that are on the market, not selling and the buyers are following rather than leading. So, the price reductions are slow to come.

BrokerIPTV: Great. Well, thanks for talking with us today Mike. We appreciate your input and feedback.

Mike Bradley: Thanks [Inaudible]

BrokerIPTV: Today we are talking to Sandi Zimmerman, Chairman of the Board for Metrolist. Sandi welcome to the show, glad you are here.

Sandi Zimmerman: Yeah and thank you very much, it's nice to be here.

BrokerIPTV: Tell me about some of the advantages of Metrolist?

Sandi Zimmerman: We are the largest Metrolist here in the region and we have 18,000 members.

BrokerIPTV: Wow.

Sandi Zimmerman: We also have our own website called REColorado, which is a great advantage to all of our participants. They love that it gives more exposure to both their sellers, as well as near buyers they maybe working with and what they are looking for.

BrokerIPTV: Wow.

Sandi Zimmerman: We have 3800 people that have their own IDX sites. Now, another tool for us to get the recheck clients, whether they are seller or buyers or just the public that's out there kind of looking and saying "What's going on in colorado?" In our inventory we have the largest inventory around here with 18,000 members that also helps their inventory, which helps us with our buyers and sellers, right?

BrokerIPTV: Sure. As a member though I didn't know about REColorado?

Sandi Zimmerman: Really?

BrokerIPTV: Yeah.

Sandi Zimmerman: Oh, that's awesome REColorado is our own website that we update in everyday. We are actually uploading our all of the listings to go automatically out there for you.

BrokerIPTV: As a member, what services are available to me?

Sandi Zimmerman: We have the state of art training room. If we have been at Metrolist we got a great training and another thing that we also do deal with our staff now is coming out to a lot of the broker offices and doing the training that we have going on right now too. Our technical support I think support I think is fantastic. They are there 364 days out of the year. So, pretty much accept everyday, except the Christmas there. they are to help you if you have any problems and I think that's a huge advantage. I think our staff, we have a wonderful staff there. You talk to real people, that's one of the things I like whether it's the training or the staff, if you need help on any aspect, we got the courteous staff there that's helpful and if they don't know, they will find it out and get back with you. I think that's a another huge help that we have.

BrokerIPTV: In those classes are CEC credits?

Sandi Zimmerman: That's great too. Not all of them, but yes a lot of them are CEC credits and a lot of people don't know that. That's another thing that if you are needing that or one you think you are training and learning, as well as earning those credits, all in one.

BrokerIPTV: Yes. What are the tools are available to members?

Sandi Zimmerman: Well, we have a lot of different things that I... the most recent the Prime Access has just come out with its MS Virtual Earth mapping and that's fantastic. We are finding people just absolutely love the mapping. We also have showng assist, if your office uses showing assist or they may or may not even know about it, but that's another great way for people to use that and be able to setup appointments.

BrokerIPTV: I love showing assistant, if I don't have to pickup the phone and I can just click and make my showing appointment, that makes me so happy.

Sandi Zimmerman: You are right, it is so easy. Just go online, set them up, set it for [Sign] comes back to you, you know...

BrokerIPTV: Its half of my time?

Sandi Zimmerman: Yeah, sometimes even a more of your time I think trying to track back down the lock boxes or some even maybe didn't call you back or something along those lines.

BrokerIPTV: Yeah and I like the mapping, because when I am look up all of my potential listings and I am going to go out and take a look at, I can kind of see in relation on the map how far apart they are from each other.

Sandi Zimmerman: Exactly.

BrokerIPTV: helps a lot.

Sandi Zimmerman: And so many other things, I am not sure if you tried up. You know we now we have forms online, Instanet, as well as document management, the Instanet plus DocBox. That's another great tool that we have just come out with recently and we are getting a lot of really great feedback from that too.

BrokerIPTV: And all of this is available to me as a member for my normal monthly fee?

Sandi Zimmerman: We don't have any hidden cost, there is nothing there. All of this is free to you with that monthly fee.

BrokerIPTV: Sandi, thanks so much. Appreciate it.

Sandi Zimmerman: Thanks whoever there, it's a pleasure.

BrokerIPTV: Today we are talking to Sandi Zimmerman, Chairman of the Board for Metrolist. Sandi, thanks for being with us, glad you are here.

Sandi Zimmerman: Thanks Dan. Good to see again.

BrokerIPTV: We all know about or at least if you are real estate agent, you are in the business, what Metrolist can provide agents, but what if you are an online buyer and you want access to Metrolist, what could they do?

Sandi Zimmerman: We own our own website called REColorado.com. That would be one of the ways that people could be on and search very specifically here in Colorado area. We also everyday turn in our realtor listings to realtor.com, since that the number one website through the net... through out the United States, that's another great website, that they chose to use to. We have 3800 people just right here with Metrolist that have their own IDX websites. So, they have created themselves, so they also... that's another great way to get that to their buyers or their sellers and get information out to them that they maybe wanting to get to them.

BrokerIPTV: When I was building my website, I wanted to have listings on my website, so I got a third party provider to give me IDX listings, but for people who don't know IDX is, can you explain?

Sandi Zimmerman: Well, IDX stands for Internet Data Exchange. Basically what that does is that, it does give you exactly what you said. The opportunity for you to display other broker's listings on your website and the advantage to you is about your sellers. So, in all place they love that. To your buyers, they can search there and be able to go on and see that, but one of the things with IDX is, it is not 100% of listings. We do have some people that have the right if they want to "opt out" whatever. So, that's one of the things with IDX that we are trying to get across to people is that, when you are searching in an IDX site, that is not searching the MLS.

BrokerIPTV: I have the option of doing actives, solds and under contracts, but I am not doing the last two. I am only doing actives. So, everybody's IDX can be a little bit different.

Sandi Zimmerman: You can create your package however you want it and there are people who want to do just active like you are, but we are the only MLS right now that does have under contracts and solds and there are lot of people that love that. there is a lot of the public that actually likes that they are getting that accurate information, but still some of the other areas that indicates, you have seen don't necessarily always have the correct accurate information. We do have it on there and that could be an advantage, but the great thing about your website is you can create how you want it to be.

BrokerIPTV: But there are some new rules in place regarding IDX and which you can and cannot do, is that right?

Sandi Zimmerman: That is correct. In our new rules you may not say "Search the MLS". You may say "Search IDX MLS," but we don't want them, [Inaudible] construe to the public that they think they are searching the Multiple Listing Service when they are not searching 100% of the MLS and that's the reason that the rules gone into place.

BrokerIPTV: Since I get my services from a third party provider, are they already in compliance with this a head of time?

Sandi Zimmerman: They have already all been told that exactly what's going to be happening, when it needs to be done by? We have sent out letter to all of them and letting them know what the changes are and when that has to be done? We are also doing followup calls to each of them too, so that they are aware of it. As long as our own participants, because you know depending not everybody has a third party, some of them done their own or whatever, so every single person will be aware of that, so that they do make the changes in the proper time.

BrokerIPTV: Why were these requirements put in place what happen?

Sandi Zimmerman: Well, part of it came from National Association of REALTORS®. NAR has... its one that came down with this first, so we jumped on the bandwagon right away, so that we could get this taken care of. Truly we more than anything you do now, want to best construe to the public that they are doing something other than what they are. When you say search the MLS they think they are searching every listing and they are not. So, that's one of the main reasons that we are putting that into place.

BrokerIPTV: Sounds good. Thank you very much. Good information.

Sandi Zimmerman: Thank you too.

BrokerIPTV: Appreciate it and Thank you for stopping by.

Sandi Zimmerman: Thanks.