MONDAY, FEBRUARY 08, 2010
by Dan Rafter |
| Jeff Berg |
Jeff Berg, senior vice president and principal with Kansas City, Mo.-based LANE4 Property Group, has worked in commercial real estate for two decades. He hasn't yet lost sight of what attracted him to this business 20 years ago: No two days are alike. There is always a new challenge. And it's impossible to get bored.Midwest Real Estate News: How long have you been involved in commercial real estate, and what led you to this career?
Jeff Berg: I started in the business in 1989 as a real estate attorney. Right before then, the real estate market was going great guns. Law firms had real estate development and other work. By the time I took the bar and joined my firm in 1989, the real estate market had tanked. I continued to do work in the real estate department, but I was more focused on workouts, loan modifications and bankruptcies. I didn't find this as intrinsically interesting as transactional work. I was more interested in actual deal creation, project creation.
MWREN: Did you make a move then?
Berg: I went to work as an in-house real estate attorney with one of the firm's clients that was also based in the Kansas City area, Applebee's International. There, I handled all aspects of company-owned real estate. At that time, the company developed and operated a lot of its own restaurants. The problem was, I didn't make all that much money. It was a blast. The people I worked with, the brokers and developers, though, were having more fun and making more money. I decided to go and join them.
MWREN: How did that move go?
Berg: It seemed easier from the outside than it actually was. As an attorney, you'd see the closing statement. You'd see a big fat fee for the broker. You didn't realize as the attorney that the broker was sharing it with four other people, eight other people. You didn't realize that the broker had five, 10 other deals die in the meantime. What looked very lucrative and easy from the attorney's perspective, when you did it yourself you realized that it was much more difficult.
MWREN: It may have been difficult, but you've stuck with it. You must enjoy the work.
Berg: I still love it. I have not looked back. There is a common thread among most of the profiles in your magazine about how hard it is to get started in this industry. I will echo that. I was fortunate that when I left Applebee's, the company was kind enough to continue using me in a brokerage capacity. I had four or five of those deals in my first years. They kept me afloat during those early lean years. I thought when I'd left Applebee's that I'd saved enough money to get through a full year. But I already had a nice house payment, a car payment. I was getting down in my finances. Then stuff started trickling in. It was lean, though, those first few years.
MWREN: Where did the hope come from in those early years?
Berg: I had great mentors, especially at CB Richard Ellis where I got my start. The hope came from watching others and their success. I did have confidence in myself that I would be able to achieve the same success. I really loved what I was doing, too. I worked hard. If you love what you are doing and you work hard, and you work with a fair amount of smarts and discipline, you should be able to eventually cross that threshold where it becomes easier, when you realize that, yes, you can make a living year after year. I knew that I had made the right choice in entering this business.
MWREN: What do you enjoy most about this business?
Berg: No two days are alike. There is something, a new challenge, a new project, a potential new deal, happening every day. There is a new relationship to build every single day. I'm not a guy who could go and do a job that forced me to work on the same project and do the same thing every single day. This job allows for a lot of creativity. I need creativity in my life. This job really allows creative people to thrive.
MWREN: What are the more challenging parts of this career?
Berg: The biggest challenge is reinventing yourself. You can't keep doing the same things that made you successful over the past decade. You basically have to reinvent yourself in your career all the time. That is a challenge. There is a requirement in this business to push yourself to open new doors. Just when you think it is getting easier, it's back on the road again, reinventing yourself and opening up new practice areas.
MWREN: Can you give me an example of how you have done this, how you have reinvented yourself?
Berg: I have done, and still continue to do, a lot of tenant representation for national retailers. Now with a lot of the national retailers slowing down, I have to go back to my roots as a listing agent. Not that I ever abandoned that, but I do have to shift back into that. I was 75 percent tenant rep and 20 percent landlord rep. Those percentages might be reversing now. I am getting more involved in financing and acquisitions and investment. A lot of distressed properties are opening potential investment opportunities. In a way, it's almost fortunate that I am not spending as much time on tenant representation but instead on other areas that are at least as lucrative.
