On April 1st I was invited to speak to the Harvard Business Club-Atlanta, on the topic of Crisis Real Estate Asset Management. As a landlord and career asset manager, I have been through 3 economic cycles affecting commercial real estate assets, and thus have been involved in working out many commercial income-producing properties with aggressive lenders, and nervous investors and tenants. My experience is with virtually every property type from tree farms, hotels, botique hotels, office buildings, retail, single-tenant retail, class A, B & C apartments and warehouse. This came in handy in the extensive questions/answer session with the audience at the end of this presentation.
The Harvard Business Club audience was a well-healed group of quality professionals, from a diverse group of professions – predominately in financial services and real estate. What surprised me was the number of audience participants who were looking to change careers and get into real estate asset management. Many were developers who had a good understanding of real estate from a developer perspective….and wanted to expand that experience into the asset management career.
My advise to these individuals was to grow your career from your position of strength. If your experience is development, there are many asset management positions that center around development. For example, banks that have taken over partially developed sites through foreclosure. Many of the banks are hiring professionals with this type of experience, and giving them the title of “Asset Manager”. Also, there are many properties that are coming on the market “for sale” that need major renovations. Developers can team up with financial guru’s and put their combined talents towards buying properties that can be value engineered through an intelligent redevelopment/rehab. A few of the participants immediately got the jest of the opportunity.
The presentation centered around managing income-producing real estate during an economic recession. There are nine critical areas of responsibility that encompass the role of the real estate asset manager, and the presentation went through each one of these nine areas with a summary of challenges during a down-market. Understanding the psychology of your (the asset manager’s) circle of influence is critical to sucessfully managing the assets. For example, know that your client/investor is very nervous about their investment. Accordingly, you should heighten your reporting to your client/investor with a strong asset management plan demonstrating the toolbox to manage your property to survive. I also suggest telling your circle of influence the truth about the key areas of the risk of owning real estate assets. The circle of influence includes your investor/client, lender, tenant, vendors and employees. A copy of this presentation is attached to this blog. More suggestions on how to manage properties in times of crisis is forthcoming.
Marjy
Crisis Asset Management-Harvard Business Club
Hi Marjy,
The timeliness and content of your Crisis Asset Management address at the Harvard Business Club Luncheon was well-received and was particularly apropos considering the challenges posed in the realm of toxic asset management.