INDUSTRY INTERVIEW
...‘taking care of the client’...
Michael Hill Properties
as they started their careers, and they’re talking about utilizing their experience in the CRE field to mentor others. Have you observed mentoring to be important in CRE in terms of ‘staying power’ and effectiveness and job satisfaction?
Mike Hill, Michael Hill Properties
RN: Tell me about your CRE career path and your focus on industrial real estate? Mike Hill: Back in 1970, I was working as a self-employed headhunter and a friend, in the same business, and I wanted to go together and form a new company. However, he decided not to do our business together and told me about a real estate company he was going to work for, Coldwell Banker, which was just moving into Houston from the west coast. Their reputation being known out there as a well thought of company, and after research, was attractive to me. So was the starting salary of $600 a month and in 1970, that was a lot of money! They offered me either office leasing or industrial brokerage, and I thought industrial sounded good, so they gave me a desk and said, ‘go do it’. There was no training program. Back then we all believed that if a person could sell, he could sell anything. And that’s true, but you still have to develop a knowledge base about your product. I started out sitting behind a guy named Phil Kennedy and I asked him questions all day, every day, until one day he turned around and yelled at me, “Don’t ever ask me another question.” By that time, I had gleaned much of the information that I needed to survive. Today, my philosophy is that the most successful industrial broker is the one who can lease property, sell property and promote investments. The broker needs to know the properties well enough to explain to an investor exactly why this particular property is the one he or she needs to buy. My staying power in the field, I think, is directly related to the fact that I have tried to take a technical approach to the business and my priority has always been taking care of the client for the long haul. RN: Many of the experienced brokers are talking about the importance of having a mentor
16 REDNews.com
Mike Hill: Over the course of about thirty years, I’ve been very involved in training young individuals coming into the CRE field. Right now I’m mentoring four young guys who are actually from different real estate firms. Steve Jaggard, a good friend, who ran Vantage Co. called them his “Young Bucks”. Back in the ‘70s, I started training/mentoring sessions with a series of CRE cassette tapes that were just a step up from the old eight-tracks. In regard to the technical side of Industrial, there is so much to learn. All of us learn something every day from what we do; that process never stops. RN: How has the CRE field changed during your years within the profession? Mike Hill: In a word, technology. When I started in the business, we did our available properties database with sheets of paper in books, not on computers. We had about twenty books, lined up on the back of the filing cabinet. That was our database. RN: I also remember those days. REDNews’ first “database” was a rolodex of 2,000 cards. Mike Hill: From time to time I still refer to those old books. I tried to digitalize all of the pre-computer era history, but the task was too monumental. I actually helped start the industrial database for CB Commercial and I still use that today. When The Commercial Gateway originally started their available properties activity, I had the opportunity to help them get that going. Then and now, I track every available freestanding building in Houston, for sale or lease, if a size is over 10,000 square feet. It’s an invaluable resource. I receive between 100 and 200 emails a day, and I’m constantly looking at my inbox and asking, “Okay, is this something I keep or throw away?” When a client walks in the door and says, “I’m looking for (as an example) a 50,000 square foot office/warehouse building in northwest Houston and I need rail, dock high loading, and an ESFR sprinkler system, I’m on top of it. In about 12 seconds I can pretty much tell my client what’s out there. My database is unique in that I have about 30 different descriptive criteria loaded for each available property, and each of those criteria is searchable. The biggest problem I have is keeping up with sold and no longer available properties. My secretary and I are constantly watching the sales in the newspaper and industry journals, as well as calling
around to brokers and getting updates. Most of my current clients are people I’ve worked with before. I also have found myself specializing somewhat by the use of the property. I’ve done a lot of work with the food storage and distribution industry (refrigerated properties), electronics, manufacturing, crane serve building. I’ve also done some work on the Ship Channel. My clients still expect me to remember the details of a deal I did for them, maybe back 25 years or more, and I’ve still got all of the information right there to refer to. I keep everything having to do with done deals.
Over the course of about thirty years, I’ve been very involved in training young individuals coming into the CRE field. n
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RN: What do you see that your competitors are doing and how would you do it differently? Mike Hill: It’s this observation that makes mentoring young people coming into the profession important. And I’m not just talking about teaching someone the basics of the profession; it needs to be the entire picture. I see some really terrible presentations on properties that are done by guys who don’t think detail and form is important; they just put something out there which, in my opinion, is totally sub-standard. This is one aspect of our profession that really hasn’t changed much at all. Yeah, technology makes how we do our jobs different, but the ability to carefully present a comprehensive picture of a property, one that tells cooperating brokers and prospective buyers as much as possible about the features, assets and possible liabilities of a property is, in my opinion, a really important key to marketing industrial real estate. Time matters, so when we communicate with each other and with the client, we have to do a good job of it. The Houston commercial brokers and our clients are busy, and if a CRE professional makes an incomplete, sloppy, obscure presentation, the recipient will certainly not be impressed. RN: Why did you write the blog on your website about Robert Clay of Clay Development?