Tips From a Commercial Agent
BY MELANIE ROBITAILLE SR. STAFF WRITER & GRAPHIC DESIGNER
Commercial markets across North America may still be recovering from a shift over the last several years, but for as hard as professionals transacting in that arena have had it, aspects of their business that have never changed are buyer representation and compensation, two issues that have turned the tables and rocked the residential world across the continent throughout 2024. Seeing this, I sat down for an interview with top commercial agent and Certified Commercial Investment Member (CCIM), Timothy Churchwell with EXIT Realty Central in Norfolk, VA to discuss these two issues and how differently they’ve been dealt with on either side of the industry. “Buyer’s agency is not dead,” he stated very matter-of-factly. “It just means you have to show them the value of what you're doing. And the same thing goes on the listing side too. A lot of agents don't know how to do that though. Now you have to share the stuff you do; show your value and why people need you.” The fact is, he has become so good at doing this himself that a large part of his commercial business is consulting these days, and handling things like feasibility analyses or making go or no-go decisions on property portfolios being brought to him. “I can do a restaurant market analysis and tell you how much money people spend in a certain demographic. Say you want to open a fried chicken restaurant. I can tell you how much money the people spent on fried chicken in the last year versus how much money they spent within that geography and do a gap analysis to tell you whether the market is saturated for fried chicken in that location,” he said. But doing this type of thing is just par for the course for him and other commercial agents, and so is talking compensation he says.
"IT’S TIME RESIDENTIAL AGENTS TOOK A FEW PAGES FROM THE COMMERCIAL BOOKS AND HELD THEMSELVES TO A HIGHER STANDARD." 10 V13 I2