In this week’s CRE Elite, we visit California and talk to Brad Umansky, President of Progressive Real Estate Partners out of Rancho Cucamonga. Brad started in the brokerage business in 1992 and during his successful brokerage career with the Ontario, CA offices of Grubb & Ellis, Lee & Associates, and Sperry Van Ness, he became one of the leading retail brokers in Southern California having closed over 500 lease and sale transactions.
In 2008 he founded PREP and backed off on day-to-day brokerage activities. Today, he is responsible for directing the activitites of the company including client relations, marketing strategies, quality enhancement, major tenant solicitation and deal negotiations.
Brad is really different from my other guests thus far in that he’s in more of a leadership & mentoring role. But he did spend almost two decades in brokerage and even wrote a book on CRE strategies for investment real estate. Brad drops a few nuggets from his book Value Added, he tells me about the Retail Brokerage Network, he promotes auctions as another tool in the tool-box, and we roll through a TON of real life resources to find best CRE practices.
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Here’s What You’ll Discover
- Brad got his start by answering a classified ad in 1992
- Why Brad focuses on tomorrow
- How to avoid the “Dolphin effect”
- What Brad got out of losing a listing presentation
Mentions & Resources
- Value Added: Successful Strategies for Listing and Selling Investment Real Estate – Brad Umansky
- ICSC
- Retail Brokerage Network
- Auction.com
- Brokers That Dominate – Ron Santomassimo
- Top Dogs Program
- CRE Elite: Broker to Brokers!! – with Justin Lamontagne
- Commercial Real Estate Show – with Michael Bull
- CRE Radio – with Howard Kline
- Success Magazine
Advice & Quotes
- Don’t think short-term
- “Marketing packages sell”
- “50% of what you do is for today and 50% is for tomorrow”
- Consider an auction process when appropriate
- It doesn’t matter where you come from or your background – you can make it in this business
- Integrity – likable – curiosity: these are the ingredients to a successful broker
- View the business like law school as you’re just getting started – it’s a 3 year process to get going
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