SAN DIEGO, CA—Patrick Walker was recently named president of Lee & Associates-San Diego North's office. Walker, whose resume includes Ten-X, where he served as senior director and VP, was also previously with Trigild Real Estate Services and Voit Real Estate Services, where he was national director of asset sales and VP of commercial real estate, respectively. As Walker sees it, this new role will offer a great opportunity for him to take Lee & Associates-North San Diego to the next level as he looks for new opportunities to grow and expand throughout the San Diego Market. Globest.com recently caught up with Walker for an exclusive interview and find out what exactly his plans are.

GlobeSt.com: Coming in as the new president of Lee's Carlsbad office, what are some of your top priorities?

Patrick Walker: As president of Lee & Associates North San Diego, my first and foremost priority is to continue to push our mission to deliver seamless, consistent execution and value driven market to market services to our clients. Secondly, our shareholders have designed an aggressive growth plan focused on adding experienced best-in-class brokers as well as new young associates throughout the San Diego market. We are making a very strong push to identify, recruit and coach the next generation of real estate leaders with the goal of doubling our existing head count and opening two new offices throughout San Diego to better serve our clients.

GlobeSt.com: How would you describe the current CRE market in North San Diego?

Walker: The CRE market in North San Diego continues to be extremely tight, especially in the industrial and retail sectors. We are continuing to see positive job growth countywide and our unemployment rate currently sits at roughly 3.3%, which is well below our 27-year average of 6%. North County, in particular, is seeing very unique industrial growth, with current market vacancy sitting at 4% and current rents roughly 15% higher than the 2007 peak. It is also interesting to note that the fourth quarter of 2017 was the highest dollar volume of industrial sales in the last ten years, with over $692 million in sales transaction throughout San Diego. We also have roughly 1.5 million square feet of industrial product under construction in North County and we see a tremendous opportunity for our clients. We expect to see continued growth in the industrial sector, and no surprise that growth is being fueled by the continued rise of e-commerce and the growing demand for “last mile” delivery facilities. A lot of our business owners live in North County and want their companies to own and occupy space in North County, so I think we will continue to see strong demand throughout this market. The North San Diego Office Market vacancy is in the mid to high teens, but we remain very bullish on our office market. We are actively looking to grow our Office Broker Team and see this as a great opportunity to bring on very talented brokers who can help us to continue to grow our office presence.

GlobeSt.com: What are some of the challenges you see in the market?

Walker: As I mentioned before, vacancy is very tight, pricing is well past our 2007 peak in some markets and we are now in the +/-95^th month of recovery from the 2008 financial crises, so there is obviously some hesitation and concern about where the market is headed. Our team is working on a tremendous amount of buy and lease demand but placing those requirements has never been more challenging given the low vacancy and peak pricing. We are working with a number of clients who are actively looking to place capital throughout our market, both from an investor and owner/user standpoint, so we are having to be very creative in identifying opportunities for these clients. It will be interesting to see how the upcoming interest rate hikes will impact our pricing and sales volume, as I imagine we will start to see some resistance from buyers as the debt gets more expensive.

GlobeSt.com: Given your experience at Ten-X, what role will technology play in the future real estate landscape?

Walker: There is no doubt that technology will play a critical role in the future of the real estate landscape, not only the new technology platforms specifically designed to create a more efficient real estate market, but also the impact of the driverless car and artificial intelligence. It was really insightful to see how a company like Ten-X is trying to revolutionize the sales process, however, it was also very important for me to see how critical the broker is to that process and what the broker's role will be going forward. The broker is and will continue to be a critical component to the transaction process as buyers and sellers will continue to rely on their market intel. We are heavily focused on utilizing technology to better serve our clients and we are equally focused on continuing to create meaningful lasting relationships while delivering best practices, solutions and outcomes to our clients.

Instant Insights /

Making a Strong Push to Recruit Next Generation of Leaders

Related Stories

Recommended For You