Young Talent Returns to CRE Brokerage

Young professionals and college graduates are returning to the commercial real estate brokerage industry, thanks to a healthy run in the last several years. Following the financial crisis, many young people entering the job market did not consider real estate as a potential industry. Now, with strong deal volume and economic fundamentals, young people are returning to the industry. However, in the last few years, commercial real estate has changed dramatically, in almost every asset class. We sat down with Jeff Rinkov, president and CEO of Lee & Associates, to talk about how they are attracting and training the next generation of brokers.

GlobeSt.com: How are you attracting young brokers to the firm?

Jeff Rinkov: We are really enthusiastic and hopeful about the number of young people that are exiting college and have an interest in participating in commercial real estate brokerage. We went for several years after 2009, where we were not able to attract people because the market was in such a transition. The transaction volume and velocity was so different than what it has been for the last five or six years. In the last four to six years, we have been able to do a good job as an industry of attracting people because there has been opportunity created based on market forces. We think that we have a good platform, but historically that platform has spoken to more senior or established brokers. What we realize is that culturally, we wanted to change and be more welcoming to younger brokers. We wanted to have the ability to instill our platform and our culture in them from day one, rather than focus on senior advisors and revenue producers. We need to now retrain our culture and our platform.