ORANGE COUNTY, CA-In a recent exclusive interview with GlobeSt.com’s Natalie Dolce about Voit Real Estate Services’ new launch of a retrospective campaign in recognition of the company’s 40 years in business, the firm’s Cary Calkin reflects on changes in the market and offered some sound advice. “It is essential to get comfortable navigating the current climate as quickly as possible (if you have not done so already),” says the director of asset services. “It's going to continue to be a bumpy ride!”

The campaign, which features a historical timeline and commemorative logo, recounts milestones achieved by Voit throughout the past four decades. Calkin tells GlobeSt.com that Voit, which has traditionally been a real estate development and brokerage company, took on a new direction in 2009, when Bob Voit created an asset services group and implemented several new investment strategies. That vision, Calkin says, proved to be right on track for the changing market. “This new direction provided much-needed services to the banking and special servicing business community, with a focus on asset and property management for distressed commercial real estate, as well as property management for long-term stabilized assets.”

Calkin points out that the markets for real estate—and just about everything else are chaotic right now—and the political scene is no exception, “especially with regard to the elections and our continued proven inability to manage the debt ceiling crisis.” Overall, he says, “everybody appears to be ‘kicking the can down the road’ in hopes of finding more clarity regarding the ultimate outcome.” Without clarity, he continues, risk-takers will take less risk and the markets will not move in a positive direction. “European banking and financial challenges make things even more difficult to predict… Where the ‘road’ ultimately goes is anyone's guess at the present time,” he says.

Calkin tells GlobeSt.com that the real estate market continues to be challenged with an over-supply of bank-owned commercial real estate throughout the country, a trend he says will likely continue throughout 2012 and well into 2013. “If the political climate in the US and the financial markets in Europe don't settle into an acceptable trend by the end of the second quarter of 2012, these markets could erode further,” Calkin warns.

According to Robert Voit, CEO of the company, over the last 40 years, Voit has maneuvered through multiple cycles, while retaining its entrepreneurial spirit and delivery of positive commercial real estate work. “We’ve been successful in responding to the demands of an ever-changing marketplace, and we’ve continued to offer integrated real estate solutions across multiple sectors.”

Created in 1971 as the Voit Corp., the firm expanded its business lines to encompass a number of other services, launching a property management division in 1973 to provide an owner’s perspective to the management of its own portfolio, as well as that of its third-party clients. In 1977, Voit partnered with John DeWeese to open Valley Commercial Contractors. The firm, now run by DeWeese’s son Jeff DeWeese, has built for both Voit and third-party owners, currently totaling $1.3 billion in real estate properties constructed. Ten years later, in 1987, Voit launched a commercial brokerage house with headquarters in Newport Beach. As Calkin previously mentioned, in 2009, with the real estate and economic upheaval, Voit acknowledged the need to handle distressed asset situations and energized the company by creating its asset services platform to meet the needs of banks and other financial institutions, as well as individual owners. The company was renamed Voit Real Estate Services, and Voit then added offices in locations where its clients required assistance and navigated a strategic path to ensure that the company’s asset and property management, construction and brokerage services were truly integrated.

Today, Voit manages more than five million square feet of assignments in California, Arizona and Nevada. “I’m proud of both the direction we have determined to take, as well as how much our new direction is meshing with our core capabilities,” Voit says. “In a market which requires depth and breadth of resources, we have gone ‘back to the future’ as we return to our roots as a solid, Southwestern US real estate services company.”

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Voit: &#145;Get Comfortable Navigating the Current Climate&#146;

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Voit: Get Comfortable Navigating the Current Climate