How One Woman Became A Top Retail Broker for IPA
“I made sure I knew each property as well as the owner for every meeting, educated myself and prepared for each opportunity I was given.”
COLUMBUS, OH—Executive Director Erin Patton is a market leader in the disposition and acquisition of retail assets throughout the Midwest region for Institutional Property Advisors (IPA), a division of Marcus & Millichap. Since joining the firm in 2004, and over the course of her career, Patton has developed significant transactional expertise in the retail sector and has become one of IPA’s top-producing retail brokers.
“I started in this business as one person and have grown to a team of 16 over time,” Patton tells GlobeSt.com. “Growth to me has been slow, but deliberate, in most of the choices my partners and I make. We have grown our territory from Columbus and Cleveland to the entire state of Ohio and have continued to add states over time. Now we head up the entire Midwest for IPA and are active in over a dozen states spanning the Midwest.”
Patton loves understanding how the dynamics of shopping centers work, not only regarding the co-tenancy relationships, but the nuances of the actual leases.
“Retail has undergone a major shift over the last few years and will continue to do so. It’s exciting to see how the industry has reinvented and defined itself over time,” observes Patton.
As a young woman starting out, challenges in the CRE industry were much harder to overcome given Patton’s lack of a track record.
“At that time, I made sure I knew each property as well as the owner for every meeting, educated myself and prepared for each opportunity I was given. By the end of those meetings, most came to know I was a hard worker, smart and knew what I was talking about. I also made sure to speak up in those meetings and let my voice be heard. Too often, as women, we are the listeners and the observers and miss out on the chance to show we are just as good, if not better, than any man in the room,” says Patton.
As the retail industry evolves, Patton is always watching the continued integration of product types coexisting together in the same development.
“We’ve seen a lot of this in mixed use assets, but I think we’ll continue to see it evolve given the growth potential for eCommerce and bricks and mortar to coexist together.”