'Lone Wolf' Broker Cloak Vanishing: Livingston Says

As the new year begins, brokerages, are more often teaming experienced professionals with entry level agents because deals in 2003 will be more complex, Livingston tells GlobeSt.com. "Clients are much more demanding and skills are much more specialized," says the founder/president of Realvest Partners Inc. in suburban Maitland, FL.

"The lone wolf model has been banished from public education and society and from the lexicon of most twenty-somethings," he adds. "The lone wolf caricature has been active since the (commercial real estate) profession came of age in 17th century England."

He says, "For most brokers, team concepts were almost anathema until just recently."

Today, "veterans are learning the values of shared responsibilities, specialist skills and a new cooperative ethic," says Livingston, an active Central Florida broker and landowner for the past 40 years. "The young turks in real estate today learned the social strengths of groups in college."

At his own firm, he pairs older veterans with younger associates. For example, Michael Heidrich, a principal and industrial broker of the year for 2002, teams with Shannon Herring, a junior executive and second-generation realtor. Her father, Frank W. Herring, heads St. Joe Commercial Co.

Robert Blackwell, another Realvest Partners principal and top-producing broker, teams with Francine Shieferdecker, whose family has been active in metro Orlando industrial real estate projects for decades. Brokers Tom Kelley and Todd Davis are seldom seen apart. Younger brokers Christie Alexander and Patrice Aaron make up special project teams.

The advantages of the lone wolf model in former eras was control, Livingston says. But deals today are "complex affairs, fraught with intangible qualities." Resources are now "more important" than lone wolves, he says.

"The advantages inherent in a team approach are voluminous," Livingston says. "Lone wolves often end up hungry.