Hearing Voices

I recently spent a day in Los Angeles hearing voices.

No, not that kind of voices.

These were the voices of people in the commercial real estate world. They were speakers and panelists at the latest RealShare conference in L.A. who agreed to submit to video interviews with me for GlobeSt.tv.

What struck me about the dozen or so interviews that I conducted was the diversity of views of this industry that we chronicle every day on GlobeSt.com. I'm not talking about diversity of views in terms of differences of opinions. I'm talking about diversity of views in terms of the different ways that different people look at the industry. Too often, I believe, those of us who are reporting on commercial real estate day-in and day-out try to summarize what's going on as if the industry is one big, monolithic entity with all parts moving in one direction at the same time.

What struck me about the video interviews was the variety of views that emerge from such a multifaceted industry. Here are just a few snippets of what I picked up in those interviews: Mark Bolour of Bolour Associates is lending on distressed properties and loving it. At a time when new office construction is hard to find and speculative construction even less evident, Charles Cohen of Cohen Brothers Realty Corp. is well on his way to delivering a new 400,000-square-foot project in West Hollywood.

At a time when much of what we hear about distressed assets makes it sound like these troubled properties are going to drag all of us under with them, David Rifkind of George Smith Partners told me―for the second time―that he thinks distress will continue to be "an annoyance" but isn't the economic ball-and-chain that it is often depicted as. Partner Clark Welton of the Moss Adams accounting firm told me of some new rules about depreciation that haven't garnered a lot of publicity but could be very beneficial for some of those in the real estate world. Tony Natsis of the law firm Allen Matkins talked about how his firm devised a strategy to keep most of its lawyers, despite a drop in business during the downturn, because it knew it would need those people when business picked up again.

These were just some of the folks who spoke with us on camera at the RealShare event. The others talked about topics that ranged from overall industry views and forecasts to very specific issues and regulations. What's different about these interviews is that they provide the tone of voice, subtleties and nuances that are difficult if not impossible to convey in day-to-day written coverage of our industry. The only editing we do is to delete the portions with little goofs and flubs, such as when I forget my own name or mispronounce "Globe Street." Once our video wizards have trimmed away the glitches and rendered the interviews ready for prime time, you'll be able to hear these voices too.