Exit Strategy:

Finding and Using the Hidden Message

By Jim Tucker, CCIM

This book is dedicated to

Charles “Chuck” Tingey

without whose encouragement and leadership, I would have never lived

this exciting and fulfilling life in commercial real estate.

Charles Tingey 1941 - 2015

CONTENTS

PREFACE by Rod Santomassimo

INTRODUCTION

I. The “Going-Out” Deal

II. Exit Strategies as a Business

III. Research: The Core Competency

IV. Structure: The S.W.O.T. Analysis

V. Strategy: Finding the Hidden Message

VI. Placemats: The Borrowed Piece

VII. Property Types: Which Benefit Most

VIII. Brokerage: Using the Hidden Message

IX. Delivery System: NetWorks CRE

X. What’s Next?

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PREFACE

By Rod Santomassimo

When I met Jim Tucker back in 2003, I had just taken over as the East Coast Regional Manager for Sperry Van Ness and I was told by the CEO and my boss, David Frosh that Jim was acting as a “player/coach” for the Eastern Region of our national brokerage operation. David encouraged me to meet with Jim and see what I could learn from him.

Jim came to our first meeting with his lovely wife Janet, his business partner, whose credentials included 12 years as the director of administrative services and corporate secretary for Richmond’s Grubb & Ellis affiliate. (Jim joked that he had tried to hire her and when she refused, he asked her to marry him.) I was to learn that first day something that Janet probably saw in Jim when she first met him…he has almost no filter between what he feels in his heart and what comes out of his mouth.

It is indeed refreshing to meet those people in our lives who we immediately know will always speak the truth to us about everything. Sometimes it is uncomfortable, but we always are the better for it. This is especially the case when the person is as committed to professionalism as Jim happens to be. And it is rare indeed to find two such people who are also so committed to helping their fellow travelers as these two have proven to be.

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In the pages of this short book, Jim does what we seldom see in the commercial brokerage business. He shares the secrets of his success as how he has learned those secrets with the intent of helping others to learn as well and profit by it. It is an act of pure unselfishness that he knows will pay off in the trust it generates from not just clients but also from other agents with whom he collaborates so well.

As you read about the “techniques” Jim describes in these pages, do not for a minute think he is showing you a short cut. What you don’t see is the immense amount of work and personal creativity that is employed by a man who has 40+ years of the most diverse experience in our business I’ve ever encountered. Few among us are so devoted to learning new technologies and finding creative ways to serve clients with them as Jim has demonstrated.

Jim talks about the “four corners of Jim Tucker’s world” as he describes the ideal relationships he continues to build. Those foundational character traits of honesty, loyalty, ethics and compassion expressed in his “boundaries” are what we all recognize as the best possible world to work and live in. The difference is that Jim doesn’t just talk about it. He lives it in his professional life and his personal life.

I am very fortunate to call Jim Tucker my friend and my life is better for knowing him. I commend his book to your reading and encourage you to meet with him. If you are lucky, you might become his friend too.

Rod Santomassimo, CCIM Founder and President

Massimo Group, LLC www.massimo-group.com

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INTRODUCTION

If you own a commercial property and have any thoughts of selling or trading it within the next 3-5 years or you are currently trying to sell a property and are wondering why it is taking so long, you will soon be glad you are reading this. If you are a lawyer, accountant, financial advisor, property manager or other “advisor” to someone in these circumstances, you may want to read this as well to become better at what you do. If you are a commercial broker and are curious about my site and interested in how I do business, you will learn something here that will help you be better at what you do and I sincerely hope you will think seriously about contacting me to discuss it and learn more.

Truth be told, I was forced to write this book as part of a strategy of helping new clients for our firm to understand what it is that we do that is so different from our competitors. However, as I got into writing and reviewing the “message” in these pages, I’ve decided that I really hope my competitors do read this and do learn from it so we can begin to raise the bar of professionalism in the commercial real estate brokerage business. Let me explain…

I owe whatever success I have enjoyed in my 40+ years in commercial real estate to many wise and patient mentors starting with my first broker, Charles Tingey, in Fresno, CA. Chuck “seduced” me into becoming a real estate broker in 1973 by convincing me to make a career change from being a Regional VP for Santa Barbara S&L. The lure of big commissions and the ability to use my earlier work experience seemed like a made-to-order opportunity for me to learn, earn and achieve my vision for success.

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Soon, the door opened for me to start my own brokerage and development firm from which I was again wooed to direct the multi-state operations of a NYSE development company. And you will see in these pages the other organizations and people who contributed to my understanding and use of the tools I’m sharing with you here.

Answering the question, “What do you do?” seemed easy when all I had to say was, “I list and sell commercial properties.” My clients were the ones who explained to me that they saw my work in a vastly different light that led me to conclude that the answer to the question really is, “I help my clients to make better investment decisions.” It will quickly become apparent as you read that I am telling the story of how I came upon a “process” by which relevant information is distilled into usable intelligence and that into actionable wisdom. Of critical importance in the process is the understanding that much information is typically overlooked because of the assumption that it is not relevant. And, that is why so many of us fail to ever see the “hidden message” that will motivate a buyer to pay the higher price for the property. Believe it or not, that message was actually subconsciously known by most of us when we bought the property. We just didn’t SEE it.

It is not necessary to have my years in this business to understand and use what you will read here. You don’t have to suffer the cost and coursework involved in obtaining a CCIM designation or be particularly intelligent to use these tools and strategies effectively. What you must be is willing to do the work that is necessary to gather the information and evaluate its relevance to the current assignment.

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Next, you must creatively communicate the strategy and engage the action steps to achieve the results that the marketplace offers to us all. It is, in my opinion, that very willingness to do the work that seems to separate the successful from the unsuccessful commercial real estate practitioners.

I am passionate about working with people who understand the value of sharing and collaborating and the modern digital age feels very good to this “old bald geek.” While I am ever grateful to those who patiently edited this work, I welcome your thoughts and criticisms to the goal of improving both the publication and my own understanding. Since this is being distributed on my website, you should have no problem contacting me. I promise to respond and hopefully we can each grow from the experience.

Jim Tucker, CCIM NetWorks Commercial Real Estate Richmond, Virginia January, 2015

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I. THE “GOING-OUT” DEAL

As a new agent in Fresno, I was very excited when a tenant I had leased some office space to asked me if I would help him find a cattle ranch to buy. Never mind that I barely knew which end of a cow ate the hay, after all, it was real estate, right?

My naïve resourcefulness resulted in contacting an accountant well-known for representing meat packing and feed lot operators and soon I found out about a 10,000-acre ranch in a court-ordered estate settlement. With the help of the accountant, I developed a pretty thorough package and presented it to the prospect. I’ll never forget that day. “Bill” was a down-to-earth and very wealthy rancher in the San Joaquin Valley and had invited me to fly with him to Dallas in his private jet and discuss the ranch. He carefully read the presentation and studied photos and the numbers from the accountant. Finally, he looked at me and said, “Jim, this is a very complete presentation and answers every question I had but one…who’s going to buy it from me?”

I was flabbergasted and seeing the confusion on my face, Bill smiled and said, “Jim, you have to understand. I don’t do my going-in deal before I’ve got my going-out deal set.”

That was the beginning of my journey to understanding and ultimately using the concept of having an “exit strategy” not just when you are ready to sell, but when you are thinking about buying an investment (or anything else for that matter). For years afterwards, I have relived that moment whenever I ask a prospective listing client why they bought a property

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that is worth less today than what they paid and the answer is consistently, “It was a good deal.”

In our rush to “buy right” we often overlook the importance of gathering relevant information that can ultimately predict how the property will gain value and or become needed by a particular prospect or category of prospect. We can just as easily overlook the real reason that it is such a “good deal” today and how the only way we will be able to sell it in the future is to convince someone it is a good deal then.

In my rush to present the property to Bill, I had narrowly focused on the property economics as a cattle ranch mistakenly assuming that was his only motive for purchasing the property. I had failed to understand that my client was not just a rancher, but a savvy investor also. So, my investigation of the opportunity had overlooked some important information such as who else was buying ranches in this part of California? I had to broaden my information gathering to include proximate and comparable recent transactions to determine if there were any patterns of buying that would predict a future sale of this property. It was a valuable lesson then and now as I did find that someone was systematically acquiring ranches in the region and they actually bought this one from Bill some 4+ years later.

As years have passed, I have always remembered to look at the features of any asset I purchase and the trends of other buyers for similar investments be they cars, houses, vacation homes or investment real estate. Always asking, “Who will buy this from me?” forces me to pause and be humble about my own motivations for purchasing and to look

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critically at the reasons someone else might be similarly motivated. When I can answer that question with some confidence, the buying decision is easy.

But, what if we already own the property and are trying to sell?

Is it too late to have my “going-out” deal?

How do we develop an effective exit strategy NOW?

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II. EXIT STRATEGIES AS A BUSINESS

In 1988, I was hired by the Heartland Group, Inc. in Seattle, WA as the National Director of Real Estate with responsibility for developing and overseeing exit strategies for large land holdings in Colorado, Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia. In virtually all of the plans developed, the company was relying heavily on local and regional developers that we had identified as well-funded and capable potential joint venture partners. When the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act (“FIRREA”) of 1989 was signed into law, it became immediately apparent that each of these potential development partners was almost entirely supported by savings and loan institutions that became insolvent almost simultaneously. And, equally simultaneously, our years of work planning the orderly development and disposition of these multi-state properties became completely worthless pipe dreams.

Since the company relied largely on revenues generated by the successful purchase and sale of managed assets, we found ourselves looking for new sources of revenue in a market in steep decline. Like many real estate asset based companies, we also found ourselves in cordial but tense discussions with our major banks. And, it turned out to be a blessing is a very unlikely disguise.

While our financial circumstances were anything but crisis in nature, our skills in the area of creative market strategies for the conversion of land assets into cash had been on our bank’s radar for some time and we were asked to become a paid consultant for mostly time-sensitive trust assets.

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Within a few short months, we created a business as “hired guns” for bank trust departments, family trusts, corporate real estate departments and others needing more than advertising to dispose of non-revenue producing land assets. While certainly not our core business, it quickly became a way to keep the lights burning during this severe national economic downturn.

During this period, I was reassigned to focus on our East Coast assets from a Richmond, VA office during which we managed to actually develop a waterfront subdivision in Chesterfield County fulfilling at least one of the exit strategies for our own properties. In 1994, I left the Heartland Group and formed Land Strategies, LLC to continue on a local scale the work we had begun nationally.

The genius of the exit strategy concept was recognized by a large Richmond commercial real estate brokerage house and for a short period, we not only did the planning for mostly bank trust departments, but also the execution via the brokerage company infrastructure. However, the potential for conflict of interest was too great to ignore and we shortly dissolved the relationship. From the experience, it became very apparent that effective brokerage of assets needed a greater emphasis on disciplined research and analysis to develop a plan or strategy before going to the market.

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III. RESEARCH: THE CORE COMPETENCY

A review of most commercial property offering packages will quickly reveal that most of the information is about the property itself with only a glance at market dynamics via maybe an aerial photograph and some cursory demographics. There is typically very little in the way of assessment of community vision for the area or the property which is curious when we all know that property values almost entirely rely on an acceptable opinion of the future.

The formal exit strategies Heartland produced were based on exhaustive research into not just property conditions, but on all proximate circumstances and probabilities that would ultimately define how a particular property would achieve its relevant value in future conditions. Therefore documents such as community comprehensive plans and growth assessments, utility forecasting, soils and geological data, long range transportation plans, watershed and groundwater studies were of considerable interest as were specific title issues, entitlements availability, ownership histories of proximate properties, political trends and regional prejudices. Compare that to what we see in typically being done in the listing of most commercial properties and you begin to understand why most marketing today consists of a sign and some postings to websites.

Consider the value of upfront research in identifying all of the potential issues that might defeat successful due diligence during contract. Consider the value of how this same research might help a buyer answer that question lurking in their mind about how they will sell this property.

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Research typically starts with what I call the “inside the lines” issues which refers to all of the visible and “invisible” facts associated with the property itself. The visible are usually easy to collect precisely because they are visible. However, it is the invisible issues that often elude even the most seasoned practitioner. Property ownership & uses history, easements, encroachments, changed development standards, recorded (and unrecorded) title issues, ownership issues (who can actually convey?), utility service easements and restrictions, CC&R’s and a myriad of facts that must be researched through title and jurisdictional resources.

External facts all relate to those issues and conditions that are outside of the property lines, but that in some way determine the use and future use of the property. This can be traffic, adjacent land uses and proposed uses/reuses, updated comprehensive and community plans and transportation plans, shifting use patterns and shifting “attitudes” about the area, demographic changes in the surrounding neighborhoods, proximate property sales and leases, ownership patterns and so forth.

A significant part of the external investigation is concerned with how well the current use is meeting the market served and if there is a potential change or reuse of the property that would serve the market better and at the same time increase the value of the property. Most often, these revelations will come about when we can see the “big picture” of the property in a single, comprehensive view, which takes us to the next section.

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IV. STRUCTURE: THE S.W.O.T. ANALYSIS

As the researched facts begin to stack up, we need a method of categorizing and prioritizing those facts as they relate to the marketability of the property. Checklist only tell us which resources we have accessed, what is needed is a tool that can take the big picture of all the facts and put it into a comprehensive picture and the tool I’ve come to rely on is the S.W.O.T. Analysis.

A S.W.O.T. analysis or matrix is defined as a structured planning method of evaluating the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats of a project or business venture. It lends itself particularly well to separate all of the researched facts obtained in the development of an exit strategy. In formulating a marketing strategy for a commercial property, we first try to separate the facts about the property and the market into two broad groups as follows:

1. Internal factors – the strengths and

weaknesses specific or “internal” to the

property

2. External factors – the opportunities and threats present in the surrounding environment to the property.

As the sample on the next page shows, with this 4-quadrant matrix, we now have a way to both separate each issue into how that issue impacts the asset or marketing program and also to view all of the issues at the same time to begin to appreciate how a “hidden message” might be lurking in these facts.

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From there, the exercise proceeds to prioritize the factors or issues as they will impact the marketability of the property. As this process continues, we will begin to see some possible ways to move factors from the Harmful to the Helpful or to eliminate some of them.

Again, we are ultimately looking to fully understand the “Internal” strengths and weaknesses completely to begin to see both the apparent and the not so obvious “External” opportunities and threats that is where we can expect to find the Hidden Message.

Quite often, proximate market information points to creative reuse or repositioning opportunities. Planned changes in transportation improvements or other jurisdictional infrastructure services can often pose a threat to the attractiveness of a property unless action is taken.

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V. STRATEGY: FINDING THE HIDDEN MESSAGE

Remembering that our objective is to reveal any “hidden message” that is disclosed by the facts we have gathered thus far, it is time to use some of the tools that will help us see the facts from various perspectives. Aerial photographs of the property, the surrounding properties and the traffic patterns that serve the property are helpful. Thematic maps showing various demographic issues such as household ownership, household and individual income (and trends), crime incident maps, area zoning maps begin to tell a story of not just the present conditions, but also point out trends to future circumstances.

We often tend to think that the Internet and phone make this job easy and while it does make it easier, there are some facts that can only be obtained by physically contacting the proximate tenants and property owners and simply asking questions. As an aside, over the course of 40+ years in the business, I have come to rely on a strategy often referred to as “roof top marketing” only because it has resulted in nearly half of the sales of listings for me.

Neighboring property owners are often one of the best resources for “inside” information about the subject property and the surrounding neighborhood. They might even be willing to tell you things about your property that the current owner is either unable or unwilling to tell you. I find that absolute honesty is the very best way to do this and very often the people I talk with like the idea that they are part of “my team” in gathering information.

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VI. PLACEMATS: THE BORROWED PIECE

In October, 2008, I attended the Annual CCIM conference in Chicago and during a panel discussion by some prominent commercial brokers, I saw the answer to my prayers of how to effectively summarize all of the research we do.

Terry Coyne, CCIM from Cleveland, Ohio was the last of the five brokers to offer his perspective on the most effective manner of presenting a proposal to secure a listing. All the other brokers had pretty much sounded alike in displaying their large, impressively-bound packages of property information, analysis and research. Oh, and by the way, in every case at least one-third of the information was about the agents or their respective companies. Each of them proudly showed us how effectively they could use PowerPoint to present information on their companies, their marketing teams and the property information and analysis. When it was finally Terry’s turn, I’ll never forget his first words. He said, “We don’t print those large packages anymore and I haven’t used a PowerPoint presentation in the last 5 years. We use placemats.”

In the audience of probably 100 CCIM’s in attendance, you could have heard a pin drop. As I looked around the room, I saw almost everyone’s lips silently pronouncing the word…..”PLACEMATS???”

Terry then went on to explain that he and his team routinely summarize all of the information they collect on the property, the market, the comparable sales, marketing strategy and even the commission and marketing costs onto a single 11” x 17” heavy tabloid-size sheet of card stock.

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The colorful images of aerials, buildings, comps and faces of the team are prominent on the sheet, but the message that was seared into my brain was that this was the exact tool I was looking for to effectively communicate ALL of the critical issues of property, market, strategy and cost to a client in a single view.

I’ll never forget how Terry answered a question from the audience about where was the information about him and his company. His answer – “If you didn’t already know me and my company and think I could do the job, you wouldn’t have invited me to make a proposal.”

I spent the plane ride home sketching out what I could remember and reviewing everything I could remember about Terry’s presentation. This was “the difference” I was looking for to explain to prospects and clients what we do and how we do it without putting them through a long drawn out PowerPoint or forcing them to plow through pages of our research to see our conclusions.

Terry has been extremely generous in sharing samples of his placemats to help me develop our own templates for our presentations. Our placemats do not look much like what Terry showed us and I have added the S.W.O.T. matrix to the back of the presentation, but the concept is as effective for us in our market as it probably still is to Terry today.

Thank you again Terry!

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Here is a typical NWCRE placemat. Starting in the upper left corner with property information, working down through market trends and activity, to comps and pricing conclusion in the center. The right side of the sheet deals with critical property issues requiring correction or mitigation, specific marketing techniques proposed, team members assigned to the tasks, single-point of contact for reporting and commissions and fees proposed.

The S.W.O.T. matrix is usually, but not always, on the back of the placemat to facilitate discussion with the owners of the property so that they become empowered with the facts going forward. Any weaknesses are reviewed to see if we can correct them prior to marketing. Threats are analyzed to determine how best to share that information with prospective buyers. And, most importantly, the Hidden Message is reviewed against the marketing strategy suggested to make sure everyone is on board before we produce the marketing materials.

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By including the S.W.O.T. Analysis on the back, we are able to engage the owners’ sense of history and imagination to brainstorm creative ways of handling the good and not so good facts about the property and surrounding context. In many cases, this is the first time many owners have faced a genuine factual inventory of their investment property.

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VII. PROPERTY TYPES: WHICH BENEFIT MOST

For some time now, “investment” or income-producing commercial real estate assets have been in the highest demand by buyers. And that reflects many things including the facts like the emergence of new “buyers” in to form of REITs, LLCs formed by investment partnerships, cross-border or foreign investors looking for economic and political stability and a growing number of private investors who have been treated unkindly in the other investment markets such as the stock and bond markets. Real estate continues to benefit from some significant tax advantages over other investment categories with depreciation leading the list.

The Exit Strategy process is significantly appropriate for finding and using the Hidden Message and projecting the effective marketing of income-producing real estate. We make use of all of the analysis and projection tools provided by the CCIM Institute. Through that association, we have more resources and cooperating professionals than the top five commercial real estate firms collectively. With over 15,000 designees and candidates worldwide, we have access to significant markets that a single firm simply cannot claim.

The Exit Strategy process is also significantly appropriate for finding buyers for more localized assets including development land and vacant or soon to be vacant buildings. By matching property and market characteristics with the universe of prospective buyers available through the Site To Do Business resources, we can.

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VII. BROKERAGE: USING THE HIDDEN MESSAGE

I love the brokerage business because every assignment, every client, every property and every day holds a lesson for me from which I can learn something new. A famous general once said, “No plan survives contact with the enemy” and that really captures what I learn every time we execute a marketing plan for one of our clients and their property.

We have to be humble about the constantly changing marketplace and the changing nature of the people and organizations that make up that marketplace. Technology has taken a huge role on our business not just in making it possible for us as brokers to access more information, but in how it empowers owners and buyers to be smarter when they make investment decisions. We, as brokers, are no longer the only source of information available about properties and market conditions.

What all of this means is that we must be willing to work in partnership with our clients and prospects to place a higher priority on motivation and not just simply focus on property issues. It is through the client’s lens of motivational issues that they will filter the facts about the property as an investment. We must always remain flexible or “nimble” enough to adjust our strategy to meet those needs and respond appropriately.

Unlike the Heartland Group who saw Exit Strategies as a consulting business, I view “results” as the measure of success of the strategy. Crafting a compelling marketing “message” out of the research and the facts produced by that research is where the true value of the work is realized. But, we know that is

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not the only step in bringing about a transaction. The next piece of the process is finding the buyer and motivating that buyer to pay an agreeable price for the property.

When I accepted the invitation to join Sperry Van Ness, it was with the understanding that I would learn how to “play nice” with my fellow brokers and always be willing to share my commissions with them on a 50-50 basis. I wish I could say this was easy for me. Frankly, it took some convincing.

The leadership of that company was patient with me and helped me to appreciate that not only was a willingness to work with others going to produce more repeat business from those agents, but that it would also produce the high likelihood of repeat business from the client by attracting more buyers who would compete for the property.

Within a short period of time, I was cooperating 50-50 on most all of my brokered transactions and was making more money than I had ever made before in my decades-long career. It was a good lesson I will never forget and always put to use.

As a listing broker, my client and I must agree on expectations about what my job and what my job is not. It is not my job to sell the property.

My job is to generate offers to purchase the property and it is my clients’ job to select the offer they will accept thereby “selling” the property. So, any agent or broker who tells you he or she is going to sell your property is not being honest with you.

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My first obligation is to make sure I bring a property to the market that can be closed in a transaction. It must be “sale-able.” Next, I need to craft the compelling message that will cause a qualified prospect to want to investigate further. And then, I must expose that message in channels that will insure that the maximum number of qualified prospects actually learn about the offering. Lastly, I must provide the factual information that the prospects can confidently rely on to go forward with an offer to purchase.

And while you won’t find many of our number in the business who will define it this way, that is BROKERAGE the way NetWorksCRE defines it.

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VIII. DELIVERY SYSTEM: NETWORKS CRE

In my career, I have worked for local and national brokerage companies and I have had my own brokerage companies. As a corporate representative for the Heartland Group, I held brokerage licenses in seven states. I have since learned that my Virginia brokers’ license along with a network of cooperating agents in every state in the United States releases me from the need to take continuing education courses every state. My membership in the CCIM Institute provides me with over 13,000 pre-qualified, ethically bound associates throughout the world to assist in marketing my listings.

Thanks to the Internet and subscription resources such as CoStar, Site To Do Business, ESRI, LoopNet, PropertyLine, REI Wise, ProspectNow and a host of others our operation is every bit as effective in getting the message to the market players as the largest company out there.

When I first began my career in Fresno, CA in 1973, I listened as my managing broker was being interviewed by a property owner who was openly comparing us to the largest firm in the US and how many more agents worked for them that for us. Finally, my boss looked at him and asked, “Yes, but who will be working on YOUR deal?”

The message was clear then and it is still clear today. When you hire a broker to help you dispose of your property, you may think you are hiring the firm, but you are not. You are hiring the person sitting in front of you.

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When you hire NetWorks Commercial Real Estate, you are hiring Jim Tucker, CCIM with a history of large and small transactions totaling over a billion dollars over a span of four decades. You are hiring a broker who has been described by his clients as “relentless” in his pursuit of client objectives and scrupulously ethical by his competitors.

When NetWorksCRE was launched in 2012, we adopted three words as our mission statement and operating philosophy…

RELATIONSHIPS – RESOURCES – RESULTS

Those three words tell the story of the most important possession I or anyone in this business will every own…our reputation. I like to say that our reputation is what our relationships are willing to say about our integrity when we are not there to hear it.

When I made the decision to form NetWorksCRE, I had just read Simon Sinek’s book, “Getting to Why” and had watched in now famous TED talk on the “Golden Circle” probably 100 times. It was then that I realized that what I love most about this business is that it brings me some of the most satisfying relationships I have ever had. It was also then that I realized that I have made some terrible choices in people I thought would behave honorable and did not. So, I swore I would make a disciplined effort to choose better and established what I now call, “Jim Tucker’s playing field of life.”

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If you have ever played a team sport, you understand what a playing field is and the concept of boundaries that define what is “in” and out of bounds. For me, the basketball court and football field are images that lead me to establish four corners of my life as follows:

Truth is not optional.

Loyalty is the highest compliment one can pay a relationship.

There is no such thing as a “B” game.

People are always more important than money.

People who are comfortable with these “boundaries” of ethical behavior are the people I want to work with and have relationships with for the rest of my life. I simply cannot work with people who do not respect the value of honesty in a relationship. And, I find that those are the same people who are generally loyal to people who are consistently honest in return.

As brokers, we are routinely asked to work on “open listings” or invited to “bring me an offer” by owners who are unwilling to commit to a single advisor. My answer to these is and will always be that the people who hire me to work for them exclusively get 100% of what I have to give in effort, expertise, creativity and any other resource I can provide. If there is anything left over after that 100% is gone, it’s yours.

Finally, I have been in this business now for 40+ years because and only because I understand that a “business” is not a collection of transactions, but instead is a collection of relationships. The relationship is always THE priority.

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IX. WHAT’S NEXT?

NetWorksCRE is a specialized brokerage company focused exclusively on listing and selling income-producing investment properties. While past brokerage activities have involved a wide range of commercial property types and assignments, the company today is narrowly focused on this single asset class and type of representation. Our target market can be succinctly identified as “motivated investment property sellers.”

If you own and are considering putting your investment property on the market or it is presently on the market and you would like to learn more about our process to see if we might be able to help you achieve your goals, a call to me or an email is all that is necessary to set up a completely confidential interview to review your current circumstances. After that, we’ll agree on if conducting the research and developing a “big picture” understanding of your property via the S.W.O.T. & Placemat process is desirable.

It is not my intent to disrupt your current brokerage relationship UNLESS that relationship is not serving your best interest and only you can make that judgment. As set out above, my target market is MOTIVATED investment property sellers because we deliver results and THAT is what motivated sellers want.

Visit us at www.NetWorksCRE.com or on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/jimtuckerccim and at NetWorks Commercial Real Estate on Google+. On the following pages are a few of the comments from clients which we are proud to share.

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What Our Clients Say

“Much more than a broker, you have been a mentor and facilitator of a most challenging community building process.” Jackson C. Tuttle | City Manager,

City of Williamsburg, VA

“You were able to find a buyer for our property and keep him on track all the way to the closing table even though he was 1,500 miles away.” - Philip

Nickels | Director of Acquisitions/Dispositions, SugarOak

Management Services

“…you are described as relentless in pursuit of client objectives and I’d say you proved that in this transaction…” - Richard Kolsch | Principal, CAM Real

Estate Associates Corporation, New York

“I work in five states securing property and local approval and never had the level of assistance from a broker that you provided for this transaction.” - James M. Nicholson | Vice President of Business

Development, HH Hunt

“…rarely have I had a real estate agent work as hard on my behalf as you have. Your services to our partnership were no less than outstanding.” - Donald

N. Patten | Atty at Law, Patten, Wornom, Hatten &

Diamondstein, L.C.