Why Spring Sports Look So Much Like Real Estate Negotiations – Pasadena Star News

I love this time of year! My favorite championship golfer found a new green jacket. We were crowned the new NCAA basketball champions. (Congratulations to the Jayhawks of Kansas.) After a long labor dispute, the tone of communication is back at Major League Baseball games.

Descend a real variety of sports. Plus, flowers are fragrant, hops at Easter and hope blooms with the 2022 blooming.

What does any of this have to do with commercial real estate, you might be wondering? Sit down and let me connect the dots.

A new beginning

Our year in commercial real estate starts every January. The panels have been wiped clean and we are starting over with a new year of production.

Just like a professional golfer or major league hitter, we start with no speculative earnings or averages. Our success or failure remains in our devices. By spring, the year unfolds as deals are created, qualified, and put into the pipeline. We have a strong sense of how the year will continue. Similar to those little crocuses peaking from the winter freeze, the transactions begin to come back.

The chapters are long. embrace them. Seasons, like real estate deals, take time. The gestation period is usually long between sales transactions. Three chapters already!

It is very common for a building search to precede negotiations. Once you spot the right place – which takes time – offers are made, responses created, and an agreement is forged. The long warranty dance begins. Due diligence is performed – property review, financing, city approval, scouring books and records, physical inspection and environmental investigations. With just the right amount of motivation and pixie dust, closure will be in your future.

As spring approaches summer, deals break out. Leases happen faster even though contract negotiations can be brutal.

The new life gives way to maturity. By late spring, our year’s landscape is growing well and we have a forecast for the fall crop. By the time we head out for the countless fall conventions in October—our production is pretty much complete. Sure, we can finish off solid, reliable deals over the holidays — but the pace is slower than the spring and summer crush.

It’s really refreshing to see a “normal” spring in 2022. We’ve been through a lot in the past two years – pandemic shutdowns, business shutdowns, industrial resurgence, office uncertainty, a fundamental shift in buying habits, a change of administrations, a war in Eastern Europe, And rampant inflation, the supply chain, and more.

Over the seasons, they come and go as the beat of the constant drums of time plays to the beat of our years.

Next month marks the 38th anniversary of the Schlipping Industrial Buildings. Imagine, 38 springs, 38 new beginnings and 38 loops on the proverbial mediation tree.

Ben Crenshaw won Augusta in 1984, Georgetown Hoyas was the NCAA Champion, and after a long season – the Detroit Tigers beat the San Diego Padres 4-1 in baseball’s crowning series.

I am a grandfather of five children now. I am happy to watch the seasons of their lives unfold in magical ways. Commercial real estate has given me the means and flexibility to be present.

Is starting over each year something I enjoy? Not right. But at this time of year, hope springs eternal.

Allen C. Buchanan, SIOR, is a director at Lee & Associates Commercial Real Estate Services in Orange. He can be contacted at [email protected] or 714.564.7104.