What Is A Great Piece Of Advice You Could Leave Us Here Related To Commercial Real Estate?

The following Q&A was completed as part of our conversational Commercial Real Estate FAQ Interview Series, we hope you find it helpful.

If there is one thing that today’s commercial real estate investors should be doing it’s looking at the disruptions in the market coming in the next 5, 10, 15, or 20 years. Investors don’t want to remain behind only to be stuck with a portfolio made up of obsolete properties and keeping up with these trends in disruption will show you just where the market is going. Multi-family is expected to remain fruitful, but the tech world is making a lasting impact on a variety of other industries. 

Richard Wilson: Final question here – what is a $100,000 value piece of advice you could leave us with here related to commercial real estate? 

Ben Marks: If I had to pick one, and again I would say I think this coincides with longer term trends, outside of I’d say multi-family residential if you’re commercial real estate in any other asset class other than apartments and single family, and if you haven’t thought about it and you don’t fully understand how your sector is going to be disrupted in the next 5, 10, 15, 20 years, figure it out now. Because by the time everyone else figures it out, and it gets priced into the market, you don’t want to be owning a portfolio of Kodak and Blockbuster. 

Richard: Right. 

Ben: And I think there’s a lot of folks who own those and just don’t know it yet. And again I hope I’m wrong and I hope the market takes off and things change and things stabilize, but I think walking around pretending like the internet is not going to affect me and I’m in main to main location, because at the end of the day the internet is the online real estate of the future. And it’s a good point what you’re doing with the family office I think anyone who’s not doing that, and we were guilty of it for many years, anyone who isn’t thinking in those terms it’s almost too late. It isn’t quite too late yet, but it’s getting there. And I would encourage them to think again very long term and about disruptions very very carefully. 

Richard: Right, great. Thank you.