Wright: I wish I could tell you I had a great long-term plan. Really, we were just focusing on the fundamentals and doing what we do right. Fortunately for us, the result has been a lot of success stories with our clients in each one of our divisions and also a lot of industry notoriety. Competitors take notice. Colleagues take notice. It’s really helped our recruiting effort. As we’ve gone out and talked to different people in different areas, we’ve been very warmly received. To that extent, we’ve exceeded our expectations.

LeClaire: Having to expand your headquarters is a good sign.

Wright: We are already filled up. We are probably going to have to expand again in the middle of next year.

LeClaire: What commercial real estate sectors or markets do you expect to heat up through the remainder of this year, and why?

Wright: Clearly, it’s in the multifamily sector. Housing as a whole is what led us into this recession in every sense. That’s going to be the first sector to recover. In fact, I’ve already seen signs of recovery. It’s been a 12-month evaporation of new construction. There’s nothing being built and you’ve seen absorption. Fundamentals have strengthened. Concessions have come down. Vacancy rates come down. We haven’t seen any growth in market rents, but certainly we have in net effective rents.

On top of that the capital markets, specifically for stabilized multifamily, are attractive. You can get agency financing at or below 4%. The catch is the value has to be there and the cash flows have to be there, and those deals are few and far between, but if you have those things it’s got a leg up on alternative product types.

LeClaire: What about other commercial real estate sectors? When will a recovery begin?

Wright: Land is the hardest hit and will be for the longest period of time. Retail and office tenants are just in the first third of renegotiations of street rents. It’s a cycle that you see in each one of these product types…it’s going to take some time to work through.

No one was prepared for the housing market crash. They didn’t know what was coming or how to prepare for it or how to deal with it because it was so systemic. A lot of the how-tos have been ironed out now, so while we are at the beginning of the work through of commercial property—specifically retail and office—it won’t take as long to work through or manage these sectors as it did housing because the staffing is now in place.

LeClaire: Was the meltdown as bad as it was billed to be two years ago?

Wright: I think it was certainly as bad as it was billed to be. Despite my general feelings about how the financial crisis was dealt with, inaction was simply unacceptable. The government stepping in and keeping some liquidity in the debt market and capital markets was essential to keeping things afloat. Without it, we would have had total chaos, which was evidenced by the Lehman Brothers fiasco.

LeClaire: When will we see the bottom in office and retail?

Wright: 2011 and 2012 is really what I am calling the bottom, if you will, where you start to see recovery. That’s a far cry from even being back to a normalized market of 2004 or 2005. Certainly a far cry from the 2007 peak. It’s hard to believe, but we’ve been in this downward for three years.

The good news is that people’s expectations have been realigned. No one expects to get back to 2007, at least not in short order. People are happier with less, so that softens the feel of what perceived bad is. I do think the worst of it is behind us. Uncertainty is always the most difficult thing. The fact that we have stopped the bleeding and there are no more large surprises coming at us is good. I don’t believe in the double dip recession in terms of jobs. In that respect, it is all up from here. It’s just going to take a little time.

LeClaire: What do you see as your biggest opportunity as a company in today’s environment?

Wright: I think it’s just the market in general is going to help us. Our strategy is to pick quality, talented people. I would stand behind everybody in our organization as far as their ability to help manage clients.

Every piece of property—unless it has traded in the last 12 months—is in some form of distress. Our positioning in this trying environment is what we’ve done right. When people started coming to us and needing leadership on how do deal with their lender, what their property is worth, what capital is available to them—whether it be debt, equity or bridge financing, we had answers. When you are in the battle of your life, you want to be in a place where you have the best information available so you can navigate it most effectively.

We believe if we continue to build our client-first philosophy, and help them navigate through this environment and live to fight another day, when the market heats back up people are going to remember who helped when times were bad.