Back in May 2010, Colliers International tapped real estate veteran Robert R. Martie as executive vice president of the New Jersey region; the same week the company became the world’s third largest commercial real estate services firm. As it stands, the New Jersey operations consist of offices in Parsippany and Princeton, and, in conjunction with the New York and Connecticut offices, serve as Colliers International’s Tri-state hub. There is also a very large Southern New Jersey division located in Mount Laurel, NJ.

With more than three decades of brokerage experience working for the region’s largest institutional real estate firms, Martie has cultivated a reputation as one of the industry’s most accomplished professionals. I recently spoke with him about the firm’s future plans as well as industry trends.

GlobeSt.com: Could you talk a bit about what separates Colliers International from other brokerage firms?

Martie: All of our practice groups translate into an enormous complement of intellectual capital. And the brokers function more as consultants. Based on the client and the assignment, there is all of this intellectual capital and expertise to draw from in order to service or capture business.

In other words, I’m going to come in and forensically look at your operation and determine what the needs are. It might be lease administration, or multi-market or even global. A lot of these major companies want to outsource their real estate departments. They don’t want them on the payroll. Or the companies don’t have a real estate department and need one. They own buildings--factories or warehouses--and they want someone to manage their leases. Maybe they want a new wing on a factory, in which case we can provide project management. Or maybe they have several million square feet of office and/or industrial space around the county and need somebody who can manage the entire thing to drive cost efficiencies. It’s more about areas of business the ability to analyze them. All of these different types of expertise lead you to the transaction. So it’s the consulting approach that takes us to the brokerage component of our business.

And that’s really what attracted me because coming out of the institutional investment and the landlord world we would very often watch the level of strategic thinking behind getting a building leased and it wasn’t always very strong. So when Colliers emerged as a front-runner in terms of redeveloping its business with this consulting approach, I immediately said this is great, this is the way to go. It’s certainly a different approach than straight brokerage.

GlobeSt.com: What drew you to the company and what are some key areas of focus?

Martie: We have international brand recognition. There’s some pre-selling in that. We have developed this formidable intellectual capital in which to approach our clients on a consulting-type basis with very strong transactional people to back it up. Plus the management of this company--the CEO in Seattle as well as the CEO of the New York region, Mark Jaccom, and the COO, Joe Caridi, who is an old ally of mine--is really second-to-none. Because I know these people and saw firsthand the passion they have for the business and for their vision, they didn’t have to sell me too hard. I really got excited about it. They basically said, “Bob, here’s this piece of clay in New Jersey and we need someone with your experience to go in and knead it into a masterpiece.” 

When I come over in May we had an army of about 20 or 25 brokers. I’ve hired five new people since then. But we’re being very selective about who we hire. Right now, I am trying to attract a few more industrial brokers. New Jersey is the second largest industrial market in the country so there’s a great opportunity for revenue growth, but also to grow Colliers and its in-state presence. I also have discussions underway with an individual who is very strong in disaster recovery, data centers and technology. Two of our brokers are very strong in the legal sector. Discussions underway with an individual involved in life sciences who would complement the president of Colliers’ life sciences practice group. We also have a capital markets investment broker, and discussions underway with another. But rather than just hire a bunch of transactional brokers randomly, we’re trying to find people with expertise that complement all of the types of tenants you meet in New Jersey.

GlobeSt.com: The past few years have presented a challenging environment for brokers. Do you think we’ll see a rebound in 2011?

Martie: We recently issued our fourth quarter research highlights for Manhattan and, once again, the city posted stellar results. The market is improving there and that bodes well for New Jersey. So it is rebounding here, albeit slower. With the advent of computers and the Internet and the global decentralization of corporate business, New Jersey is no longer the only choice.

But certain areas are starting to appear more active here. I don’t want to indicate that there’s some sort of boom going on, but there are certain cylinders in the engine that are starting to hit again. We are seeing activity in the legal community and also medical arts.

We expect the solar industry to gain more legs as time goes by--and this includes everything from solar farms to rooftops panels. These solar initiatives are also creating companies that require space. Recently, the federal government as well as the state extended credits for people who purchase solar panels. That was a shot in the arm.

Also, from an economic data standpoint, corporate cash positions are the healthiest they’ve been in several years if not decades. Companies are profitable. But although Corporate America is looking good, it hasn’t translated into job growth, which normally happens. There is no fast train coming out of the job growth station. It’s a slow progression. So we’ll see New Jersey recover, just at a slower pace than we’ve seen in other down-cycle rebounds.

GlobeSt.com: You talked about trying to hire more industrial brokers, as this is such an important sector in New Jersey. Have you found that the state needs to be more competitive when it comes to nabbing industrial tenants?

Martie: We are working against other states’ attractive packages. A lot of New Jersey’s problems have come home to roost. Virtually every state in the union has representatives that are in our neighborhoods knocking on doors. They have economic development teams who are calling, visiting and sending information. They are aggressively recruiting our corporate constituency. They are offering aggressive packages with tax incentives and a fast-tracked approval processes. But they also represent cheaper costs to do business--cheaper housing and real estate taxes.

Gov. Chris Christie was elected and he’s made some major strides, but you don’t turn a battleship around in a day. Still, there has been some significant progress made--revamping a lot of the incentives that New Jersey offers and taking a more proactive and aggressive position with the state’s existing tenants so that they will remain here.

The other thing is the reputation. Gov. Christie has started to change the way people view the state. Everybody knows that New Jersey has a wealth of intellectual capital, a good work ethic and a financial backbone. However, you get to a point where the price doesn’t warrant the pain. We reached that point and started to rapidly lose business. But we are turning that around. All eyes are on Gov. Christie. It’s a difficult and tedious job. But I think people would agree that there’s definitely change that’s recognizable.

GlobeSt.com: Let’s talk about distressed assets. With all of the CMBS debt coming due, will we see more building trades?

Martie: We are starting to see a few trades. But we will still see paper. As the markets have deteriorated, quarter-by-quarter, owners need to mark their assets to market on their books based on valuation. So even if you didn’t lose any tenants, if nothing’s changed in your building, you might have to mark the value down on your books. So a lot of the institutional owners, which represent a disproportionate share of the class A market, have already marked to market so they can compete in today’s leasing terms. And also, anybody who’s lost a tenant--if they’ve marked to market--can sell the building as a profit once they’ve filled it up. So by virtue of accounting rules and people correcting their book value with market, there’s some stimulus there.

Banks are healthy again. When they thought they were going under, they weren’t about to start shoving real estate out the door for tremendous loses on top of the loses they were already trying to swallow. But now that things are profitable, they can afford to send some of their bad debt out the door. Wells Fargo, for instance, has the old BASF headquarters, on the market for sale.

One other trend that I see that should definitely turn into deals in 2011 is in regard to the institutional investment community. There are two sides, really--the piece that is chasing the distressed market for cheap deals and the piece that is starting to look at taking some risks. This second group of investors wasn’t a factor last year, but they are starting to see that the wheels of the economy are spinning again. If there’s some longer-term money in a fund then maybe they can afford to take some risks because they will be delivering into a market two or three years from now and will likely see a profit.

In short, investors are getting comfortable with the risk evaluation equation. It warrants the risk. This will translate into some of the value-add type deals, whereas in the past 24 months value-add was “go away, don’t bother me.” Overall, the outlook is very encouraging.