SADDLE BROOK, NJ-Real estate will always be essentially “local,” but increasingly it is also “global,” says CBRE's Jeff Hipschman. He tells GlobeSt.com that the company's brokers who represent multi-national companies make approximately 30% of their transactions outside New Jersey's bounds
“In the past,” he says, “as companies would expand into other states and other countries, they would often spend considerable time and resources finding trustworthy people in each market.
“Today, in the era of consolidation and merger, larger companies want to develop a global vision and strategy, and to make sure that those strategies are consistently implemented and deployed around the globe.”
Modern technology, of course, enables CBRE's brokers to do much of that from their own desks, Hipschman notes. “It's not as important where a broker sits anymore,” says one of his brokers, Carl Eriksen, who is based in Saddle Brook, but plays the national field.
Jeremy Neuer, senior vice president, and Joe Sarno, executive vice president of CBRE New Jersey, who represent several multi-market corporations – ADP, Prudential and AIG, among them – are both experienced in managing long-distance conference calls and travel to remote locations, he says.
For ADP, the global human resource company with headquarters in New Jersey, Neuer and Sarno have worked with CBRE colleagues in more than 70 different locations in the western half of the United States alone to secure leases. Plus, they have traveled to Toronto and Singapore on ADP assignments.
“We've been representing ADP, which is headquartered here, since 2006,” says Sarno. “They were using most of the larger real estate firms in the different regions, but realized an advantage to having a single local point of contact to handle their transactions across the board.”
He says more and more corporations are opting to have one real estate firm that is familiar with their executives, legal team and corporate culture.
Carl Eriksen, who is based in CBRE's Saddle Brook office, has completed deals in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, New York City and San Francisco - to name a few places – for clients, including Hay Group, IBM, Intel and Univision.
“It's all about building a relationship and level of trust with the client, and then providing the same level of service in every market,” Eriksen says.
CBRE's industrial market brokers say they too operate in an increasingly global orbit. “We've traveled to China to consult for our clients and closed warehouse deals in Venezuela,” says Bill Waxman, who teams up with Mindy Lissner to represent Mary Kay, Tekni-Plex and global shipping firm Kuehne + Nagel.
“It is not always transactional,” says Lissner. “By offering premier project management, financial consulting, and supply chain solutions, we are a single source for global corporations. We become their trusted advisor.”
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