Affinity Networking in CRE

Affinity groups should be helpful in CRE, but the list of them is long and making them work for you can be difficult.

“The world of commercial real estate affinity group organizations’ conferences is so over-saturated,” Dana Light, chief marketing officer of Buzz of California and long-time CRE marketer, tells GlobeSt.com. “You could spend your whole career out of the office, socializing and not doing your business.” At the same time, they can be “a good thing for business development.”

“When you meet people and look in their eyes, you connect with them,” says Light. “When getting into sophisticated deal dynamics, people want to work with people they know and trust and like. People are relatively loyal to the people they trust and know they can get the deal over the finish line.”

An association’s quality matters. “The red flag to a lot of this is that the conferences in some of these affinity groups make money by the service providers who pay to speak, attend, and sponsor,” she adds. “Nobody wants to be sold on products or services when they’re there to hear from the developers, owners, and operators. But the service providers are the ones paying the bills.”

Good quality is critical because “staff has gotten cut to the bone and marketing budgets have been slashed,” Light says. “That is universal across all big companies and small companies. But they still need to do business development and be out there. That’s where these affinity groups come in. There are some that I think are phenomenal and are strong and people are connecting with A-team players.”

Light has one consulting client working at a significantly sized bank who is responsible for constantly bringing in more deposits. The person is paying out of their own pocket for help with development and is worried about possibly getting fired. Someone like this has to go to the right shows and belong to the best organizations.

The best way to use affinity groups — she mentions the Urban Land Institute (ULI), National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC), and NAIOP as three examples of top organizations — is to find ones that focus on your main areas of business. “There are some people who are trying to be everywhere and go to everything,” she adds. “A lot of people throw a lot of stuff against the wall,” but that sort of experimental participation can spread someone too thin to find the real benefits.

National organizations can be good for local chapters, national reach, and even subgroups for specific asset types. For the best, expect costs to run high for national conferences. “You know when you’re going to the lodging conference and it’s thousands of dollars per ticket, it weeds out a lot of the bottom feeders,” Light says. “You have to pay to play.”

Sometimes local professional groups with a tight focus can also be good. Light mentioned the Los Angeles Mortgage Association (LAMA) as doing “an amazing job offering quarterly events, strong panels, great networking, and exceptionally nice attendees and leadership for the organization.”