King of Brooklyn Commercial Real Estate Summons the Skill of a 'Harbor Pilot'
“Today, we’re a little drunk on low interest rates,” said broker Timothy King. “But I remember when you could get a mortgage at 21 percent — not at 3 or 4.”
Flatbush office space for lease.
The real estate market’s been soft — sellers are anxious, buyers are cautious.
But Timothy King, managing partner at leading Brooklyn commercial real estate brokerage SVN/CPEX, has navigated such turbid waters before. King fancies himself the trusted advisor, the resident priest (he studied at seminary), or, as he’s fond of saying, the local harbor pilot.
“The real estate marketplace has gone through boom and bust before — inflation, deflation, up markets, down markets and all the permutations thereof,” said King, who started his real estate career in the late 1970s. “Today, we’re a little drunk on low interest rates, but I remember when you could get a mortgage at 21 percent — not at three or four.”
Throughout all of those cycles a common denominator was always present — people still needed to buy and sell. “In each of those cycles, the buyer and seller each had to come away feeling as if their needs were satisfied in that particular transaction.”
To ensure mutually agreeable outcomes, King summons the analogy of a harbor pilot. “I tell people: Imagine a veteran sea captain who’s navigated his ship from Hong Kong to New York, traveled halfway around the world thousands of miles. But for the last 5 or 10 miles, he entrusts his life, his ship, his cargo and his crew to the hands of a local harbor pilot. And why is it that the guy that can navigate a ship halfway around the world needs someone to help him get those last few miles? The answer is that he needs local knowledge — the guy who knows where the rocks, the reefs and the shallow water is, and can help navigate around that to get you safely into harbor.”
Before embarking on his real estate career, King was a merchant mariner, so the anecdote resonates as more than mere analogy. Last June when his firm partnered with SVN International, one of the largest commercial real estate firms in the world, CPEX suddenly found itself with a suite of tools that are unique in Brooklyn commercial real estate.
As an example, King points to the weekly Monday morning SVN national call-in webinar, where an audience of tens of thousands listen to a handful of SVN/CPEX agents speak about properties they’re selling.
“So we went from overnight having the folks in our New York office looking to help people find or dispose of their real estate to now having an army of colleagues scattered across the country and the globe,” said King. “Now, some buyer in Bangor looking for properties in Brooklyn is going to come across our listings. It’s a tremendous benefit to potential landlords, tenants, buyers and sellers.”
King likes to say that running a building is something that most owners are very good at. “And they’ve been running it for five or 10 years, but selling a building is something they do once a decade or once a lifetime. And it’s something that I do on a daily basis. Who do you want standing next to you when the time comes to move that asset into the next party’s hands?”
Answer: The priest, the trusted advisor — the harbor pilot.
Any questions? Go to the SVN/CPEX website here.
Photos via SVN/CPEX
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