Gwinnett's Diversity Lets Expanding Companies Use It As 'Living Laboratory'

In the 1950s, when Moishe Sonenreich first set foot in Colorado, he saw a future in real estate. It started small; he bought a duplex and lived on one side while renting the other out. Later, he tried his hand at buying and operating motels, a tough business. By the '80s, when his son, Izzy, joined the family business, he was tipped off to the future of warehousing.

At the time, it was the “butt-end” of real estate, according to his granddaughter Aviva, and the three C's that helped drive industrial real estate to their current heights — Covid, e-commerce and cannabis ​​— weren’t factors. Moishe began picking up smaller spaces for $15 or $20 a foot, properties his family firm now controls, which can go for up to $250 a foot. 

“I don’t think there was any kind of long-term perspective other than generational wealth,” said Aviva Sonenreich, Sonenreich & Co. senior broker, who’s been engaged in the family business since graduation. “That was the goal.” 

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Bill Hill is a people person, and that serves him well in commercial real estate. The D.C.-based Newmark vice chairman, who specializes in real estate deals involving the federal government, has relied on networking throughout his nearly 20-year career because, as he put it, one needs a “cast of characters” they can trust around them. In CRE, that cast is eclectic — though not as diverse as it should be, he said — and he encourages people he mentors to broaden their network outside of their expertise.

Fresh off getting a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering and materials science from Duke University, Hill entered commercial real estate in 2002 — there was no other industry he wanted to be in, he said.

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