'You Sure You Want To Do This?’: Rookie Office Brokers Pursue CRE Careers Despite Downturn

There’s an existential crisis facing the office market, with phrases like “urban doom loop” and “office-to-residential conversions” becoming commonplace. That environment might seem like an unfavorable one for young adults looking to start a career. 

But many early career brokers who spoke with Bisnow said they felt energized by the chance to hone skills during a downturn, despite the increased competition and widely acknowledged financial hardships of starting out in CRE. In conversations with nine young office brokers, many of whom entered CRE since the pandemic, and a few in their older 20s and early 30s with some experience, most saw great opportunity and excitement despite the difficulties.

“You can have the highest high and the lowest lows within 20 minutes of each other,” said Orlando, Florida-based Foundry Commercial office brokerage associate Maria Lombardi, a 24-year-old who graduated college in 2022.

Lombardi was the only one of her 48 classmates in her master’s real estate program at the University of Florida who went into office.“My classmates asked me, ‘Are you sure you want to do this? Is this the route you want to go?’” she said.There is also widespread agreement that…

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Could Discounted Loan Payoffs Be What Finally Restarts The CRE Debt Market?

It's one of the toughest questions plaguing commercial real estate today: What is to be done with a pileup of maturing — or past-due — loans worth hundreds of billions of dollars when refinancing is all but impossible?

For most of this year, and seemingly since the pandemic began, the most common solution has been to extend loans until financial conditions improve. But any relief on interest rates remains off in the distance, and the most prolific class of commercial real estate lender, regional banks, is under pressure to get CRE off its books.

Barring a shocking economic reversal, some regional banks will be forced to make a deal or foreclose on delinquent loans, which continue to rise in number. One form of deal that could rise to prevalence is the discounted payoff, or DPO, debt negotiators told Bisnow.

"The discussions about [DPOs] are increasing," said Amy Hatch, vice chair of law firm Polsinelli’s financial services litigation practice. "I can’t say I’ve seen a bunch closing or a bunch happening, but I think it’s on people’s radar as a tool, probably more than a year…

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