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A commercial real estate and golf pro.
The guest on this week's Business Outlook podcast is DJ Brigman, a partner at NAI SunVista in Albuquerque.
He is the latest guest on a revamped business podcast, which will host small business, real estate, emerging leader and technology professionals.
Business Outlook podcasts are released on Monday afternoon and are available on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts and SoundCloud.
Here’s a preview of the conversation, edited for length and clarity.
Can you start by introducing yourself and telling your audience a little bit about you?
"Thanks for having me. I am a native New Mexican. I was born in Clovis. My dad was in the Air Force, born on Cannon Air Force Base, and then grew up in the Dallas Fort Worth area. I was able to get a golf scholarship to the University of New Mexico, so I came back and played golf at UNM. Was able to improve throughout my college career and then turned professional and played 17 years of professional golf, playing on the PGA Tour and some other tours. And as a result of that, I got to travel and see some amazing places. But Albuquerque was still my home. New Mexico was still the place I came back to, and in 2018 I decided that it was time for me to make a change. Kids were getting older, back was not holding up, and the the coolness of eating out and staying in hotel rooms had worn off. So I picked a different career and fell into commercial real estate. And so I work for a company called NAI Sun Vista. I'm a partner over there, and love it. It's a great environment, family friendly. We've got a great CEO, Debbie Harms, who is very active in the community. And it really, truly feels like something similar to what I did previously in golf, because it was a community playing on these different tours. And I feel like it's still a community in Albuquerque."
Was there was a mentor that you had that kind of gave you some words of advice about jumping into commercial real estate?
"When I was going through the process of trying to figure out what I wanted to do post golf, there's a guy by the name of Dave Hill who is well known throughout the community, but he's had a previous career before getting into commercial real estate. And I sat down with him, and he was very frank with me, and just said, 'You're not going to make any money for nine to 12 months. You better have some money put aside. And if you can make it through the first nine to 12 months, then you'll be successful in this business. And the reason that is the case is we're just commission based only. We don't get a salary. If you don't close a deal, then you don't get paid. That's similar to golf. If you don't perform on the golf course, you don't get paid. So my mindset was, 'Hey, I'm going to outwork everybody. I'm going to do the things that most people aren't going to. So the commission side of this business did not scare me at all. Whereas for some people, that's hard for that hard for them to attach themselves too."
How did the COVID-19 pandemic change commercial real estate?
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"That was a unique time. No one in our industry had ever experienced that before. They've been through 2008, 2009 and they kind of knew what that was like. Phones went quiet, people weren't doing anything. Interest rates. The market crashed. So this pandemic was completely different. The ability for people to work in offices dramatically changed, and it's still getting worked out. Albuquerque and New Mexico were known for their call centers. There's a lot of workforce here. The price for people to work here was lower than a lot of different states. So most of these call centers are 24/7, they have people coming in on different types of hourly-based programs. The biggest thing I noticed, is what these call centers did was they sent people home. The normal office people obviously sent people home, but when the call center sent people home, they didn't come back. They just gave them a computer and a phone and said, 'You can work from home.' So as a result of that, we had a lot of big vacant spaces out on the market, most of that's been absorbed. And you've seen charter schools really grow in the past three years. You've seen the financial institutions really grow in the last three years, and medical has really grown in the last three or four years. Those are what's considered, I would say, more of the essential businesses that have actually benefited from the COVID-19 pandemic.. The call centers are the big one, that's been the biggest shift that I've seen in our market."
So those call centers aren't shutting down. They're just sending their workers home?
"Correct, and letting them be remote.
It makes a lot of sense, to keep lights on in a place where no one's going to be. These are big, huge buildings that were anywhere from 30 to 80,000 square feet sitting empty. The operating costs in those buildings is pretty substantial, and so the ability to send someone home, they don't have to pay the overhead to keep these buildings heated and cooled. Makes a lot of sense in my mind."
As somebody who works in the business, in commercial real estate how do you fit into the puzzle?
"It's putting the puzzle pieces together and finding out who would be the right fit. For example, we had a larger building in the Journal Center that was sitting vacant, and it was a former call center space. We were representing the landlord on this transaction, and we were able to have a local credit union buy the building. They looked at it and said, 'We can put our mortgage division, we can put our call center division in there. They can put their back office operations in there. And they can consolidate from three to four different locations into one place and fit that under one roof. And so that was a prime example. We also did that with a local bank. A local bank was in a building that they were looking at putting about $6 million into just bring it up to nice standards for their employees. Well, there was a the Lowe's call center, which is just south of Osuna on Jefferson NE. They sent everyone home. Our client, we represented Bank of Albuquerque. And as opposed to putting $6 million into their current facility, they could buy a building for less and then have a better environment for their employees. And so from a financial decision, it made sense for them to do that, and it was a fun transaction, and it's open for business now and they are extremely happy."
As far as trends in commercial real estate, How is Albuquerque similar and different from what you're seeing in other cities around the country?
"So we get the question all the time. You watch the national news, and you read the reports that are out there. San Francisco has got a 60% vacancy rate. Dallas has these 100,000-plus-square-foot buildings that are sitting empty. New York's got multiple buildings that are empty or only have 50% occupancy. People think that's the same here in Albuquerque, which is not the case.
The reason that Albuquerque is different is because, we have some huge companies that create a lot of jobs, and those jobs are pretty standard. Sandia National Labs, for example, one of the largest employers in the state. When they have contracts, they're looking for local defense contractors to help partner up with that. So that's something that is always consistent within our market, the UNM medical facility, Presbyterian, Lovelace. The medical facilities here are pretty robust, and so those create a lot of job opportunities. And we don't have a Fortune 100 company that has its headquarters here. So when (large companies) decide to lay off half their workforce, or whatever the number is, we see those big dips, like some of the bigger, larger cities do. And you know, the that's a nice thing about Albuquerque. The employment stays fairly steady compared to some of these larger markets."
With this rise of the hybrid workforce, work three days in the office and two days outside of the office, how are businesses navigating that with their commercial office space?
"So what I'm seeing in the market is that they're still trying to figure out what that looks like. I think from an employee standpoint, some people like having the in-person conversations. They like having the water cooler talk. They can problem solve a lot faster when they can go around the corner and talk to someone at their desk, as opposed to getting on the phone call and trying to call them and they're not available, and then waiting for them to call you back or shooting off an email. So in regards to being in person, there's some advantages.
But we're also seeing that employees like the flexibility. So one of the things that some companies are doing is allowing employees that are performing to have Fridays and Mondays off and come in the office, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and fluctuate that way. On the other flip side of that, you're seeing some CEOs requiring employees to be in the office and not allowing them have that hybrid work model. The reason for that is just production. Production studies have shown that it, in a lot of industries, it has gone down when they are remote."
How's your golf game these days?
"Not as good as I want. It's more networking events and scrambles, cold beverage here and there. But it's still a great sport. I still love doing it, and it's helped me transition to being successful in this industry."
