Leveraging your CCIM designation to achieve returns

The best way to leverage your CCIM designation into superstar returns is to use the concepts that you have learned in the classes, learn from other students in the class and apply their experiences in the real world, and experiences of the instructors. The CCIM instructors are practitioners teaching practitioners. For example, last week I was discussing with Jeremy Cyrier, CCIM the educational goals of the region for 2009. Jeremy shared with me just how valuable the CCIM designation is to commercial real estate practitioners. He told me about a broker in his office that was in one of my CCIM classes that I taught recently: He told me about a broker in his office that earned a $57,000 commission within four weeks immediately following taking a CI 103 course. The broker listed a vacant office building in his local market that had been for sale for over a year with another firm. The building was generating no income and needed some improvements to make it market ready for any tenant prospects or owners that may have wanted to locate in the building. Unfortunately, the owner had inherited the building, and was no longer willing to invest in the property and wanted to sell it. This broker marketed the property for sale and for lease, using an accelerated marketing technique to generate interest because the property had been on the market for over a year and had become old news. The bids were due the same week that the broker was scheduled to take CI 103, which made for a stressful time, but one that's fairly common for CCIM students—business doesn't stop while we're in class, does it? The broker received two five-year tenant commitments both seeking pure gross lease agreements and two proposals to purchase the building, one from an owner-user and another from a local investor that had learned of the tenant commitments. This is where CCIM education connects the dots! The first thing the broker did was take the lease deals and model them using the comparative lease analysis worksheets from the CI 103 course to determine the effective rents for the tenants as well as how much the nets would be to his would-be investor. He also prepared an owner-user analysis for the other buyer, who coincidentally wanted to occupy the entire building and had no interest in the other tenants.   Ultimately, the broker successfully negotiated a successful cash offer from the investor. He then took the proposal and drew on his CI 104 concepts to create a comparative investment analysis for the seller who was trying to figure out whether he should exchange, keep the building and the new tenants, or sell, pay his gains and give his money to his financial planner. The broker created a capital accumulation analysis using the CI 104 worksheets and prepared a visual of the outputs to illustrate the results of the alternative investment decisions he faced. The result was turning lemons in lemonade and $57,000 in commissions from CCIM education.   In sum, when you're taking a CCIM course, try to relate the material to problems you're working through in your local market. Collaborate with your classmates and the instructors to get feedback on how they might solve similar problems in their area. And take what you're learning back to the office and apply it. Leverage that knowledge and profit from it. What superstar returns are out there waiting for you?   Joe Larkin, CCIM, CIPS, SIOR is the 2009 education presidential liaison for the CCIM Institute. He is also a senior instructor and an international instructor for the CCIM Institute.  He serves on the Board of Directors of the CCIM Institute and he also serves as 2008 vice president of the NYS CCIM Chapter.