This week, our 5 for Friday features Justin Langlois, CCIM, Managing Director of SVN | Graham, Langlois and Legendre, based in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Langlois specializes in the acquisition and disposition of Class A office, garden-style office and multifamily properties, including student housing, affordable housing and market rate housing sectors. He is also active in retail, self-storage, land and industrial brokerage.
1. What advice would you provide to an aspiring advisor who is new to the industry?
Create an awesome database. This will take time and it is a work in progress. Continue working your database by making calls and scheduling meetings. Very few commercial real estate advisors do this on a consistent basis and those who work their databases become market experts.
2. What does the SVN Difference mean to you?
When you look at the data of commercial real estate sales over $2MM, 65% of the deals are transacted by buyers and sellers across state lines. My clients like knowing their properties are listed by SVN and available for all brokers to sell. This creates competition in the market, it increases sales prices and all parties win.
3. What learning tools would you recommend to your colleagues to further their knowledge and enhance their careers?
I enjoyed reading The 12 Week Year. Several years ago, I read the book and it helped me break down my work week into segments. The segments help me avoid the day-to-day chaos of taking on too much at one time, get a task done and move on to the next task. I read portions of the book throughout the year as a refresher.
4. What inspired you to open or join an SVN franchise?
I like picking up the phone and calling another SVN advisor in a different market. The call feels like I’m reaching out to someone in my own office. SVN advisors respect each other, we watch out for each other and we share our own best practices with one another.
5. What was your most memorable deal and why?
I spent about two years putting together a build to suit for CVS. It was one of my first BIG deals and throughout the process it felt like all I had learned up to that point about commercial real estate was put into this one deal. The process was long and drawn out, it involved acquiring a local pharmacy, site selection, construction and contract negotiation and fending off preferred developers who were trying to get their hands on the project. It taught me patience, it showed me I was knowledgeable but needed improvement.
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