How Quattro Development Takes a Uniquely Collaborative Approach To Real Estate Broker Partnerships

(MENAFN- Digital solutions)

Real estate brokers are often the unsung heroes of commercial real estate deals. Depending on the project, they might assist in site selection, market analysis, negotiations, financing, due diligence, and countless other tasks to keep deals on track.

Founded in 2008, Quattro Development is no stranger to working with brokers. Its co-founders, Rob Walters and Michael Liyeos, created a trusted network of expert brokers across the United States to grow their firm into a small but thriving enterprise. “We'll go anywhere. The office is in Illinois. I'm living in New York. But we can do this anywhere,” Walters says.

The co-founders want to be the nation’s premier small-shop build-to-suit developer, and they know broker relationships are the key to healthy, successful commercial real estate deals. However, Quattro Development takes a different approach to broker relationships. Instead of relying solely on brokers’ expertise, Quattro Development uses a collaborative technique to source the best sites.

Rob Walters and Michael Liyeos explain how the broker-developer relationship usually works and how Quattro Development’s unique take on this relationship benefits their clients.

 

How Broker-Developer Relationships Commonly Work

 

As of 2021, there were well over 560,000 real estate brokers in the United States. The Bureau of Labor Statistics also expects the number of real estate brokers to increase by 5% every year through 2031.

As commercial real estate projects come to fruition, developers rely on brokers’ expertise to manage real estate deals from start to finish. The broker-developer relationship differs by project, region, and company, but more often than not, brokers have a big influence on real estate transactions.

They help developers identify suitable properties for development, bringing in knowledge of available sites, zoning regulations, and market conditions. Some real estate brokers even provide market analyses on rental and absorption rates.  Others focus exclusively on tenants and helping them find the right location for their business.

For national developers like Quattro Development, brokers are the local boots on the ground who know not just the published data on the local market but also what is going on behind the scenes and under the radar. They often work as intermediaries between developers, land owners, and tenants, ensuring smooth communication at every stage of the project. If a developer needs a local lawyer, contractor, or city planner, the broker is usually the one to make the connection.

Construction costs are on the rise and banks are less likely to extend loans for real estate projects. In a tricky economic climate like this, real estate brokers will often connect developers with banks, private equity investors, and other financial institutions. More often than not, a broker’s local connections keep projects moving, so synergy between a broker and developer is vital.

 

Quattro Development’s Refreshing Approach to Real Estate Broker Relationships

 

Quattro Development works with an expert network of brokers across the United States to facilitate seamless deals for their clients. But because Quattro Development tends to work with the same corporate clients for multiple projects, Rob Walters and Michael Liyeos believe in taking a different approach to broker collaborations.

“We work with brokers a lot,” Walters says of Quattro Development’s network of professionals. However, Rob Walters and Michael Liyeos often have either personal insight into site selection for their clients or direction from the clients themselves on desirable sites. “Clients often tell us and their broker where they want to be, and collectively we go out and find a property.  Often the broker might know all the options on the market, but we have put together a team that will assist by identifying any opportunities that are off the market.  Ultimately whether we find the property or the broker does, at the end of the day we will buy the property, build on it and lease it back to them,” Walters says.

This is less common in commercial real estate development. Brokers will typically do site selection exclusively, but Quattro’s approach gives the client a deeper understanding of what properties are truly availables — all while allowing the broker’s expertise to shine. For example, a client might know they need a store in a particular city and have a broker selected there but the broker hasn’t been able to identify any suitable properties yet. Quattro Development will come alongside the broker and dig up additional opportunities that the broker may have overlooked or not had time to inquire about.

The problem, in the co-founders’ opinion, is that many real estate developers rely too much on brokers for site selection. This works out just fine in many cases, but it can backfire. In a market where developers are a dime a dozen, Rob Walters believes personal expertise is Quattro Development’s true differentiating factor.

“That ends up meaning a lot of the principals of the development companies never even go out and see these sites or never help dig in. Michael and I have been to every state in the country multiple times,” Walters explains. “If we have a meeting with the head of real estate for Chipotle, we can talk to him intelligently about any trade area in the country. I think being able to talk about it with somebody who has that direct knowledge really goes a long way.”

 

Customizing to Local Context

 

“‘Our tenants want to find a specific type of real estate within a market. Historically, it's been the guys who want the main and main corner,” Walters says. “Different markets have their own little micro-economies.”

“We're comfortable going anywhere and everywhere. But we try to keep the tenants the same and the building types the same,” Michael Liyeos adds. “Every real estate development project has variables in it. For us, the variable typically is the market in which we're doing the project.”

Since Walters and Liyeos can’t be everywhere at once, they rely on real estate brokers to help with the nuances of each location. “Sometimes the right location simply isn’t available at the time being and having a local broker to continually be on the lookout for that right location is critical for when the right property does become available,” Rob Walters says. Thanks to their strong relationships with a national network of brokers, Quattro Development’s co-founders are able to easily expand their tenants’ footprints across the U.S. while accounting for local differences.

 

Quattro Development’s Secret: Broker Collaboration

 

Quattro Development is a small but scrappy firm that’s managed to grow at an incredible rate over the past 15 years. Thanks to its unique approach to broker collaborations, the firm is poised to grow even more over the coming decades. The company has already completed 150 projects across 31 states — and it’s just getting started.

 

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