By Melanie Robitaille, Sr. Staff Writer & Graphic Designer
Commercial markets across North America may still be recovering from a shift over the last several years, but for as hard as professionals transacting in that arena have had it, aspects of their business that have never changed are buyer representation and compensation, two issues that have turned the tables and rocked the residential world across the continent throughout 2024.
Seeing this, I sat down for an interview with top commercial agent and Certified Commercial Investment Member (CCIM), Timothy Churchwell with EXIT Realty Central in Norfolk, VA to discuss these two issues and how differently they’ve been dealt with on either side of the industry.
“Buyer’s agency is not dead,” he stated very matter-of-factly. “It just means you have to show them the value of what you’re doing. And the same thing goes on the listing side too. A lot of agents don’t know how to do that though. Now you have to share the stuff you do; show your value and why people need you.”
The fact is, he has become so good at doing this himself that a large part of his commercial business is consulting these days, and handling things like feasibility analyses or making go or no-go decisions on property portfolios being brought to him.
“I can do a restaurant market analysis and tell you how much money people spend in a certain demographic. Say you want to open a fried chicken restaurant. I can tell you how much money the people spent on fried chicken in the last year versus how much money they spent within that geography and do a gap analysis to tell you whether the market is saturated for fried chicken in that location,” he said. But doing this type of thing is just par for the course for him and other commercial agents, and so is talking compensation he says. “We’ve always negotiated our fees, period. I always explain to my clients the fee, and that some out there offer it straight up while others don’t, and if the seller doesn’t pay, they have to pay me.”
Tim, as most people know him, is teaching a course on value these days. Being that his origins are rooted in residential real estate but he’s also the 2024 Regional VP for CCIM and sits on their 2024 Global Board of Directors, he’s known both sides of the real estate industry saying, “I didn’t just leap into commercial as much as I wanted to. I didn’t even know what I didn’t know, so I couldn’t. I had to get the education to find out what I was doing.”
In his opinion, the use of a Buyer’s Representation Agreement (BRA) is something agents should’ve always been doing, however not every state mandated the practice, that is until now. Recent National Association of REALTOR® (NAR) changes took effect last August regarding buyer’s agency and compensation which has shaken up residential real estate and caused many a hot debate since. And while some may be new to these practices, he doesn’t think agents should be fearful of them. In fact, Tim believes doing them will only strengthen the integrity of the entire industry.
“This isn’t a big deal,” he explained. “If anything, it’s actually kind of positive because what it’s going to do is get rid of the agents out there that expect to get paid for holding open a door.”
For more tips from a commercial agent, read the full story in the latest edition, The Integrity Issue, of the EXIT Achiever.
