Darren Lizzack, MSRE Associate VP NAI James E. Hanson 201 488 5800 x104 dlizzack@naihanson.com More Info

New Jersey Commercial Real Estate Alliance Unveiled

I hope this message finds you well. I wanted to follow up with my readers this month after the New Jersey Commercial Real Estate Alliance (www.njcrea.com) has been publicly unveiled only one month ago. The concept of this specialized group has been well received from all the people I have spoken with during my travels and I wanted to use this opportunity to express some of the valuable tools that are now available to you and I highly recommend you tap into these resources if need be.

About NJCREA

Two years ago I reached out to Keith Lesser, a partner at IS&L Architects from Fair Lawn and we spoke about creating a specialized group of professionals that can come to the table on a regular basis with the notion of helping one another without expecting anything in return. Keith introduced me to his partner, Joel Ives, simply because it was a conflict of interest for him to be involved with my group given he had been working with his own network group, BUT he thought Joel and I should run with our idea to form this unique organization which has now become known as NJCREA. Joel and I tapped into our resources to identify members who touch the commercial real estate arena from a slightly different angle, and therefore, may look at similar circumstances differently. Truth be told, if a scenario is brought to the attention of the members, each individual offers their professional expertise which helps others see different solutions that they may not have thought of on their own. There is an advantage to having a group of highly trained professionals working together to solve any particular real estate dilemma that arises.

NJCREA has been created to help companies and/or people solve complex problems, and in a state that faces many obstacles and challenges, this could not come to the forefront at a better time. The economy has been suffering for almost two years and recovery is expected to be slow and steady over the next couple/few years. If you have a real estate venture you are dealing with in some capacity, this group can help assist you from start to finish. Or if your project is under way, and if you have some of these professional services already engaged, you should feel comfortable calling on the member(s) you feel may be the missing link(s), which will help aid your project to completion.

I can bet that whoever you are, you have created relationships during your tenure in the business that you can tap into. If you have been in the business for any amount of time, you come across resources all the time and add them to your quiver. You may also find that you recognize some of the members or member firms involved with NJCREA. And don’t think for a minute that these individuals/companies do not have relationships they have created over the years before NJCREA was formed. They are not all that much different than you and because they tap into the resources of NJCREA when needed, you can and should do the same.

Whether you are an attorney, architect, real estate broker, banker, accountant, appraiser, insurance broker, contractor, etc., you should feel comfortable tapping into the resources offered by other members and work towards advancing your own relationships for projects you may be associated with. Some may have an “old school” mentality, thinking all projects that touch NJCREA must be created here and remain here and this can’t be further from the truth. The member firms are independent, stand alone entities that have been servicing clients in the state of NJ for decades; member firms are independently proven, collaboratively strong NJ expertise. Therefore, I recommend you remove your “old school” mentality and enter the 21^st century mentality.

www.NJCREA.com

If you have not been to the website yet (over 2,800 hits already since the public unveiling the first week of January 2010), I highly recommend you spend a few minutes maneuvering through its content because you will find valuable information. You will find on the left hand side of the home page, links to each member firm’s blog page which is beginning to fill up with useful information. Each blog page will also link you to the member firm’s company website (http://njcrea.com/directory). The “Member Directory” will provide you with contact information for each NJCREA member so you can call/email them with questions and/or concerns about any project. There is also a “Forum” (http://njcrea.com/forum) section whereas you can ask questions which are category specific and the member best suited to answer that question will respond to you. This information is only viewable if you register with NJCREA, but as time unfolds, this may be a great resource to tap into. If you are not sure who you need to help out, go to the “CONTACT US” (http://njcrea.com/contact-us) section and let us know what you are interested in finding out information on and the appropriate member will contact you to further discuss.

If you are a professional servicing the commercial real estate arena, there are newsfeeds that are specific to your industry (our average visitor has been to the webiste 3.5 times just in the past month alone) that you probably already receive on a regular basis. NJCREA has taken this to the next level for you; our website is unique in that we provide industry specific news (http://njcrea.com/news) which is broken down into various categories (architecture, banking & finance, commercial banking, construction, “green” news, legal & national commercial real estate news, and business news for NJ). If you would like to receive daily newsfeeds directly into your email from NJCREA, sign up on the home page by providing your email address. Or simply try searching a topic on the home page and see the plethora of results at your fingertips.

NJCREA is innovative and is multi-faceted. We have incorporated the various social media tools available today, and we can now be found and followed on Twitter (search NJCREA on twitter), and coming soon, you will be able to join the subgroup of NJCREA on LinkedIn. Whether you are using any of these social media tools today or not, I do not know, but if you are not, I recommend extending your own network of contacts by getting involved because these tools are here to stay whether you like it or not and they cost you nothing. All you have to invest is your time!

Summary

I hope you enjoyed this month’s issue and you found some/all of the information interesting and/or useful. If you need additional information on these terms or the ones I have left out, feel free to contact me directly at your convenience at dlizzack@naihanson.com. In addition, please feel free to read up on all my articles; you can find this article and all others archived here: http://njcrea.com/brokerage/nai for your convenience. You may also provide me with feedback and please let me know if there is a topic you would like me to shed some light on in future news articles. And if I am not the one to best answer your specific commercial real estate related question(s), feel free to contact any of my peers that are associated with New Jersey Commercial Real Estate Alliance (www.njcrea.com); I am confident that one of us can help you.