We Think Like an Owner

Shannon Waltchack currently owns a portfolio of 1,150,000 SF of Medical Office, Retail, Office, Flex Space and Multi-family properties. We also lease and manage another 350,000 SF of 3rd party properties for various clients.

We tend to think about our portfolio on a property-by-property, granular basis rather than a macro view. Most of our properties are owned with different sets of investors and as such an investor in the Hollywood project may not care that we have a vacancy at Altadena Square as they are not in that deal.  

I thought it would be interesting to compile the data on all of our properties and look at the portfolio-wide occupancy rate for the past 5 years. I was shocked at what we found:

We had sustained a much higher level of occupancy than national and local averages. Why? How?

The first half of the answer is that we selected quality real estate that had an inherent advantage to its peers. We believe in buying at or below replacement cost.   

But the real key was the time and attention that we spent on attacking our upcoming vacancies. We, as principals, were involved in the day to day deal making that it takes to stay full in this market.

A prime example was our Corporate Center property in Homewood. That building was 100% occupied from the day we bought it, but due to coinciding lease expirations, we were facing a worse case scenario of a 65% vacant building in 2011. We saw that bullet coming back early in 2010 and Tim Blair put a plan together to aggressively market and cost effectively rehab the lobby. By attracting a new anchor tenant and moving some existing tenants around to accommodate their needs, we are still holding strong at 86% occupied. Crisis averted. 

As we continue to win more 3rd party work, we bring to our clients the same expertise and care for our craft that we’ve applied to our own properties. 

Our tag line is ‘We Love Real Estate’.  But it could just as easily be we’re different because ‘we think like an owner’.