Celebrating 20 Years of Tenant Representation in New England; Kudos to Pioneer Bill Goade

When Bill Goade was a corporate real estate executive during his days at Wang Laboratories and Digital Equipment Corporation, he outsourced some of the companies' real estate needs to brokers who typically represented landlords as well as tenants. Indeed, going this "dual agency" route was basically his only option back then. Well, Goade wasn't entirely impressed with the service he received; in fact, he found that the brokers didn't add much value...and worse, he saw that their allegiance to him, as a tenant, was compromised by their vested ties to landlords. 

Thinking that he could build a better mousetrap, Goade ventured out on his own (with current Cresa Managing Principals Jack Burns, Ed Fothergill, and Bob Shulman) and founded Avalon Partners in Boston, the forerunner of Cresa, 27 years ago. As the area's first tenant rep firm, Avalon started small and grew to 15 employees before 1993, when the firm merged with other like-minded tenant rep groups that had opened in metro centers across the country during this time. Cresa's subsequent growth was dramatic, and in 2006, after The Staubach Company was acquired by Jones Lang LaSalle, Cresa became North America's largest corporate real estate advisory firm exclusively representing tenants. Almost two decades later, after helping Cresa grow to 57 offices in North America and over 250 locations worldwide (through the partnership Goade forged with Savills), Goade has decided to step down as Cresa's CEO. Succeeding him is Jim Leslie, former President & CEO of Staubach. http://www.cresa.com/news/viewarticle.asp?id=843

Goade's Legacy

Industry analysts say that Goade's lasting legacy is introducing the tenant rep model on the local level and helping to nurture it nationwide. As well-received as this model is in Corporate America today, some wonder why it has not gained even greater traction. Goade's take on this:  

• Traditional landlord agencies have been around for well over a century and have established relationships that are sometimes hard to change, even if the client's interests don't come first.
• Once companies decide to go with a traditional firm, they often tend to justify their decision to do so, reluctant to acknowledge there may be a better way.
• Landlord brokers benefit from free advertising of their listings splashed on building signage, enhancing their branding in a way that tenant firms cannot.

The Tenant's Advantage

Still, more companies are discovering what we call The Tenant's Advantage, as exemplified by Cresa:  

• Objective consultation in which advisors are not beholden to landlords.
• Accountability only to the client and not to Wall Street.
• Bottom-line savings averaging 15% or more with tenant rep firms.
• A partnership model that features broadly held equity (leading to outstanding staff retention) and no debt.
• Integrated corporate services, including Strategic Planning and Project Management. http://www.cresa.com/integratedservices/overview.asp

Looking ahead, we certainly don't expect the dual agency approach to go away, and we respect brokers we work with on the landlord side. But, thanks in large part to Bill Goade's vision and his accomplishments, we expect that more companies will demand full transparency and no improprieties...and will embrace the model that Bill brought to this area 20 years ago.

To learn more about Bill Goade, who continues as an advisor at Cresa, 

 see our backgrounder and his bio

http://www.cresa.com/resumes/bgoade