Personality Traits Of Commercial Real Estate CEOs
August 28, 2017 | Natalie Dolce | GlobeSt.com
There are many unique personalities in the executive suites of CRE investment and development companies. CRE is a difficult entrepreneurial business and most individuals who become CEO’s derive their character and personality traits from this experience and their upbringing. In the exclusive commentary below, written by Joseph Ori, executive managing director of Paramount Capital Corp., he discusses these personality traits and how they can be good or bad depending on the specific individual and their life experiences. “Some traits are positive and produce great CEO’s and others are negative and may cause individuals to become flawed executives.” Three primary CRE personality traits that he discusses are: the Deal Junkie, the Brain and the Sleazeball.
The views expressed below are Joseph Ori’s own.
The Deal Junkie is a CRE CEO who excels at making deals, however, they end up making some good, but mostly bad deals. They are more interested in how many deals they make and money they earn than if the transactions make financial sense or are profitable. They usually excel at making the deal, but leave the details and closing issues to someone else. It appears the Deal Junkie CEO obtains a certain thrill from the deal aspects and the notoriety but has little interest in the specifics of the transaction. They get great press and complimentary articles written about them in major newspapers and magazines. They are invited to speak at key CRE industry conferences and are lauded at their deal making prowess. The Deal Junkie usually grows his firm quickly by the rapid deal making, but inevitably, gets into financial trouble when the economy turns down or the real estate market crashes. The Deal Junkie doesn’t realize that a lot of deal making requires a lot of real estate debt and when the market turns negative, the high debt load becomes a big problem. Since the Deal Junkie’s skills are in doing the “next deal”, they usually lack the management, operational and risk containment skills that are necessary to run a large real estate organization and for long term success in the CRE industry. Most Deal Junkie CEO’s have a meteoric rise in the industry followed by a big crash.
