By Conrad Koneczny - Nothing is as simple as it seems, and hiring the right advisor is no different. The landscape of the commercial real estate industry has changed dramatically over the years becoming increasingly complex. As you have no doubt surmised from the color of my beard, I’ve been at this a while…more than 35 years to be precise.

Aside from the obvious requisites such as knowledge, experience, personality, a strong support team, a broad sphere of influence, market savvy, etc., the key to engaging the right firm is defining the relationship in such a fashion that goal alignment is achieved out of the gate. Productive professional services relationships insure that there are no conflicts of interest, and that the advisory firm’s loyalty and fiduciary obligations are to the owner and no other third party. Creating a certainty of execution in this market goes far beyond sales ability.

Much like an algebraic formula that isn’t solved due to getting the order of operation out of sync, one of the most commonly made mistakes by real estate practitioners is hiring vendors in the wrong sequence. Contractors, architects, engineers, etc., while talented professionals should rarely be the first vendors engaged. These professionals can add tremendous value to a project when carefully engaged at the right point in time to be part of a collaborative effort, but are not typically the best professionals to drive the project from the outset.

If you want to know if a commercial real estate project (new or existing) is viable, you need to know whether or not it is positioned, or can be repositioned properly in the market place…Put simply, any property you acquire needs to have a strategic competitive advantage in the market. Put even more simply, it has been our experience that when a sponsor will make the decision to engage a qualified commercial real estate advisor at the time a project is first being conceptualized, it is the single best form of insurance an owner can purchase.

Commercial real estate should be approached like any other business in that you need create a clear vision, a sound strategy, and demand precise execution to come out on top. Examine any successful commercial real estate investor and to the one you’ll find that they have surrounded themselves with professional advisers whose sound counsel they rely upon to avoid the ever increasing number of mistakes that can be made in this market.