Property ManagementThe Impact of the CCIM Institute on Commercial Real Estate Industry and Investors
[Note: To follow is an excerpt of an interview with Charles A. "Mac" McClure, the 2009 President of the CCIM Institute, and Chairman of the Board of McClure Partners, a full service real estate brokerage and development company. To listen to the show archive or download an MP3, go to www.IncomePropertyInvestmentTalk.com/012809.]
Mosca: You coined a new theme to guide participation from the Institute and its leadership in these challenging economic times. You call it "From Wall Street to Main Street." Can you tell us what you mean by that and what it means to the Institute?
McClure: As we go through some of the economic collapses that began in October of this year, we found that many of our investors in the United States especially have spent an inordinate amount of money in some of the less active markets. One of the things that we have attempted to do in the CCIM program with our 20,000 members in the United States is begin to move our investment portfolios back to "Main Street" because the fundamentals of real estate in each of our communities across this country are still very good. We started depending on "Wall Street" instead of "Main Street" to create the jobs and the growth that will help the real estate industry on a local market basis. We came up with the theme "Wall Street to Main Street" where we"re asking our investors to look for the CCIMs in their local markets and start driving up and down the streets and see where local businesses actually operate. The greatest real estate investments are some of those you drive right by every day. If you can get into a situation, maybe through a partnership or through a group of investors and buy those buildings and actually start creating jobs in the local community, we"re going to rebuild this country. Remember, this is still the greatest country and the greatest investment opportunity in the world.
Mosca: When you go to CCIM.com, your slogan is networking, education, and technology. The Institute has a history of staying on top of the industry in those areas, and helping government understand the importance of real estate to the economy. What are some of the other ways that make the Institute unique?
McClure: We originally wrote our first course in 1969, and since then, we constantly update the concepts we teach for our CCIM designation and our courses. In fact, right now I am sitting here with Bob Ward the inventor of the internal rate of return. We started yesterday morning in Dallas, and we are rolling out our brand new financial analysis course and we"ve been sitting here teaching 52 brand new students the concepts of financial analysis. We"ve updated it for 2009. We are 100 percent state of the art. We have spent, in our Institute, $3Ѕ million retooling all of our courses. We look at our work as a way to make our communities better, the way to make our pension funds across this country better, and to figure out a way to make a return on investments better. If we can quantify and analyze with the proper tools, then in essence everybody is in a "win-win" position.
Mosca: The networking and the knowledge of your members and what you are sharing here today are tremendous. What are some of the education and technological resources that designees have to give them a competitive advantage?
McClure: This world is changing and the use of computers and the Internet is dramatically changing the real estate industry in this country. Five years ago the CCIM Institute invested about $2 million into STDB online, our the global "Site to Do Business." The Site To Do Business is a way of using GIS software so we can spatially manipulate and visualize data of what"s going on in every single market in this country. Then last year we entered into a contract with the largest provider of the GIS service in the United States and geospatial engineering, ESRI out of Redlands, California. The CCIM Institute signed a 20-year contract, which is unheard of in our industry with ESRI so that we could provide the state-of-the-art geospatial and GIS technology to our members.
Mosca: Has this impacted your education or the CCIM designation itself?
McClure: We introduced a new term into our curriculum called psychographics, which is lifestyle segmentation. Therefore it is much easier for us to look at what"s going on in the market, how that market is going to change over a period of time, and what real estate asset should be in place to meet the demands of the new wave of people that will be in that market. I"m sitting here right now in Addison, Texas and 15 years ago we didn"t have lifestyle centers. Now, I"m looking at over 5,000 units in our lifestyle area at a beautiful park. The entire geospatial area of new lifestyles is taking hold and one of the things we have to do is provide our members and honestly the real estate investing public with the tools to be able to analyze where things are going and how best to meet that market demand. We spend our members" dues dollars on the state-of-the-art and that"s what we just did with our contract with ESRI. We"ve done that with completely rerouting our education that has produced 17,000 students in 2008 that went through our program on a global basis. We believe that only by staying on the cutting edge can the CCIM Institute maintain its position as the global leader in commercial real estate.
Mosca: What is your golden nugget for today?
McClure: We need to take the real estate industry back to our communities all across the United States. CCIMs are uniquely positioned to do just that; we have the technology and the education. We need to do it because it"s the right thing for our country. We need to pull more people out of our colleges and universities and hire more civil engineers and financial engineers. It"s time for us to go back to work like FDR did in 1932 and rebuild our country with roads and bridges and schools and churches and all across this country. We need to build our real estate because it is without a doubt the finest investment we can have in our country.