Who's Who in Real Estate - 2014 | Robert Phillips
Who's Who in Real
Estate - 2014
The Daily
Transcript | by: Tony Lovitt | published 12/10/14
Pacific Coast Commercial CEO says 'San Diego is just an incredible place to do business'
Robert Phillips has
been in the commercial real estate business for more than two decades and he
has a very good memory. A better memory, in fact, than the computer he used
when starting in the business.
“When I was starting
out, I can remember that the computer that was out there, that they were
touting as 'the' computer, was an Altos and it was a 10 megabyte computer,”
said Phillips, a San Diego native and the president and CEO of Pacific Coast Commercial. “And I can remember the salesman telling
us that 'with 10 megabytes, you will never run out of memory, there's more
memory than you can even imagine.' Ten megabytes.”
Phillips and his
partners founded the company, a commercial real estate brokerage and property
management firm, in September 1994, buying out what was then known as East
County Property Management and East County Properties. Although technological
advancements have, Phillips said, “allowed us to communicate better, store data
better and actually do a lot more work,” he has not forgotten that first and
foremost, commercial real estate and property management are relationship-based
businesses.
“There are people
behind the properties. We don't really deal with institutional owners. It's
mostly people like you and I. That's probably the most rewarding part of it for
me,” said Phillips, whose day-to-day responsibilities at PCC include leasing,
management, personnel supervision and overall guidance of the company.
“It's really a diverse
business, especially when we do both sales and leasing and property management.
There's really never a dull moment,” Phillips said. “Every day is different and
you really never know what you're going to be confronted with, whether it's
dealing with the people and their problems or the buildings and their problems,
or the successes of turning a property around, which we do quite a bit of.”
Phillips is proud that
PCC still manages the 18 properties and 800,000 square feet that were inherited
when he started the company 20 years ago. The “original 18,” among others, have
also been an ongoing and invaluable source of word-of-mouth advertising.
“I have clients that
don't just say we do a good job, they really rave about us. You could talk to
any one of my clients and they would rave about our service and what we do,” he
said, adding that the company has 94 employees, including 30 commercial real
estate agents and about 25 to 30 members of the administrative and executive
staffs. Many have been with PCC for 10 years or more.
“We don't have turnover
in terms of managers. Property managers are the lifeblood of what we do. They
have knowledge that is very difficult to transfer from person to person. And
when you have management transition, that's when you get loss of information
and it really degrades the service that the tenants are getting and the quality
of service that the owners are getting,” Phillips said. “Everybody here knows
we want every one of our clients to feel as though they're our only client.”
Phillips said PCC
covers all of the bases -- sales, leasing and management -- for all types of
commercial real estate. PCC's properties range in size from about 5,000 to
175,000 square feet, the latter being a self-storage facility in Eastlake. The
company now manages “about 125 properties and right around 5 million square feet,”
Phillips said, between Bakersfield and the International Border, including
Imperial and Riverside counties. Glasshouse Square Shopping Center in Point
Loma is, perhaps, PCC's most high-profile property, as well as one of its
largest.
Asked to identify the
biggest challenge facing his company, Phillips replied, “growth.”
“We're growing like
crazy. This year has been historical for us. We've never had this kind of
growth. We have grown more this year – probably 150 percent – from what we
started the company with.
"That's our
challenge, handling the growth.”
Not a bad problem to
have for Phillips, who has good memories of the past but is enjoying the
present and is optimistic about the future, especially in his home town.
“The market itself,
from a real estate standpoint, is very stable and I think it will continue to
be as long as our government can hold it together,” Phillips said. “San Diego
is just an incredible place to do business. You can't go wrong buying real
estate in San Diego. I just don't see how you can.”
DISCLAIMER: This blog/article has
been curated from an alternate source and is designed for informational
purposes to highlight the commercial real estate market. It solely represents
the opinion of the specific blogger/author and does not necessarily represent
the opinion of Pacific Coast Commercial. www.PacificCoastCommercial.com
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