One CCIM shares how starting a consulting business can help during an economic downturn
By Todd D. Clarke, CCIM
After a few years in the business and having completed more than 400 apartment transactions, I became focused on how to get paid for what I knew versus what I could do. Having been through the ups and downs of economic cycles, I didn’t want all of my income generated from a source that had variables I couldn’t control, such as an economic meltdown and fluctuations in interest rates. You can work for years on a client relationship, precisely price a property through analysis, execute the perfect marketing plan, find a buyer, and put a property under contract, only to have the whole deal blow up because of forces outside your control. The commercial real estate industry has experienced this nationally during the 1980 Resolution Trust Corp. days and most recently in the current credit crunch.