Soon after pandemic travel restrictions were lifted, Jeff Shaw, an office broker and CEO of Bridge Commercial Real Estate, embarked on a cross-country trek to find out how changing office dynamics were affecting markets, and more importantly, tenants.
For the past 18-plus months, Shaw has toured office properties as a prospective tenant would do. With his reporter-style notebook in hand, he has been interviewing tenants in his properties. Bridge Commercial Real Estate, a subsidiary of Bridge Investment Group, owns office properties from coast to coast, and Shaw has traveled through his home base of Atlanta to other major cities including Chicago, Minneapolis, Phoenix and Washington, D.C.
At each stop, Shaw spent about 30 minutes asking tenants how the pandemic affected their business and priorities and what concerns they found most pressing. “I've been able to make a connection with them in many cases professionally, and personally,” he said. “They feel comfortable telling the things that are going right or things are going wrong.”
The effort has helped Shaw establish a personal bond with tenants and has provided insights into tenant needs and office-use patterns. He’s built new relationships with several of Bridge's tenants and has given his personal phone number to about 1,300 people, Shaw said in an interview with CoStar News. By giving them his phone number, Shaw has left open those new lines of communication.
“It’s like when your doctor gives you his personal number. You know you're not going to call your doctor unless you really need to ask him something that's important,” Shaw said. “I think it's the same thing [with tenants] as this is building the importance of a relationship because they have been going through a big struggle through the pandemic with the same issues that a lot of owners are dealing with, how do you keep talent, [amid] quiet quitting and the loss of culture as a result.”