How's Biz with Kelly Disser III
On excellent service: “Before you get something, be prepared to give something.”
A high performing broker of many years and Executive Vice President with the Industrial Services Group at NAI Hiffman in Chicago, Kelly Disser III was one of NAI Global’s Top Producers in 2022. Early in the year, the How’s Biz, Gary Marsh, host spoke with Kelly about his career path and history, some of the work he and his team have been doing and what are some of the contributing factors to his success. Here’s a brief recap of the podcast.
The Fort Wayne, IN-native has a near-perfect background to thrive in the commercial real estate industry – especially brokerage, because he is both competitive and collaborative in nature and is a self-described people pleaser, meaning he likes to make people happy, and that often translates in business as helping his clients make money. A high school standout in (American) football (QB), after interviewing with a number of Big 10 schools (+ the Naval Academy and Air Force Academy) Kelly opted to attend and play for Butler University, which is in Indianapolis. However, because he wanted to be a starter on the Butler team and just before the 2-a-day workouts ended, Kelly switched to cornerback – a decision he said in the podcast was a youthful exhibit of impatience, and something he learned from that has been helpful in his career development. For his last two seasons of collegiate football, he switched to wide receiver on the offensive side.
During college, Kelly did a two-year internship with Indy-based Duke Realty Corporation, which hired him out of college in 2002. With Duke, he was responsible for financial and operational management of a 22 million square foot portfolio. After four years (professionally) with Duke, Kelly was recruited to Dallas, TX, where he worked for Tabani Group, where he helped facilitate the growth of the company’s existing real estate portfolio through investments and new development. In 2008 he moved to Chicago – in part lured by his fiancé and later wife, Audra, who he credits as being a big part of his success early and currently with his career. In Chicago, he started in brokerage with NAI Hiffman – just as the Great Financial Crisis began and without any contacts in the Windy City. By 2015, he was a shareholder of NAI Hiffman and today, runs point on a team of four people – two other brokers and a senior administrator.
Kelly’s team divides duties but in some instances, overlaps on work when the deals demand it. His strengths are with business development and some of the underwriting as part of the overall development process. The team typically is involved in two or three new development deals per year. However, the team balances its activity and revenue by working closely with tenants about the half the time and landlord/developers for the other half of their transaction volume. They do a lot of work with Prologis and Link Logistics yet also work with middle-market investment companies that often do not have directors of real estate, so Kelly and his team effectively become an outsourced real estate department.
Kelly described two of the team’s bigger deals in 2022, including a 450,000-square-foot, build-to-suit on behalf of Atlantic Packaging and another project (which he called equally complex) – a 150,000-square-foot deal, for a 100-year-old company, Clyde’s Donuts. One of the takeaways on those start-to-finish projects (site selection and entitlement process through construction completion) is how much service and the amount of detail associated with information gathering with each transaction and how that information goes into analysis and decision making by Kelly’s team and their clients.
The team also had just closed on a land sale that was indicative of the current market in Chicago. A client/developer has been doing a land assemblage project and started purchasing property a couple years ago when land was being sold at $15 a foot. During the interim land values shot up to $40 a foot and the last parcel – 7 acres, closed at $32 per-square-foot in December. When the project started there was a target audience of 40 developers and by the time it got closer there were only six or seven developers that had the capital and ability to close and build the project.
Currently, there is approximately 37 million square feet of industrial property under development in the Chicago market that is expected to finish this year. Kelly said on the podcast that he thinks there will be fewer starts on speculative industrial projects in 2023, and largely associated with the higher cost of money and change in Cap Rates in the investment markets as well as the threat of an economic slowdown.
Kelly described his commitment to service as a large contributor to his success, and he recognizes that without excellent service a broker can become nothing more than a commodity. For someone new in the brokerage business, there’s a really strong message to be heard in Kelly’s comments on service.
Reach Kelly Disser III: +1 630 317 0721
Find out more about NAI Global: www.naiglobal.com
