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Show Summary
Chad Massaker shares his journey from running an IT company to becoming a top commercial real estate agent and mentor in Florida. He discusses market trends during and after COVID-19, the rise of mixed-use developments, and the strong performance of necessity-based retail and industrial assets. As eXp Realty’s Commercial National Mentor of the Year, Chad also highlights innovative lead generation, personal branding, and sustainable business strategies that help new agents succeed without relying on cold calling.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Chad Massaker (00:00)
Uh, it was, and still mostly is almost feels like the wild West. Everybody swings for their fences in terms of pricing here. The bid ask spread is just still immense. Um, just to give you like the most extreme example, when I first got here, the Ferragamo building, which is on Palm beach Island, where all the billionaires are. That space was running out for about 150 square foot. That was in 2022, 23, maybe it now runs for three 42 a square foot gross.Yeah, it’s insane. And landlords here, it’s funny because tenants are like, well, this space has been vacant forever. Why aren’t they taking my offer? I was like, you don’t understand. People here have all this money. I don’t care. They’ll wait for the right tenant. If they don’t like you, it is what it is. They don’t need your money.
Dylan Silver (00:28)
ThankHey folks, welcome back to the show. Today’s guest, Chad Massaker is a commercial real estate agent and business broker, 2023 EXP commercial national mentor of the year, CRE technologist and AI specialist, and also international judo and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu gold medalist. Chad, welcome to the show.
Chad Massaker (02:37)
What’s up?Dylan Silver (02:38)
Great to have you on here. We were talking before you’re in beautiful West Palm Beach, Florida. I would say I’m jealous, but I’m in the Dominican Republic, so I feel like I maybe are taking in some of the good weather. ⁓ Let me start by asking you how you got into the real estate space.Chad Massaker (02:47)
no, you win. You win.Yeah, it’s a funny story. So I owned an IT company for 20 years in Atlanta where I was from. Had a few other businesses. I guess you could say I’m a serial entrepreneur, but the IT company was the mainstay. And the latter 10 years of it, I kind of got burned out on just tech in general and trying to keep up with it. People start asking me questions about new technology. I’m like, I have no idea. Like, because over time as I grew the business, I transitioned to like the CEO rainmaker role. I wasn’t really doing engineering tech stuff. So I didn’t keep my fingers on the pulse.
And, had befriended some people that I knew from Atlanta that came down here to West Palm, but they had sold their business and they got into real estate and they were doing well. ⁓ it was a couple and, ⁓ I would come stay with them time and again. And, know, eventually we talked to them about what I didn’t like about my IT company. And I was just kind of burning out on it. And they said, Hey, you should come down here and start the commercial side of our, whatever. Cause we’re getting a lot of like spinoff leads from our residential deals. like, okay. And you know, that was a.
That was probably 2016, 2017, you know, we would keep talking about it, but never were in around and got my license. So in 2018, I met my now wife. Um, we got, know, our relationship moved pretty quick. We clicked. Um, and then for whatever reason, that seemed to be like the time to go get the license. So I get the license in the summer of 19. And then, you know, it’s always with the antenna moving down here. So I’m like, all right, I got the license and now we’ve got to figure out how to get her a job down here. Well, a month after I get the license.
Dylan Silver (03:57)
Hmm.Chad Massaker (04:19)
gets ahead Hunter that calls her with the job and we weren’t even looking she hadn’t even told them to start looking down here yet. mean talk about serendipity and so was like well okay I guess we got to go now and and so I stayed back we moved her down here early because the job needed her earlier and she went and lived with that couple and I um stayed back with our daughter to help her finish school and then we all moved down here January of 2023 months before COVID.Dylan Silver (04:24)
Well…So you got started in the commercial space, which is interesting because a lot of people say, hey, I’m going to maybe make a transition into commercial, but that was your entry.
Chad Massaker (05:33)
Yeah.Yeah, there was no way I was going to ever get into residential. ⁓ but, know, hindsight being 2020, there are great, there are great many things that I would have done differently. ⁓ obviously first of those would be to not start my career. ⁓ when a pandemic starts, you know, I can’t, I can’t really armchair quarterback that one that well, but, you know, it was also, ⁓ good and, you know, I don’t want to say a pandemic is good, but, obviously, you know, being in Florida, ⁓ you know, it was, ⁓ it got really good, really quick.
Dylan Silver (06:06)
I actually want to ask you a granular question about the commercial space in that time. I’m not a commercial agent, but I’m aware of what happened during COVID, right? So you’re having, you know, retail and maybe office really struggle, shuttering doors all around the country. And we’re still seeing the effects of that, right? ⁓ But you were not experiencing that in Florida, from what I understand. What was the market like at thatChad Massaker (06:26)
Not here. Not here.Uh, it was, and still mostly is almost feels like the wild West. Everybody swings for their fences in terms of pricing here. The bid ask spread is just still immense. Um, just to give you like the most extreme example, when I first got here, the Ferragamo building, which is on Palm beach Island, where all the billionaires are. That space was running out for about 150 square foot. That was in 2022, 23, maybe it now runs for three 42 a square foot gross.
Yeah, it’s insane. And landlords here, it’s funny because tenants are like, well, this space has been vacant forever. Why aren’t they taking my offer? I was like, you don’t understand. People here have all this money. I don’t care. They’ll wait for the right tenant. If they don’t like you, it is what it is. They don’t need your money.
Dylan Silver (07:02)
ThankChad Massaker (07:18)
is like the traditional supply and demand dynamics. I would say that they work here.but they’re not as predictable as they might be in what I would call a regular middle of the road market. I don’t even know what that would be. Maybe a line or something. I’m not sure, but it’s just a different dynamic here.
Dylan Silver (07:33)
So was there any,I can speak for Texas, we weren’t as impacted as some areas, but there definitely was some shuddering, some difficult times for people in the commercial space. It doesn’t sound like there was any of that in your area.
Chad Massaker (07:49)
Yeah. I mean, the one thing that all of Sunbell States really were largely insulated from any element of like the recession and stuff like that. And we had so much, I think, I think the year after the pandemic stopped, we calculated that we had nearly a hundred thousand New Yorkers become Floridians, like as in surrender their driver’s license and got a Florida license, like, like moved here. ⁓ like, you know, so we, we got, we have a lot of immigration. now called like the wall street at the South. ⁓ anyways, backing up a little bit.Dylan Silver (08:09)
Whoa.Chad Massaker (08:16)
Office by far is still the most troubled asset class hands down and that’s largely due to the work from home thing that happened as a result of the pandemic and it’s been hard to kind of put the genie back in the bottle. But what’s interesting is it’s also kind of shining a light ⁓ on the most troubled and crappiest, if you will, assets. If you were to go into CoStar right now and look at vacancy rates,Dylan Silver (08:24)
Right.Chad Massaker (08:41)
Class A would probably have a very healthy sub 10 % vacancy rate. Usually when you have that lower percentage, you’re just talking about kind of leases changing over or somebody’s lease is in and they’re just refilling the space. But then if you look at like Class B and Class C, and I haven’t looked at these in a while, but at one point, Class B office spaces were 20, I think I saw the size 22 or 23 % vacant. So that’s a fourth of the building. And then when you factor in Class C and look at them all together,It’s 40. It was 43 % occupancy. So, you know, really to summarize this, take a look at any class B or C building. And it’s basically, you know, that it’s probably just half full and that’s it.
That’s a lot of revenue that’s like, you know, not ever being realized, right? It’s just like, think about it like a hotel every night, every night a hotel room doesn’t get rented. That’s revenue you can never get back. Same thing with leasing, right? ⁓ And so, you know, there’s been lots of talk about
Dylan Silver (09:59)
Yeah.Chad Massaker (10:08)
you know, what do you call it? Retasking or repurposing, you know, like, hey, take it and turn it to multifamily. The issue with that is plumbing. The treasure fit by the time you retrofit the plumbing, you know, to add, you know, shower sink and all that, you probably could have built a new building is what most people will tell you. The only way you can make office truly work and make that conversion work as if there’s medical office, because then you’ve got plumbing throughout the office suites, right? But office medical office in and of itself isn’t having any issues.Dylan Silver (10:11)
Great.Sure.
Chad Massaker (10:34)
We need doctors all the time. It’s regular class BNC office that are the troubled assets right now. So yeah, I kind of went up on that.Dylan Silver (10:36)
Medical, yeah, absolutely.I do want
to ask you about maybe the area of commercial that you’re most bullish on. We’re talking about how office may be troubled, but medical office is great. imagine anything multifamily commercial residential is doing great. Do you have a favorite asset class in the commercial space?
Chad Massaker (11:03)
Is that the long way of asking if I specialize or are you just asking for personal favor?Dylan Silver (11:09)
No, mean, are youas an investor, right? Or if you were looking at it as an investment, would you be preferential towards one asset class based on recession proof, based on how it’s doing right now? And then also ⁓ maybe even the long term investment as far as an exit.
Chad Massaker (11:28)
I would look, ⁓ for me, I’m bullish on retail and industrial, but looking at it as a synergistic pair, as the supply chain. So when I say retail, because of like, have the tariffs and may or may not see a significant impact here in this quarter, say. ⁓ I always like to look at stuff that’s a retail that’s about necessary goods.You know, so that’s groceries. That’s arguably Home Depot home repair. People are going to fix their house instead of try to sell it or stuff like that. So I like retail. That’s that’s necessity focused. And then obviously the warehousing and distribution that is used to back up those retail elements, right? Because I think that’s a very solid, stable. I mean, we have to have groceries. We have to have,
Dylan Silver (12:00)
Yeah?driven.
Chad Massaker (12:21)
building supplies, right? Even arguably clothing stores, but probably not the higher end ones. ⁓ But anything that’s covering basic needs, any kind of a supply chain cycle that covers that. And even to the extent ⁓ office, right? mean, know, Publix I’m sure has corporate headquarters, right? To have all their executives. So ⁓ office that’s in support of that whole ecosystem that I’m talking about, great.Dylan Silver (12:27)
Yeah.I think it’s interesting you mention that because from the outside looking in, again, with little involvement in the commercial space, I’ve seen a lot of flex use commercial happening where I’m licensed in Texas. I imagine this is happening in so many different places. We’ll have a mix of maybe first floor retail, you’ll have apartments, and then you’ll have all of those necessity driven businesses that you mentioned. You might have a Home Depot close by, you might have some clothing stores.
Are you seeing more of that as well? This kind of flex you spaces.
Chad Massaker (13:13)
Yeah, so to clarify, think you guys in residential use that word a little differently than we do. For us, we would just simply call that mixed use. Anytime you’re combining asset classes, retail and office, office and multifamily, whatever, retail, multifamily, right? When we say flex, like if you were to go into CoStar right now and you look at flex space, flex is essentially a form of warehouse space that is, they’re generally for smaller businesses. They’re like one, 800 to like 3000 square foot units that haveDylan Silver (13:33)
Got it.Chad Massaker (13:39)
a small office and then the rest is like warehouse that to us is flex, just clarifying. ⁓ Is mixed use the way to go? ⁓ The short answer is yes. ⁓ It’s obviously situational. You know, the trend that we’re all seeing right now is, ⁓ you know, we like density and high walkability. And so obviously to do that, to achieve that, we need to like kind of cram as much stuff that we like in one place as possible.Dylan Silver (13:44)
I appreciate that, yeah.Chad Massaker (14:07)
So, yeah, in terms of, you know, should I, if I’m a multifamily developer, should I build a straight up 100 % multifamily building or should I consider something where I can put some retail on the bottom, specifically retail or especially retail that supports the tenants of the building?Chad Massaker (00:00)
to building type right now for developers is a mixed use retail on the bottom, multifamily on top, obviously no mixture that shows office with some exceptions. mean, they are building new office here in West Palm, but it’s all class A, which is still in demand. ⁓ But to the extent that you can build a building and put retail on the bottom and really focus the retail on tenant servicing, like restaurant, maybe dry cleaner, pet groomer, I think that’s very powerful combinations.Dylan Silver (00:13)
Yeah.Chad Massaker (00:28)
Now the issue, is just getting, ⁓ you know, handling construction delays, the potential increased cost of goods, particularly maybe steel because of tariffing, right? I don’t really, I can’t speak to intelligent on that construction, you know, part, but, you know, now we have labor shortages, obviously too, right? And so everything is, everything’s taking longer. So that’s longer to get return on investment, know, yada, yada, yada, you get the point. But if I were,If I were to build a building right now and just was bullish and said, I’m going to build on anyway, regardless of market conditions, I would go retail and multifamily for sure.
Dylan Silver (01:01)
I do want to pivot here, Chad, and ask you about being the Commercial National Mentor of the Year for eXp. We were talking before hopping on here. I was actually unaware, shame on me, that eXp had a commercial arm. So we were talking about this before hopping on. But how has it been, you know, mentoring other folks in the commercial space?Chad Massaker (01:23)
Yeah. So the journey to get that award was an unlike wing one and not one I was even really thinking I was going to get. What happened was is the first two years when I was doing real estate here, it was horrible. think I got like four deals. None of the leads that the couple promised me materialized. He supposedly was in commercial, but really had probably done no deals, couldn’t mentor me at all. And so I finally just took matters into my own hands, left the team, left the broker, went to EXP. then, so, know,first two years I did four deals, maybe not even worth 50 grand. ⁓ But the first year of the EXP I went to 15 deals, I capped. ⁓ And then within six months of that, I was named mentor of the year. So 18 months into the EXP and how that happened, I went through their commercial academy program and I noticed that there were a lot of holes in the knowledge that they were, that the teachers were giving these new commercial agents, right? And so I would start typing stuff in chat.
A couple of times instructors get mad at me like, you want to teach the class? And I’m like, well, answer the questions. I wouldn’t have to, but you know, whatever. But you know, it’s all good. And I just noticed that, you know, they weren’t, you know, EXPs job at the end of the day is to train you how to be a good commercial agent, but not necessarily probably how to use or leverage the technology. It’s like, here’s the technology, but you need to learn how to use it on your own or go to that vendor’s training, right? We’re not going to, we don’t have the bandwidth to train you on all that specifically. And I’m like, I can.
Dylan Silver (02:26)
Yeah.Chad Massaker (02:45)
I can show people how to do this. just started making videos on like how I scrape data out of Reanomy and I did it in my CRM, how all the different ways I use CoStar, how all the ways I do marketing and lead generation, I don’t cold call it all. And so when the mentor award nominations came out, I just, I had this dedicated workplace channel back when we were on workplace that had, don’t know, like four or 500 people in it.Dylan Silver (02:51)
Yeah.Chad Massaker (03:08)
Because they all like my stuff and I guess I just said hey you guys want to vote for me like that’d be great I don’t think I’ll win this but you know, let’s let’s find out and then I won and I’m like I’m here, you know, I’m one of my three and a half years in there’s people in here that are you know, 30 year industry veterans ⁓ But I think at the end of the day the reason I was given it I don’t know this to be true is that my mentoring style is extremely different IDylan Silver (03:17)
There you go.Chad Massaker (03:34)
Most mentors in commercial, the mentoring program goes something like this. Here’s a list of 2000 numbers, make a hundred call calls a day. And remember, it’s all about relationships. And that is, when I tell you that drives me insane, ⁓ I can feel myself getting angry right now, just thinking about it. It drives me nuts. Coal calling is one form of many forms of lead gen. I don’t know why we’re not teaching other forms of lead gen, like any form of marketing. It’s the least efficient form of lead generation because…Dylan Silver (03:50)
Yeah.Chad Massaker (04:01)
takes you have to do all the work. And then saying it’s all about relationships is that’s not that it’s not a true statement, but it’s obvious, right? Like it’s like saying a good business remembers that it’s all about repeat customers. Like, do I need to tell you that? Like, do you really not know that? And so it’s like, you know, thank you for the useless information. Right. And so when I teach my mentor, what I teach my mentees is like, I show them how to start their own business so they can write off, ⁓ you know, expenses, right? Like their marketing and stuff like that.Dylan Silver (04:02)
Fine. Yep.Yeah.
Yeah.
Chad Massaker (04:30)
I show them how to set up lead generation funnels using their CRM and publicly scraped data like from reality. I show them how to pull like the five or six different ways you can get leads and costar. ⁓ I show them how to do SMS marketing. I show them how to do LinkedIn marketing and LinkedIn messaging, automated messaging marketing, is my three biggest. My three biggest lead sources are Google, my business, which I show them how to do that to LinkedIn and SMS marketing. That’s it. There’s a lot of other things. That’s what I that’s.Dylan Silver (04:54)
I want to ask you, know, when you…Chad Massaker (04:58)
That’s the difference in my style relative to other mentors is I get people to generate leads while they’re doing something else so that they’re not relying on poll calling, I would say.Dylan Silver (05:07)
When people talk about outreach, I feel like most of the time newer agents, either in residential or commercial, I think it’s applicable in both, even for investors who may be looking for seller leads and this type of thing, don’t immediately jump to marketing because they may think, I’m just starting out, I don’t have a brand or I don’t have this massive budget.ways to start marketing, and I’ve learned this recently, where you don’t have to be putting in thousands or tens of thousands of dollars a month in paid ads or pay-per-click leads and this type of thing. And I think people kind of gloss over this, and you mentioned cold calls, work a hot 100 list, that’s kind of the old traditional way of doing things. But I think if people aren’t already aware,
marketing yourself is the new wave even if you’re just getting started.
Chad Massaker (06:03)
Yeah, I’m 100 % with you become a key person of influence and and for the people that have this like well I can start marketing and I can post stuff up and everybody that’s gonna see it You know is not gonna really care or whatever. It’s like well, okay, let’s examine that number one You probably haven’t focused on growing the right audience So let’s start building that first, right? If I get on your LinkedIn profile and you know the only people you’re connected to are people that you worked at when you were You know doinggrocery work when you were a teenager and your friends from high school and college, you don’t have the, you you need to start making meaningful connections that are relevant to this job. so GCs, architects, developers, asset managers, so on and so forth. Right. Those all need to be level one connections. All right. And then once they’re level one connections, for example, I’m obviously talking about LinkedIn, then you start posting to LinkedIn. You start showing up in their feed. First time, second time, they may like, yeah, go past, but you know what?
Everybody knows that marketing is about touches, right? The old wisdom was seven to eight touches. Now they say it’s about 10 to 11. I’m posting every day. If you get on your LinkedIn or friends, you’re seeing me every day. We’re going way past 10 touches within the first two weeks of me. You will absolutely know who I am. And that has paid off in spades, both with getting clients, but also attracting agents.
Dylan Silver (07:10)
Stay in front.Chad Massaker (07:19)
You know because they see me and then they go to the website and then they dig around they’re like, oh, okay. This is interesting and Honestly, that was actually an unintended consequence of some of the marketing that I’m doing was kind of some what I would call passive agent attraction So now I’m actually Working on more messaging to more directly attack that like oh, let’s let’s experiment with this and see if we can really make me I ramp this up a little bitDylan Silver (07:43)
Yeah, mean, there’s multiple ways to make money in real estate, especially on the retail side. And sometimes people think, well, I have to focus on building a team. I have to focus on personal production. But your great example was an unintended consequence. were marketing to, I’m imagining, sellers and buyers. But ultimately, agents came along with it.Chad Massaker (08:08)
Yeah. And you bring up a good point about like all the head trash that kind of goes through a new agent’s mind because there’s just so many, I feel like there’s so many things that they don’t know. And there’s so many decisions they have to make. Like, do I specialize or not? Do I start a team or not? All this other stuff. ⁓ and, and I’m shamelessly plugging. We’re in the middle of a four week bootcamp that I’m putting on that actually addresses these issues. And so the way I show it is like, look, the end game here is to start a team, regardless of whether you want to start one or not. I’m suggesting that you.pay attention to this whole boot camp and let me make vacations show you why, but you don’t have to worry about it right now. And so I show them how to create a bunch of leads. ⁓ and then what the idea is to create more leads than you can possibly handle. That’s always the goal of marketing, right? So that you get to cherry pick the best ones. Well, even once you start cherry picking the best ones, there’s probably some, you know, medium level ones that are still pretty good, right? Well, what are you going to do with those? You can pay a referral fee to somebody, or you can start a team and start handing those down and start building other people up. Also.
You now own a business and not a job. I can walk away from my business and it’s still running. If I’m not on the phone prospect, I was just listening to Jeff Blount’s book, The Phenatical Prosthetic in this morning. If you stop prospecting for 30 days, it’s going to mess up your pipeline for 90 days. I don’t worry about that.
Dylan Silver (09:07)
Yeah.Love that book.
I’ve been reading that book for like
seven years. I don’t know when it first came out, but I’ve been reading it for a great book.
Chad Massaker (09:28)
Yeah.Yeah. And so I think getting back to also the mentoring part, right? This is everything that we’re talking about is the stuff that mentors are supposed to be doing that frankly, many of them are not. They’re just like here, prove to me that you can go kill something. And then maybe we’ll talk and try to figure out how to get you to the next level. no, a lot of these people need a lot of hand holding. There’s a lot, there’s a big, there’s what’s great about this industry is there’s a giant learning curve and a lot of front load, heavy lifting when you start.
Dylan Silver (09:49)
Yep.Chad Massaker (09:57)
Now that part’s obviously not great, but it’s great from the perspective of once you get it going and create the machine and the processes, then it gets a lot easier. People are like, my God, how much time do you spend on marketing? Cause they say all my stuff. I’m like, ⁓ about two hours every two months. They’re like, no way. I’m like, ⁓ here’s the video. show you how to do it. Like donuts. You can replicate what I do very easily. I don’t pay per click money. That’s how much I spend. Not a drop. Everything I do is organic SEO duct tape marketing.Dylan Silver (10:14)
Wow.Chad Massaker (10:22)
I can’t even imagine now that I’m growing a team and I just started growing one, I can see me starting to get into pay, uh, paper, like, especially in markets where I don’t have as much of the client density, mobile and connections on LinkedIn like that. But, but right now I don’t have a need to get any, any kind of paper, advertising. I’ve got more than one. I’m looking at my CRM right now for my, just my leasing pipeline. I’ve got 80 leads in there. What am going to do with that?Dylan Silver (10:32)
Yeah, that’s the use case, yeah.Well, congrats on all the success on EXP National Mentor of the Year. I’m addressing a concern that a lot of new agents have, definitely in commercial, know, how do I get started? Is it cold calling? You’re bringing something novel and new to folks while addressing a lot of the modern marketing ways that people can get their name out there. You also mentioned you are doing a four-week course. How can folks reach out to you and learn more about
Chad Massaker (10:51)
Thank you.Yeah, so we’ve already done ⁓ the first two weeks. week one was lead gen ⁓ last week or I’m sorry, this past Tuesday was sales conversion. Next week we talk about actually how to increase overall sales and how to get higher commissions. ⁓ Now that we know how to generate leads, now that we know how to sell, now it’s improving how and what we sell and choosing and targeting better prospects. And then week four focuses on
Kind of it’s like a wrap-up of everything and putting it all together and also about different ways of that You might want to go and set up your team but the first two Yeah, the first two videos are already up on my YouTube page there if you search for commercial real estate diaries ⁓ They’re already up there. And if anybody wants to attend the boot camp, it’s massaker group comm boot camp ⁓
You can enroll and the next session will be next Tuesday at eight 30 Eastern. You’ll have that one and then the 18th with the next Tuesday after that will be the last one. Also in that bootcamp, I give a ton of resources away. Just day one and day two alone. I think that there’s. Combined well over 30 or 40 different things like different spreadsheets I use like leasing analysis, 20 sales objections. I have digital flashcards on Quizlet on.
how to overcome the top sales objections. have a 500 flashcard set of commercial real estate terms, you know, to make people start being able to speak the language of commercial real estate. A bunch of other spreadsheets. have wall posters that you can put up that ask you that make you can see which questions you need to ask based on the asset type of the call that somebody’s calling in on like, you know, okay, I somebody that needs office space. Here are the questions I need to ask them, right? Cause every new agent that that’s usually what you’re missing is, I forgot to ask that. Oh, I forgot to ask that. You don’t have an excuse now.
put this on the wall, read the questions down. A lot of resources for net new agents. That’d be very helpful. And it’s free. I don’t charge anything.
Dylan Silver (13:09)
Chad, Chad,thank you so much for coming on the show here today.
Chad Massaker (13:14)
You’re welcome.
