Charting the Course

Cre Summit More Relevant Than Ever

BY DWAIN HEBDA

More than three decades since the CRE Summit was first launched, organizers said the event, scheduled for Aug. 25 at CHI Health Center, is more relevant than ever. Event founder Jerry Slusky said current economic conditions and other market challenges rank with anything he’s seen over the past 30-plus years.

“We’ve had eight, nine years of blessed things going on in our lives, like 3-4% interest rates and low construction costs and we built the heck out of America and Omaha and Lincoln,” he said. “Then, all of a sudden, we get COVID, construction prices jumped up at least 20% and we get smacked with these interest rates.

“So where does this stand today? I’d put this one at a six/seven on a 10 scale of severity. This is up there with 1990, ’91, ’92 and we haven’t actually seen all the results yet.”

Slusky said the themes of the 2023 event – including charting the course of the future and building your own capital as a professional – reflect the realities of the local real estate market today.

“The content changes every year to fit the times,” he said. “Each of the subjects we’re tackling this year is a way to educate our CRE professionals, the whole group of them. It’s 900-1,000 people who are all professionals making a living in commercial real estate. They look forward to [CRE Summit] every year kind of like a barometer of where are we at and where are we going.”

Hitting the Sweet Spot

Chris Mensinger, senior vice president at Colliers, said the 2023 summit strikes the right balance by addressing the fundamentals of commercial real estate success through the lens of current market conditions. For example, money will never be unimportant to the process, which is why several presentations will look at ways to finance old and new projects.

“We’ve got a lot of talks that have to do with finance,” she said. “We’ve got a breakout session on creative finance techniques that some people can use in this environment that may help them build their equity stack. Then there’s a more traditional finance breakout as well.

“We’ve also got a construction project breakout session that talks about how to get things done with the supply chain and the worker shortages. When these were first being put together, we were talking about 3% interest rates and some of the supply chain things had caught up. But the cost of the construction and labor are now adding on to some of those costs, so getting a construction loan is much more complicated.”

Tailoring the Message

Mensinger said the topics are also addressed in such a way that professionals of various backgrounds and experiences can take home something useful.

“We’ve noticed in the last few years that the room has gotten not only younger by age, but also in years within the commercial real estate world,” she said. “So, we’ve got a couple of breakouts where they can pick and choose tables they sit at and sit with some really strong, experienced people in the commercial real estate market who can answer questions about how they are dealing with problems. These sessions are targeted towards people who are a little bit newer to the industry.”

Slusky noted that for as valuable as the presentations are, it is this type of collaboration that many attendees come back for year after year.

“To get a commercial real estate deal done, whether it’s a development or purchase of land or purchase of an existing building with business occupancy, there are many of these trades that get involved,” Slusky said. “From the companies that are doing the survey and the architects to the developers and the bankers, there’s so much collaboration and there’s so much time involved.

“With a market that’s changing, like the one that we’re in right