Andy Hoar

Andy Hoar
Title: President and co-managing partner, CBRE/New England
Age: 57
Experience: 34 years

Andy Hoar is president and co-managing partner of CBRE/New England, a joint venture with 450 employees at offices from New Haven, Connecticut to southern New Hampshire. The firm has represented clients in some of the largest deals reshaping the Boston office market in recent years, including General Electric, law firm Goodwin and Putnam Investments. Although Hoar’s idea of a perfect vacation is fly fishing in Montana or the Adirondacks, he’s careful not to let his leisure time linger, haunted by the memory of a senior executive at a previous firm who took a two-week West Coast vacation without checking in to the office and was let go two weeks later.

Q: What’s the reason for the slowdown in capital markets the last couple of quarters?

A: First and foremost, if you look historically at the volume of sales in the past few years, how many properties are there left to sell? There’s a large appetite in terms of continued interest in well-located properties that have a story, whether it’s multifamily, commercial or industrial. It’s just a question of supply. One example, I’m working now on an adviser in a terrific site in Kendall Square that’s potentially for sale and there’s no lack of interest in that site.

Q: Second-quarter office market activity was essentially flat in terms of absorption. Is that a blip or a sign this cycle has played itself out?

A: I think we should keep an eye on the horizon. This is a cycle that has run for [more than] eight years and so there are pockets of great strength and activity, and other places indicating a slowdown

Q: On the investment side, are there any bargains left in Greater Boston?

A: You definitely have to look at last-mile industrial, the Amazon effect. There’s definitely a lot of interest in industrial properties inside Route 128. A contrarian would say if you can ever figure out the class B suburban mall, which is being decimated by the Internet and other buying patterns, somebody in this cycle or the beginning of next is going to come back with a terrific idea for reuse of that real estate. You have excess parking and dirt you can build something on, so you’ll see some creative reuses.

Q: What would you consider CBRE/New England’s strengths and areas where you’re looking for improvement?

A: Number one, CBRE is by any measure the gold standard and global leader in commercial real estate services. Whether it’s the number of offices, personnel, revenues, they are possessed with being the premier provider and pushing every day to become a world-class organization. We have a very unusual structure here in New England. We’re a joint venture within the CBRE umbrella, so today what’s really unique in New England is that 67 partners and I own 50 percent of our business. One other partner, CBRE, owns 50 percent. We are fully autonomous. Our compensation structure and organizational structure is different.

Q: How is the compensation structure different?

A: It’s everything from salary base and bonus compensation to the splits that are shared with our sales professionals. As one example, in 2008 to 2010, when everybody was having a difficult time, CBRE nationally would come out with a policy of a compensation change, and we would send out a memo to all New England employees that that did not affect us.

Q: How would you assess the performance of the retail division following your merger with Grossman Retail Advisors?

A: It’s terrific. When we did our business plan, our case was we already had a dominant property management group, that we would expand retail management and kind of an add-on would be the brokerage and leasing business. Actually what happened was exactly the opposite of our business plan. We were outrageously successful on the brokerage side much more quickly than we expected, and property management continues to grow. We have a great new hire, Matt Curtin, who just came to us from The Dartmouth Co.

Q: What qualifications make a good broker?

A: The great thing about the brokerage business is people come from all walks of life and can be outrageously successful. To me, there are a few basic traits that most successful people have: you have to be a real team player and be smart enough to know what you do and what you don’t, and surround yourself with a team that can satisfy all your client needs. There’s nothing that replaces integrity and work ethic. There are plenty of people that are smarter than I am in the business and the way I’m going to make up for that is that I‘m working with a great team and we’re working harder than anybody else. 

Hoar’s Five Favorite Ways To Spend A Day Off:

1. Driving a tractor
2. Cutting down trees
3. Fly fishing with his daughters
4. Porch time with his family
5. Winning at anything