Photo courtesy of CBRE
Mike Brucato
Executive managing director and market leader, CBRE New England
Age: 38
Industry experience: 15 years
The world’s largest commercial real estate brokerage has a new face leading its New England region as it expands and diversifies its business. In June, Mike Brucato was named CBRE’s market leader for the region, just shy of his 10-year anniversary with the company. The Boston University graduate says cultural fit is the key criteria in talent recruitment for CBRE, which has just over 400 local employees at offices in Boston and Providence.
Q: Looking at the New England region, which business lines present growth opportunities for CBRE?
A: We’re always looking for opportunities to expand and bolster our existing lines of business. For us, the market drivers are always going to be what accelerates our interest in one opportunity over another. And certainly in New England that might look and feel different, but generally when you look at our project management side of the business, we had the announcement about [the acquisition of co-working provider] Industrious. As you’ve written about and read about, everybody is interested in the flight to quality and the ability to create better experiences not only within the individual tenant spaces, but the buildings themselves, as we continue to differentiate. There’s no real specific area I can necessarily dive into, but it’s really going to be a function of the prevailing trend that you’re seeing in what clients are facing.
Q: Looking at transaction volume in investment sales, what is your outlook for the rest of the year?
A: As of midyear, things are trending up, as far as where we have more institutional investors, private family funds, international funds, poking their head into the overall investment sales market. Obviously the element of feeling there’s more value compared to years past, but certainly, like anything else, along with any other industry, we are trying to feel and gauge the ups and downs of the tariff conversations and what that looks like versus the long-term horizon. Net-net, we are seeing an uptick across the industry.
Q: What is your priority in terms of recruitment and retention in Boston and New England?
A: When I look at the team that’s here, it’s already very diverse and we’ve got a strong team across multiple service lines and asset types. We’ve got an incredible array of individuals at various stages of their careers and various parts of the industry and various backgrounds, but then when you contextualize that into where and how do we continue to grow, honestly the biggest thing for us is cultural fit.
We’ve got a team here that operates under a really, I’ll say, harmonious yet competitive, great environment. For us, it’s more about the right individual regardless of where they are in the stage of their career: the right individual who is willing to come in and become a part of what is a much bigger, non-traditional way of supporting the business with all of the advisory and consulting service that this group offers, and everything that CBRE brings to the table. It’s that classic combination of entrepreneurship and hard work and things of that nature.
Q: Is development advisory service a potential growth area?
A: We have a few different ways to support that. Through our Trammell Crow development arm, there’s a tremendous amount of depth of expertise from the development side. When you look at just the overall capital planning and ongoing management and maintenance of facilities, that can run the gamut of our areas of expertise, from the Turner & Townsend side of our business that covers project management, through property management and facilities management.
Q: What are some noteworthy transactions that you’ve participated in at CBRE?
A: I’ve supported some pretty exciting headquarters-type transactions for large technology companies. If you look at the span of my career, not only just on the brokerage side but then going through more into more of the corporate sales solution sides and broader global accounts business and where I am today, a lot of that has been some of the more exciting and noteworthy parts of my career that I’ve been a part of. There’s been a number of large multinational corporations in the financial services sector, oil and gas sectors and life sciences sector that I’ve been a part of.
Q: What does the Federal Reserve’s decision this summer to hold rates steady mean for pricing and investment sales volume?
A: At the end of the day we’ve seen various levels of interest throughout the year. The net-net of it is really just a function that we’ve got more of the institutional investors and private family funds and everyone else that are active in the market, or at least there has been increasing activity in the market trying to assess what the value proposition is today compared to what it was in the past. There’s activity in all [property sectors]. The interest is not always following the traditional path. Investors who traditionally looked at office are looking at other sectors as an example. There’s a broadening.
Q: What qualities make a good broker?
A: The general answer is in the sense of hard work, the ability to be a team player, the ability to be coachable and really internalize feedback and grow and build from that. Sometimes it’s not really more than that. You’ve got to be smart and articulate and be able to talk to people. There’s a lot of that that comes through just the natural development of people, but when you think about the core characteristics, I constantly go back to that and try to think about it myself to some degree.
I started from the bottom of an associate broker, but I had the proverbial chip on my shoulder to be successful and work hard. And I wanted others around me to be successful. As my father would always say, I wanted to be a student of my profession, and continue to learn and grow. To me, those are all characteristic of my comments about being coachable and having a level of perseverance and being a team player and working hard.
Brucato’s Five Favorite Summer Family Traditions:
- 4th of July at Bow Lake, New Hampshire
- Trips to Stoneham Zoo
- Beach and Fun-O-Rama at York, Maine
- “Auntie’s beach house” in Greenport, Long Island
- Regular ice cream trips to Dandi Lyons in Reading
