David Slye
Title: President and CEO, NAI Hunneman
Age: 54
Experience: 28 years
After nearly three decades in Boston’s commercial real estate scene, David Slye is taking on a new role as the newly appointed president and CEO of Boston-based brokerage NAI Hunneman. Slye started out as a broker at Leggat McCall Properties before joining Spaulding & Slye, the brokerage co-founded by his father George, which was acquired by Jones Lang LaSalle in 2006.
Q: Was this a hard decision to make? How long did you have to think it over?
A: It was an unknown decision. I was not necessarily looking to do something like this, but as I met with (NAI Hunneman Chairman) Stuart Pratt on a different topic, we got to discussing what was going on at Hunneman and what I was looking to do. It came to fruition over three or four conversations and we spent a couple of months working toward that.
Q: What is your impression of Hunneman’s reputation and the strength of their business model?
A: What excited me most is where I came from, as the son of entrepreneurial developer. What I saw in Hunneman was a locally-owned, locally-operated full-service real estate company where in this market, there are none of those anymore. The firms have been bought by national and international firms, and those firms have been bought again by national and international firms.
Q: So you see local ownership as an advantage?
A: It’s the excitement about an enterprise built around your clients and your clients’ interests with a partnership mindset. JLL taught me about using efficiencies and certain processes that allow you to grow in a more efficient way.
Q: What do you mean by a client-based approach?
A: A great example is what we’ve been able to do in Springfield, which is to take a rail car assembly plant from an international player and bring it to a city that needed the jobs. You’ve got the small, nimble client approach, looking at every nook and cranny [where] a rail car assembly plant could be built, but do it on a big scale. You will have a principal on your job here, a principal who will be working on behalf of you as a client.
Q: Greater Boston’s commercial real estate markets are in an extended growth cycle. Do previous cycles offer any guidance for this one, or have the rules changed?
A: Boston’s got the greatest fundamentals in the country. You’ve got education, health care, financial services. The interesting thing that happened since the last cycle: it’s not really a headquarters city. So on the downside, headquarters may be reducing size, but it’s really only a sales office that may be taking that hit here. But it’s still highly-nimble, intellectually stimulated and it’s very diverse. It’s not government-driven and recession-proof like Washington, D.C. is, but you look at the drivers and they are the stars in this market. In the last 10 to 12 years this city has definitely done everything to truly be a 24-hour city. Whereas before, the Innovation District and the waterfront was the dream for where people might live. Now it’s built.
Slye’s Top Five Favorite Things:
- Spending time with his wife and children
- His relationship with The Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation
- Golf
- Watching “Caddyshack”
- @ the Deck restaurant on the waterfront in Newport, R.I.
