Chicago Gets its First RE/MAX Office Exclusively Focused on Commercial Real Estate

RE/MAX, the Chicago area’s market leader in residential real estate, has opened an office in downtown Chicago that is exclusively focused on commercial real estate. It is the first all-commercial RE/MAX office in the Chicago area.

RE/MAX Commercial Real Estate Services, located at 120 N. LaSalle St., has been established by John O’Hara and Chuck Nunley, who also operate RE/MAX Gateway in Gilberts, Ill., and Gateway Properties of Illinois, LLC, a real estate development firm based in Lake in the Hills, Ill.

For RE/MAX, the new Chicago office is an important step in its expansion into the commercial real estate field. RE/MAX now has all-commercial offices in each of the major metropolitan areas of the United States, according Jim Merrion, regional director of RE/MAX Northern Illinois.

In addition, 256 RE/MAX offices around the world have divisions that deal exclusively in commercial property. Worldwide, RE/MAX has more than 6,800 agents who specialize in commercial property and has expanded its commercial property transactions from approximately $5 billion in 2002 to $13.5 billion in 2006, an increase of more than 150 percent.

In northern Illinois, RE/MAX closed $412 million in commercial transactions in 2007.

The new office will move in the direction its agents take it, according to O’Hara.

“Agents can focus on the downtown market and work out of our LaSalle Street facility, or they can concentrate on other portions of the metropolitan area,” he said. “Our role will be to provide them with the resources and continuing professional education they need. For example, we make available Argus Analytic Software for evaluating commercial properties and potential transaction structures, and we will give them access to key commercial real estate networks, such as CoStar and Catylist.”

The emergence of RE/MAX as a force in the commercial real estate field may result in profound changes for that entire sector of the real estate brokerage business, according to Tim Hatlestad, president of the CCIM Institute and the owner of a number of RE/MAX offices in the Phoenix, Ariz., area, including three that deal exclusively with commercial property.

“RE/MAX revolutionized residential real estate by allowing agents to take a much more entrepreneurial approach, and the same is happening in the commercial sector,” said Hatlestad. “Traditional commercial brokerages typically limit their sales associates to a specific niche, such as leasing or the sale and acquisition of a certain property type, such as retail or industrial. RE/MAX leaves that choice up to the individual, so while one agent may choose to specialize in a single segment of the market – for example, office leasing – another agent may find success by working in several segments simultaneously.”

According to Hatlestad, traditional commercial brokerages have been able to tightly control the kind of work agents did because the brokerages offered agents access to proprietary market data that wasn’t easily available elsewhere.

“But that is changing rapidly,” Hatlestad said. “So much information, from listings to aerial maps to data about taxes and zoning, now is accessible via the Internet with just a few key strokes. As a result, commercial agents can be more independent and flexible than ever, and the entrepreneurial approach pioneered by RE/MAX makes more sense. Today, that approach has progressed to about the same point in commercial real estate that it was 20 years ago in residential real estate. I expect it to grow dramatically in the next 20 years and reshape our business.”

With RE/MAX ranking No. 1 in residential sales in the Chicago metro market, giving the commercial side of the business a separate identity will be very helpful, according to O’Hara.

“A number of RE/MAX agents are extremely successful in commercial real estate in the Chicago area, but that has tended to be overshadowed by the residential market achievements of RE/MAX,” he said. “We named our new office RE/MAX Commercial Real Estate Services in order to keep our mission clear and make potential customers aware that RE/MAX is very much a player in the commercial real estate market in Chicago and worldwide.”