Roundabout way to commercial real estate
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
05/15/2009
By Christopher Boyce
Dennis DeSantis didn't take a straight path into his career as a commercial real estate agent. It's been more of a zigzag -- which may be a more appropriate path for a man who includes the neighborhood yo-yo championships of his childhood in his list of his most proud achievements.
DeSantis, however, may be better known for having his hands on a significant number of real estate and development projects throughout his 35-year career. He says his early landing with real estate giant Cushman & Wakefield has a lot to do with his success. DeSantis has acted as a broker in local deals for Ernst & Young, St. Louis University and Citicorp, among others, and has earned the regional industry award for the year's largest transaction five times since 1995.
Despite his successes, DeSantis acknowledged that he looks like an industry outsider on paper. The St. Louis native is the son of a tool and dye maker, and he still dabbles in a fair amount of handy work as a result. There was also a time he looked more likely to be a chef.
How has the economy affected your business?
St. Louis, from the office side, we don't really get overbuilt. We're a very conservative area. Retail might have got a little overbuilt, because of the incentives, the TIFs and things like that. But it'll adjust out.
I think, usually, I was working on larger deals, but larger investment deals have pretty much stopped ... Larger deals are really difficult to get done.
But on the other hand, user deals -- people that have solid businesses that wanted to buy their own facility -- now they have an opportunity.
So it's a great time for an entrepreneur to buy their own facility. If you needed a 40,000-square-foot office building a couple of years ago, the prices weren't that great. Today you might find five or six.
How did you get into this?
Started (college) in civil engineering. I liked that you could set up the foundation and build things. But the differential equations, calculus ... it was a little more than I wanted. I liked the building part.
I needed to get out of (civil engineering) and I didn't know what else to do, so I went into home economics. I went from all these guys with the slide rules, to home ec, where the girls dressed real nice and I was one of the only guys in the classes at the time.
That worked out really well. (Laughs.)
I learned how to cook.
But then I had to pick a major like fashion merchandising, and that's when I went into real estate, which worked out really well, because what I took from civil engineering was great -- understanding surveys and plans.
What attracted you to real estate and, specifically, the commercial end?
I was always kind of interested in real estate. You know, the finance part of it -- I liked finance. Finance was a walk in the park compared to calculus. I received my license while I was in college. You had to turn 21.
So I had my license and, for a summer, I went to work for a residential company. And you know, residential sales are very emotional sales. Color of carpet and those kinds of things. I didn't have the patience for that.
In commercial real estate, it's business decisions. It's somewhat based upon logic. Residential sales are such emotional sales.
My wife has been doing residential for 30-something years ... You deal with senses of emotions, families moving. I tried it for about three months and knew it wasn't for me. It's entirely different.
You have credited a lot of your success to your affiliation with Cushman & Wakefield, but can your career be completely based on their name?
No, but that helps. Other things are being involved in the community and things like that. But in St. Louis, probably 70 to 80 percent of the real estate decisions are made from out of town by other companies. There's (only) a few local companies in town that occupy a lot of space.
(That complicates things) a little bit ... The way real estate decisions are made, usually headquarters steps up with a plan and then they need someone to implement it ... I once had a real estate director call me up and say 'I got a small deal in St. Louis and I don't know you, but I see you have an SIOR (commercial real estate designation) and you're at Cushman Wakefield so I know you can't screw up my deal. And this is not a big deal, but I want you to do it for me and I've got a big deal coming down the road, so if you can do this one, I'll give you the big one.'"
They want someone who can get their deal done. They know what they want, but they need to get there and they need to understand local practices to do that.
What do you see as the future of development for St. Louis?
If you take the time to sit down with any company, you can explain why St. Louis is good. It's really hard to get a company to move their headquarters to St. Louis. It's hard to get them to move their headquarters anywhere.
Our focus should be on the companies that have a presence here and the (money), and having them bring other portions (of their companies) here. They get comfortable here.
I think we have to grow the ones that have already established a presence here. I don't know that we do that good of a job doing that.
I think Denny Coleman at the (St. Louis County) economic council does a great job. They are very good at that, finding those people.
But as a whole, we need to move on that. That's kind of fragmented. Denny Coleman is set up for the county. Then you've got the city, and the county, and St. Charles County and Illinois.
They're not all working so much for the area. They have a common goal, but it's all, 'here's my territory' and 'this is my territory.'
