Knowing Everyone in the Market Isn't Enough

Every commercial real estate market has one: the guy who knows everyone. He knows the Chick-fil-A real estate rep, the Starbucks real estate rep, and probably the Dollar General guy he played golf with back in 2019. If a major retailer is expanding, he knows someone involved. If a deal is happening, he has a connection to the person on the other side. Ask him about his network and you'll get a pretty impressive list of names.

Then a 2,400-square-foot drive-thru opens across the street from his vacant pad, and he finds out about it at the ribbon cutting.

It's funny because we've all met some version of this guy. But there's a real problem underneath the punchline: knowing people and knowing what's happening in your market are two very different things.

Relationships matter enormously in commercial real estate. A trusted connection can get a conversation started, provide context that never makes it into a listing, or help move a complicated deal forward. I've built my own business around the importance of connecting people who have something to offer each other. The value of those relationships isn't going away.

The problem comes when relationships become the entire strategy for staying informed. Even a well-connected person has a finite amount of time, attention, and memory. You might know every major tenant rep in your market, but unless you're speaking with each of them regularly, you won't know what every one of them is looking for, what has changed, or which opportunities are developing. And if you are calling everyone every day to keep up, when exactly are you supposed to do the rest of your job?

Markets move whether you're in the room or not. A tenant changes its expansion plans. A developer starts working on a project. A property becomes available, or a retailer quietly commits to a location. Sometimes the information travels through the usual channels; sometimes it doesn't. Your network can be excellent and still leave you with blind spots, because information doesn't automatically reach everyone who could benefit from it.

This is where technology changes the equation. A platform like Crexi can help people discover properties and market opportunities. Sytes serves a different purpose, connecting tenant requirements with developers, landlords, and brokers who may have suitable real estate. Instead of relying entirely on individual conversations to get a requirement in front of the right people, a tenant can make that information available across a broader network.

That doesn't make personal relationships obsolete. If anything, technology can make them more productive. When the right opportunity surfaces, the relationship still matters: someone needs to understand the deal, build trust, negotiate terms, and get it across the finish line. Technology helps with the part that relationships alone struggle to do consistently, which is getting relevant information to the right people at the right time.

There's a tendency to look at software as another expense to justify, particularly in an industry where people have been doing business through personal networks for decades. But the cost of a platform is easy to see on a budget; the cost of an opportunity you never knew existed is much harder to measure. A vacant property sitting for months, a missed tenant, or a deal that goes to someone else can cost far more than the software that might have helped you find it.

You can keep relying on the strength of your personal network, or you can give that network a way to operate at a scale no individual could manage alone. The people who combine relationships with technology have an advantage over those who assume knowing everyone means they'll hear about everything.

Because in commercial real estate, it doesn't matter how many people you know if the right opportunity happens across the street and you only hear about it at the ribbon cutting.