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Tuesday, Mar 19, 2024
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Real Estate Center Changes With Industry

The incoming executive director of the Burnham-Moores Center for Real Estate, at the University of San Diego, is aiming to prepare students for the cross-training now required to represent increasingly sophisticated clients, especially in the competitive realm of commercial real estate.

Those buyers, sellers and corporate tenants want not only brokerage advice, but in-depth knowledge related to lifestyle trends, demographic demands and property financing issues, along with other number-crunching expertise.

“You need to have a grasp of these various specialty areas, and you also need to have really good communications skills,” said Stath Karras, who will leave his current post as executive managing director at Cushman & Wakefield Inc. to head the USD center, effective Jan. 19.

Karras will succeed Mark Riedy, a founder of USD’s real estate program in 1993, who earlier this year announced plans to retire from the position.

Part of USD’s larger School of Business Administration, which serves around 1,700 of the university’s total undergraduate population of more than 5,700, the Burnham-Moores Center provides education and support services to students and the local real estate industry.

The center’s offerings include a master’s degree in real estate, an undergraduate major and minor in real estate, and a continuing education certificate in real estate. The center hosts several industry conferences and also provides mentorship and outreach programs to members of the business community.

The center has a staff of 13, including four faculty members, and at most times its real estate-focused offerings serve 60 to 70 undergraduates, with 25 to 30 graduate students participating in programs, said David Pyke, dean of USD’s School of Business Administration.

Pyke said he expects the real estate center will continue to focus on giving students real-world perspectives and preparation for an increasingly competitive and complex real estate climate, on both the commercial and residential sides.

Priorities will include more outreach, mentorship and research, along the lines of case studies that the business school’s students have conducted in the past with local companies such as WD-40 Co. and Qualcomm Inc., focused on issues including technology, distribution and search engine optimization.

The center will also be aiming to bolster USD’s profile among potential real estate students nationally and globally. “There’s no reason, with the caliber of students we have here, that we should not be able to become better known in these other places nationally and internationally,” Pyke said.

For Karras, 60, the transition to academia is a coming-home of sorts, although he has served on the center’s advisory board for the past decade. The 38-year real estate industry veteran for the past 26 years has worked for what was originally known as Burnham Real Estate Services — led by local businessman Malin Burnham — which was acquired in 2008 by global real estate services provider Cushman & Wakefield.

The center took on its current name in 2004 after it received a $5 million endowment gift from Burnham and fellow businessman-philanthropist John Moores, a developer who at that time was also majority owner of the San Diego Padres.

Remaining in San Diego for his full tenure with Burnham — where he was CEO for several years — and then Cushman & Wakefield, Karras most recently has overseen Cushman’s western regional resolution group. He has handled matters including receiverships, property management, financing and leasing related to distressed real estate assets and is also involved in overall business development efforts at the San Diego office.

In addition to helping students navigate the current complexities of real estate, Karras said his priorities at the real estate center will include establishing more direct and ongoing connections with the business community, as well as with other schools and departments within USD.

Karras said real estate clients generally want to deal with a single brokerage professional or office when pursuing transactions, and investors seek out brokers with a thorough knowledge of acquisition financing, property cash flow, sustainability and other issues involved in owning and operating a building.

In addition, buyers and sellers in the real estate world — especially the large real estate investment trusts — are increasingly specializing in their investments, focused on sectors such as technology, health care, biotech, retail and apartments.

“You need to have knowledge of all of these various product types,” Karras said.

The U.S. real estate services industry, including the San Diego market, has been emerging in the past two years from severe doldrums created by the housing meltdown and related recessionary fallout from the 2007-09 period.

The research firm IBISWorld Inc. reported that nationwide real estate brokerage industry revenue rose by an average of just 0.1 percent annually during the past five years, reaching $103.5 billion in 2013. Over the next five years, revenue is expected to rise 4.5 percent annually, reaching $128.9 billion by 2018.

Real estate sales and brokerage services employment is forecast to rise 3.3 percent annually over that period, nearing 1.2 million nationally by 2018, researchers said.

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