Equity, a national full-service commercial real estate company, named its top three producing agents for 2020: Matt Lasky in Columbus, Ohio; Elaine Gillespie in Cincinnati and Tracey Herron in Dayton, Ohio.
“I’m proud of these agents who persevered throughout such an unpredictable year,” said Austin Wathen, senior vice president of Equity’s brokerage division. “Despite the challenges we all faced due to the pandemic, Equity’s team of agents, including our top three, continuously showed resilience and dedication in their day-to-day work.”
Like almost all others, the commercial real estate industry was largely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. In July of 2020, Equity’s chief executive officer Steve Wathen described how the industry was affected in a video released by the company. In the video, Wathen described various hardships such as low tenancy rates and late rent payments.
“When the pandemic first started having an impact on businesses, we didn’t know how long lasting or to what extent these businesses would be impacted,” Gillespie admitted. “When I saw this happen, I immediately sat down with my team to regroup. We just viewed the pandemic as another obstacle in the sales cycle and used that time to reach out to clients, see how they were doing, and see if there was anything we could do to help.”
Lasky and Herron too focused on client relations during the shutdowns.
According to Herron, she spent much of her time calling and checking in on her clients. She reported that due to her consistent communication tactics, she closed more restaurant and industrial deals than she ever had before.
“Maximizing client relationships has proven to be successful, even during a year like 2020,” Lasky said. “My team actually closed a good amount of deals at the end of 2020.”
In fact, Lasky and his team were able to complete four healthcare acquisitions ranging from $4 million to $20 million during the pandemic. “These deals took a lot more work, grit, and persistence than years prior,” Lasky said. Lasky also contributed his team’s success to diversifying their client portfolio to serve autism therapy tenants, behavior health tenants, and veterinary tenants.
Moving forward into 2021, these three agents agreed that they would continue to work hard to gain and maintain client relationships, close deals, and network.
“For me, I’m going to be persistent. I’m still going to hustle and work on everything that I can work on,” Herron said.
