Commercial Real Estate Today: Cory Bultinck Of Wipfli On 5 Things You Need to Create a Highly Successful Career in the Commercial Real Estate Industry Today

An interview with Aron Weiner

Recognize, encourage, and incentivize those that contribute to your success. Nobody can do it alone and as you grow; your team will be more integral to your long-term success and sustainability.

The commercial real estate industry is a dynamic and challenging landscape that offers enormous potential for success. However, it requires a unique blend of skills, knowledge, and aptitude to truly excel. How does one establish themselves in such a competitive field? What does it take to consistently rise to the top in commercial real estate? How does one rise above the headwinds that are challenging the commercial real estate industry today? In this interview series, we are talking to commercial real estate professionals, brokers, investors, leaders of Real Estate Firms and Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), as well as anyone who’s found significant success in this industry. As part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Cory Bultinck.

Cory Bultinck is the national real estate practice leader at Wipfli. Prior to being the national leader, Cory led Minnesota’s construction and real estate practice. His clients and team value his passion to help others, tenacious approach to his clients’ success and ability to find unique solutions to the most challenging problems.

Cory is proactive in providing real estate industry-specific business, operational and tax advisory solutions. He often works collaboratively with his clients and key stakeholders, including attorneys, investors, advisors and strategic partners. His collaboration and commitment to success have led to many life-long client relationships and a dedicated real estate team that strives toward that same client success.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would like to learn a bit about your origin story. Can you share with us a bit about your childhood and how you grew up?

I grew up in Chaska, Minnesota — a southwest suburb of Minneapolis and home to Hazeltine National Golf Club which has held multiple major golf championships including the Ryder Cup, US Open, PGA Championship, etc. I started working at Hazeltine at age 9 picking up range balls. At age 11, I started caddying every day in the summer, and at age 15, I started working in their bag room cleaning clubs, cleaning carts, and managing the range. I really enjoyed being on a golf course growing up and spent just about every day in the summer on one. Looking back, this job was a clear reflection of my work ethic and taught me a lot about business/networking interactions and how to provide exceptional client service.

Can you share with us the ‘backstory’ of how you got into the real estate business?

I enjoy working with like-minded individuals, so working with others that share that entrepreneurial, ambitious outlook for success and have a consistent motivation to find unique solutions to challenging problems to make a deal work aligns well to how my team and I operate. We understand the need for being proactive with clients and to constantly think outside the box on how we can do things better or how we can find the middle ground between various parties that creates a win-win situation.

Can you tell us about your company and what makes it stand out?

Wipfli is a CPA and consulting firm that goes to market by industry and aligns solutions to those specific industries. As the real estate leader, our team understands the industry and thrive on the ability to provide unique solutions to the challenges our clients face while flourishing in the fast-paced environment. I feel our team emulates the ambitious nature of our clients very well.

Can you tell our readers about the most exciting new projects you are working on now?

Downtown Minneapolis office space was hit hard in recent years by Covid and other disruptions, but activity seems to be on the upswing, so it’s been exciting to see some significant acquisitions starting to occur in downtown and hopefully the price corrections have finally hit market. We are seeing a lot of PACE financing, energy incentives, and tax credits be the catalyst for getting deals over the finish line and the recent proposed legislation to provide a federal tax credit for an office to multi-family conversion are creating additional variables to the real estate proformas.

As with any career path, the commercial real estate industry comes with its own set of challenges. Could you elaborate on some of the significant challenges you faced in your career and how you managed to overcome them?

The biggest challenge many ambitious leaders face is the ability to scale and get past the plateau that occurs when you have hit your limit and require leverage. Building a team to achieve that leverage model requires alignment to the culture and expectations of the team. Needless to say, those expectations were very high and, in most cases, caught a wide-eyed response from those I pitched to join the team. Many of the initial team members continue to thrive on our team and are some of the most cherished and valued relationships I have to date.

Ok, let’s now move to the main part of our interview about commercial real estate. What are the 3 things that most excite you about the industry now? Why?

With the recent disruption to the current economic environment comes opportunity. Many clients have been bulking up their cash positions in order to capitalize on real estate opportunities that come to fruition. While we have seen deal flow overall decrease, we have seen a steady or slight uptick in deal flow for those organizations with strong balance sheets, great banking relationships, and the ability to source off-market deals with success. These group tend to be nimbler and more flexible to get deals done quicker and easier than the standard consumer. Tax legislation and incentives are becoming increasingly integral in making deals easier to move forward and it is exciting to help clients navigate those incentives and help get them across the finish line.

What are the 3 things that concern you about it? Why? What should be done to address and alleviate those concerns?

Interest rate risk and uncertainty has impacted a lot of real estate deals and how to account for this uncertainty in proformas and the longevity of deals. The recent interest rate hikes have made investors cautious and many feel we are hitting a new normal for debt service. Running various scenarios and hedging or reducing that uncertainty will alleviate that exposure to a certain extent. Evaluating the current value or risk with your current portfolio and aligning the incentives for sponsors and investors based upon revised hold periods is a hot topic. Sponsors are looking for ways to accelerate promotes and carries to participate in the current cash flow and value creation from the existing favorable debt while also being cognizant of investor expectations. Many value fund or income fund strategies have been deployed to consolidate higher performing assets with favorable debt terms in order to crystallize waterfall participation structures and recycling equity to give investors options. Those options include cashing out, staying in and diversifying risk, or somewhere in between that includes taking some chips off the table. We are seeing more options added to operating agreements to allow for more flexibility given the market uncertainty and change in outlook or position with respect to certain assets. Strong balance sheets and sound business strategies continue to be the keys to long-term success. I feel many real estate investors and developers may have gotten too aggressive in their acquisition strategy and weren’t prepared for some of the economic factors to their portfolio. In times like these, we tend to see many organizations revisit their portfolio mix, risk, and other things that may have been on autopilot a few years ago.

How has technology changed the commercial real estate industry, and how do you foresee it shaping the future of the sector?

The real estate industry has been slow to adopt the most recent technological advances and automation, however, in the last year or so, we have seen a significant uptick. Many of our clients have been so heavily reliant on excel to run models, data, and dashboards and although there is a lot of comfort with excel, this tends to be a very manual process that has ample opportunity for errors and omissions. Many organizations — even the smaller ones — should consider what technology is available and how they can outsource or leverage the most recent tools to automate their accounting/finance functions, have real time and quality data, and prebuilt dashboards that simultaneously pull the data from their sources and provide the pertinent reporting to their management team and investors. We see a tremendous need for our real estate clients to make progress in this area as further AI and data solution applications come to market that will require data integration and automation. The excel solution will eventually hinder their ability to be nimble and make sound business decisions quicker than their competitors.

I am hearing the phrase “Stay alive until 2025” a lot. What is your plan to survive in the current market?

Any disruption to our real estate clients — whether it be economic changes, tax legislation, or business solutions — tend to foster opportunities for our firm to help our clients navigate how these items impact their business. We tend to thrive in this environment historically and continue to see opportunities for us to help clients better position themselves through our industry expertise.

For a young person who would like to eventually make a career in commercial real estate, which skills and subjects do they need to learn?

Real estate is a fast-paced environment and, as with many professions, thrives on relationships. Creating a tremendous network of resources to help tackle challenges is how deals get done. Many of my initial real estate connections in other organizations to this day remain tremendous resources and I remain in close contact with them. The most successful real estate developers I have worked with tend to be entrepreneurial in the sense that they look many steps and years ahead and not only with respect to a single asset or project, but at a macro or community level. They also tend to develop a strategy and stick to that strategy even if its broad and have a willingness to walk away or cash in the chips if the value or timing is right. Lastly, they tend to be fearless when going against the grain and follow their gut with respect to the subjective nature of the assets they believe in or area they are looking to develop even if others may be pessimistic. Some of the biggest home runs I have seen have been that diamond in the rough or project that many had passed on because they looked at it from a different angle or lens and didn’t see how the value creation could be made in an alternative way.

When evaluating deals or opportunities in real estate, what are the most important factors you look for and why? Can you provide some examples?

Invest in what you know and understand the risks, financial and subjective, to the projects you are looking to invest in. We are seeing an increase presence of ESG and other subjective factors enter into the investment criteria.

Ok, here is the main question of our interview. Based on your personal experience and success, can you please share “Five Things You Need To Create A Highly Successful Career In The Commercial Real Estate Industry”?

1. Build a network of trusted resources and relationships.
2. There will be good deals and bad deals, but over time make sure the good ones outweigh the bad ones.
3. Invest or develop what you know. Define what your strategy or wheelhouse is and stick to that. If you want to go outside that box then leverage you network or take on a JV partner that the project is in their wheelhouse.
4. Recognize, encourage, and incentivize those that contribute to your success. Nobody can do it alone and as you grow; your team will be more integral to your long-term success and sustainability.
5. Set high expectations for yourself and your team and create a culture that emulates they keys to your success. As professionals we tend to attract and gravitate to other organizations and people that are like us and defining that culture within your team can be instrumental in identifying other organizations, projects, or people that work well with your team. Be bold in what makes your organization unique and why that breeds success.

Do you have three things you would advise a new real estate professional to avoid?

Don’t focus too much on the trees and miss the forest. As much as there are small decisions and issues that will be encountered be sure to stay to true to the big picture. This doesn’t mean details aren’t important, but don’t get lost in the details and forget what the ultimate goal and objectives are. Avoid the “you” and “I” with your team and others you are working cooperatively with and instead use “we”. It’s amazing how impactful that slight tweak in your correspondence and dialogue can create a team environment and keep the focus and alignment of the team to the same win-win outcomes. Avoid losing work/life balance or sight of your goals outside of work. It is very easy to lose sight of what’s important outside of work and the key roles/relationships we have. Understanding what those key roles and relationships are and making a commitment whether through your outlook calendar or other time allocation device is important. Avoid just scheduling your day or life around work and make sure to schedule important activities that fall outside of that.

What advice would you give to another real estate professional about improving the work culture, building team morale, and helping each employee thrive?

Be human, share humility, share challenges, and see your team and clients beyond being a number. The most important thing I have learned about building a team is that we are all human and having different motivations, aspirations, and perceptions on our career and life and that makes us all unique. Understanding and embracing that uniqueness is what makes a great diverse team.

What is your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share a story of how that had relevance to your own life?

Be a life-long learner. When I initially heard this, I thought it was cliché, but became very apparent that those that embrace the everchanging environment and learn from others or their own experiences tend to be the most successful. The easiest applications in my own life is being a parent and feeling like I had the sleep schedule down pact with my young boys until I didn’t. Further in my professional career as soon as I felt I had the tax regulations down there would be changing tax laws or new tax legislation passed that would change what I used to know. Although this presents significant job security also keeps me poised to learn new ways to benefit my clients from the everchanging tax rules and ways to get deals done. To this day I feel like I learn something new every day and appreciate the fact that I will never have it figured out.

You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

I’m not an influencer or whatever they are called these days. But something I think everyone should do so let your mind breath and take time away from distractions to reflect and recalibrate. Each day I take a walk outside or exercise without distractions for 30–45 minutes and just let my mind wonder. It’s during this time that I have had the best ideas and most creative solutions to solve the most complex problems.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

Best place is always on LinkedIn. (3) Cory Bultinck | LinkedIn.

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!