Sean M. Cahill
Principal and Managing Director, Avison Young
Age: 57
Experience: 30 years
A timely and tech-savvy internship helped Sean Cahill land his first job in commercial real estate. As a college student, he was part of an eight-member team of interns who helped set up Coldwell Banker’s property information management system in its Stamford office. That led to an initial job in the firm’s research department before he made his desired move to brokerage, where Cahill put together landmark deals including Bayer Pharmaceuticals’ sale of its 136-acre campus in West Haven and Orange to Yale University. Cahill joined Avison Young in 2014. The firm is looking to expand its Fairfield and Westchester county teams, with opportunities to hire additional brokers specializing in office leases and sales.
Q: What do you think is the biggest surprise for newcomers who are considering commercial real estate careers?
A: I often get asked that – my kids are coming out of college – and my response is: to understand what facet of real estate they are looking to get into. Are you looking to be a broker? Because that’s a different animal than a property manager. Are you going to be in customer service or business development? Or manage properties as opposed to going out and trying to sell and lease them? In brokerage, they don’t understand that there’s very little money upfront. The first year you learn, the second year you burn and the third year you earn. It’s like going to graduate school.
Q: What do you mean by “burn”?
A: You’re burning out. You’re not making a lot of money and you’re working your butt off. A good broker should be working 12 hours a day, prospecting and helping a lot of the brokers to free them up to do deals. We have good training, as do a lot of international firms, but mentoring is really the key to this business, in my experience. You have to bring something to the table and provide something to that mentor which allows them to spend time with you as the mentee.
Q: What’s your impression of the health of the Fairfield County office market for 2018?
A: It’s still early. There hasn’t been a lot of large deals reported yet and we finished 2017 basically flat as a county: no big losses or gains, no large tenants coming in or leaving. We expect 2018 to be a stronger leasing market. There’ll be more velocity and absorption than we saw in 2017. Some of these tenants have been in the market for a long time and haven’t landed. You have to be optimistic to stay in the business, but I do believe the numbers will bear out.
Q: Any co-working providers looking for space?
A: We’re not seeing it in the suburban markets as much. It’s the rage in Boston and New York and Cambridge and San Francisco. Regus is the biggest player and they’re in most of the cities and towns in Fairfield County that have a significant office market. Regus went into a downtown Westport building recently.
Q: You’ve been handling the leasing for 1000 Lafayette Boulevard in Bridgeport, a 215,000-square-foot office building which has a high concentration of law firms and legal service agencies. What’s the latest activity there?
A: We still have 23,000 on a full floor available and we have a [new] lease in the 4,000-square-foot range. That building has a very heavy legal (industry) occupancy, as do a lot of the class A buildings in Bridgeport. We have a Superior Court two blocks away and the federal court right across the street from that building.
Q: What’s the anticipated effect of General Growth Properties’ SoNo Collection mall in Norwalk on the retail market?
A: It’s counter to the trend (against mall development) but very smart people are building it and I think they will be OK there. As a company, we believe in retail. As a product type, it will change, but it will survive. I see the SoNo Collection impacting mostly Westport’s downtown, and to a lesser extent Stamford. The higher-end stores will be in direct competition. There’s opportunities in neighborhood shopping centers and we’ll see a higher degree of conversion to medical uses in the future. Medical users need access to people and parking and 60 percent of them are going into retail (buildings). They’re shying away from older downtown areas with limited parking.
Cahill’s Top 5 Vacation Destinations:
- New York
- Vancouver
- Paris
- Hong Kong
- London
