You probably don’t want to invite Leroy Breinholt to a round of golf. It’s not just because he doesn’t have the five hours to spare, but he would just get bored by the ninth hole.
Breinholt has been an industrial broker for nearly three decades, for much of the last he has made a reputation for closing more than 200 and 300 deals a year.
In the last seven years, his company, Commercial Properties Inc., has doubled in size. The 52-year-old was listed fourth in the U.S. for total square-footage of transactions in 2014 by CoStar Corporate. He completed 1,953,851 SF in industrial deals. He was the leading broker in number of industrial transactions completed in 2014 by a long shot. Breinholt and his team completed 655 industrial transactions in 2014; The second-highest contender completed 371.
The goal is to complete two transactions a day, Breinholt says. In a firm with 90 people, 52 of which are brokers, Breinholt and his team complete just about half of the firm’s four daily transactions.
A big deal for Breinholt is between $1M and $5M. A considerable slice of his M.O. is responsiveness and respect regardless of size.
“We’re not trying to be the biggest,” he says. “I just want to be good at what we can do. … You have to be on your game 12 hours a day, responding to everyone within an hour. These tenants are intense. They want more care and to be shown they are as important as the multi-million-dollar deals.”
There are some days when he has only made a $50 commission, he says, but the key to turning that into a sustainable business is relationships.
The fourth-generation Arizonan’s family has been in the area since the late 1800s, he says. His family has cultivated a lot of contacts in that time.
Seven years ago, he closed his biggest deal for $22.8M. He had worked with the ownership for more than 20 years when they finally decided to sell. Now, the property, just down the street from CPI’s office, is seeing 400KSF of new development.
The boardroom isn’t the only place where Breinholt likes to shift things into high gear. He and his family are avid snowmobile riders and have seven machines parked and ready for their vacations to Utah. Earlier this year, Breinholt was exposed to one of five private racetracks in the country, which is fast becoming his off-season hobby. A few years ago, he bought into two planes, which he can land at Inde Motorsports Ranch in Willcox, where he races cars, such as Porsches and Corvettes with family, business associates and clients.
“I try to mix the family and the business,” he says.
In addition to pulling 12-hour workdays, Breinholt spends 15 to 20 hours a week in church service helping young adults. He’s also planning a trip in October to South Africa with Enactus.