Colorado Real Estate Journal - August 5, 2015
Having spent time as an executive recruiter, Mark Bradley knows about bringing parties together for their mutual benefit – and in commercial real estate, it’s no different. “You have a seller and a buyer – both need to feel like it’s beneficial to them to be engaged in a transaction,” said Bradley, co-founder and managing broker of Realtec-Greeley. Bradley, who played a role in some of Greeley’s largest and most complex commercial real estate deals, including the sale of the former Hewlett-Packard campus and Leprino Foods’ acquisition of the Western Sugar Cooperative plant, worked in several capacities before becoming a broker. In addition to being a “headhunter,” he served as sales and marketing manager for National Technological University, which delivered graduate-level engineering courses to the workplace, was regional director of the American Management Association and was involved in a couple of startup companies. All the while, his brother-in-law, Realtec founder Steve Stansfield, tried to convince him to get into real estate. “He had been telling me for years that I needed to get into real estate, and I ignored his advice,” said Bradley, adding his many other experiences formed a good basis for a real estate career. In late 1999, Stansfield finally persuaded Bradley to team up with Bernie Blach to run Realtec’s Greeley office. They spent the first six months learning the properties, the players and the market. Then they hit the ground running. “I like the fact that it’s project-focused. There’s a beginning and an end, and it’s constantly changing,” he said of the industry. “No transaction is the same, so it’s not a repetitive business. That’s enjoyable,” he said. “I like the creativity that can go into making a deal work.” After working alongside Bradley to build Realtec’s Greeley business, Blach died of Lou Gehrig’s disease in 2008. “That was hard. He was an exceptionally bright, insightful person that had a lot of experience in business and real estate. It was a blow,” said Bradley. Bradley and a core group of brokers plugged away through the recession and before long found themselves in the midst of an oil and gas boom. Given today’s depressed oil prices, the frenzy has “eased,” providing a needed respite for the market, Bradley said. “The phone is not ringing off the hook with people just screaming for space like they were,” he said, But, “We’re still getting a steady stream of people looking for space.” While Bradley’s business runs the gamut with regard to property type, he has a penchant for land deals, although they can be very time-consuming, and industrial transactions. “(Industrial) users tend to be pretty enjoyable people to deal with,” he said, adding the “techie” in him also makes him curious about the products and processes in which industrial users are involved. Jordan Hungenberg of Greeley-based Hungenberg Produce said he and his father have worked with Bradley on sales and acquisitions for years and appreciate his hard work, fairness, ability to think outside of the box and forthrightness. “He lays everything out there for you,” said Hungenberg. “We’ve had a good relationship.” Bradley, a Wichita, Kansas, native who came to Colorado to earn his degree in finance at Colorado State University, enjoys being part of Northern Colorado’s “close-knit” brokerage community. “I think Northern Colorado brokers, for the most part, are probably more cooperative with each other and more willing to share information and help each other than I’ve seen elsewhere in the state or across the country,” he said. Bradley and his wife, Jane, office administrator for the Larimer County District Attorney’s Office, have two grown sons, Sean and Lincoln. The couple has been busy settling into a new home in Fort Collins, and Bradley, 60, a member of the National Auto Sport Association, also is looking for a new car to race after selling his BMW. A board member for the Northern Colorado Commercial Association of Realtors and Northern Colorado Economic Development Corp., Bradley believes the Weld County and NoCo commercial real estate markets will continue to perform well, barring national or international economic disturbances. He also believes Realtec-Greeley, with an “experienced, knowledgeable staff,” has a bright future as the city, which just crossed the 100,000 population threshold, continues to grow. “Realtec in Greeley has a great core of brokers. I think we’re really positioned to do well,” he said.