Colorado Real Estate Journal - November 4, 2015
Mike Kboudi has turned a passion for helping people into the business of selling land. “When I was studying psychology, at first I thought, ‘Boy, I can help a lot of people.’ I do that now, but I also get to have a career that I really enjoy,” said Kboudi, a managing director at Cushman & Wakefield in Denver. “There’s a creativity to land that you don’t get from other areas,” he said. “I like the idea of turning nothing into something.” Kboudi learned the land business under veteran Stew Mosko and partnered with Jim Capecelatro 14 years ago to create one of Denver’s foremost land brokerage teams. The partnership came about because Kboudi and Capecelatro were representing the same client on different deals and wanted to make sure they provided consistent representation. “We worked really well together. It was kind of a seamless transition. Nothing changed between how the two of us were working, but all of the sudden, each of us was able to do better work because the other one was there,” said Kboudi. “I’m a macro guy … Jim is very detailed … It’s a perfect relationship. We have 100 percent trust in each other,” Kboudi said. “He is top-shelf and a solid partner,” said Capecelatro. Kboudi and Capecelatro frequently are recognized for their success – they are six-time winners of NAIOP Colorado’s Land Broker of the Year award, for instance. Kboudi doesn’t keep tabs on how much land they’ve sold, however. He’s focused on current deals, including entitlements for the 41-acre Broadway Station (the “Gates site”), selling the 72-acre Karl’s Dairy property in Northglenn and representing U.S. Bank on a 8½-acre listing next to the Renaissance Boulder Flatiron Hotel in Interlocken. The goal is to add value, something the team was able to do successfully even through the recession. “We were representing a lot of banks, which are not used to being landowners. That’s not what they do for a living,” said Kboudi. Furnishing them with information and trying to create competition among buyers helped preserve as much value as possible and avoid “the deals that were 15 cents on the dollar that they may have taken if we weren’t there,” he said. “During the down times we actually got more thank-yous from clients than we do during up times because during the up times everybody expects to make money.” A San Antonio native, Kboudi studied psychology, but changed his mind about a counseling career while working on his master’s degree at the University of Houston. After graduating, “I had a U-Haul full of stuff and was leaving Houston to go back to Austin for an interview with an industrial developer. My interview was at 9 o’clock. I got into Austin about 7:30 in the morning, and I was having a great drive. I called the guy I was going to interview with and told him, ‘Thanks for the opportunity. I appreciate it, but I’m going to keep going,’ and I drove to Denver.” He didn’t know a soul but three weeks later had a job with what, at that time, was Fuller and Co. (not to be confused with Fuller Real Estate, another company that still exists). He remained with the company through its transitions to DTZ and, more recently, Cushman & Wakefield. “The energy around here is amazing,” he said. Kboudi organizes the company’s annual Day of Giving, which helps local nonprofits; coaches youth basketball and baseball; serves on the board of the Jewish Community Center; and volunteers with Junior Achievement. He and his wife, Toni, an administrator with Aurora Public Schools, are raising three children: Aiden, 13, Jillian, 9, and Grayson, 8. “My family is awesome. It is so fun. I love getting out of the office and going home and spending time with them.” “Mike has an uncanny ability of juggling a lot of balls at work while also pursuing a very active schedule outside the office,” said Capecelatro, adding he does that with great energy and instincts, as well as sometimes-irreverent humor. Although Kboudi visits family in San Antonio a couple of times a year, Denver is home. “We’re in about the best place you can be. I wouldn’t move anywhere outside of Denver. There’s no place I’d go,” he said. While much of their business is on the residential side, including multifamily, Kboudi said the current market has him and Capecelatro running on all fronts. “We’re selling a lot of properties all over town – we’re seeing multifamily deals, we’re seeing homebuilder deals, we’re seeing speculative land deals, we’re seeing retail pad deals, we’re seeing office deals, we are seeing mixed-use deals everywhere.” What makes one deal more enjoyable than another is the client, said Kboudi. “I will take a small deal where I have a good relationship with the seller over a huge deal where I feel like I’m getting beat up any day of the week. I like working with people who appreciate what we’re trying to do, which is add value to their property,” he said. Deals are not easy to complete because sellers’ expectations are high, costs are high, entitlements take time and buyers fear overpaying for properties. But Kboudi doesn’t expect prices to decrease anytime in the near future, and he is concerned about escalating home prices. Yet he also expects more national and international capital to enter the market and builders continuing to buy land they believe is viable for immediate development. “There is so much activity in the market right now, and there is so much positive momentum in Denver right now. I haven’t seen anything like it before. Denver is such a great place. We’ve got job growth, we’ve got in-migration, we’ve got quality of life, which is cliché, but it’s people moving here for no reason whatsoever.”