How to Avoid Potential Lawsuits & Best Practices for Hiring

What are some top lessons learned from lawsuits and how to avoid potential litigation in the future? Where is NYC going with regards to tenant laws? What are some of the best hiring practices in order to grow a real estate company? Top commercial broker in New York, Bob Knakal, Head of New York Private Capital Group for JLL, shares his insights.

Read this entire interview here: https://tinyurl.com/2wuc94ky

What have been the top three lessons learned from lawsuits that you have seen out there? How can we avoid potential litigation in the future?The number one advice relative regarding litigation is don’t get into litigation. Nobody wins except the lawyers. Even lawyers will admit that in litigation, nobody wins. Avoid it, it would be my number one lesson to learn from. Number two, avoid litigation. The easiest is with full disclosure. The brokerage law in New York requires that the broker convey to a buyer what they know, or what they should have known. You can’t say, I didn’t realize that there was a hole in the roof, even though all the apartments on the top floor are flooded every time it rains, because you didn’t know that you should have known that. Was there a fire in the building two years ago? Was there some condition that you either knew or should have known? Do you have to convey that to the parties?

Also, in New York, if you’re representing a buyer and a seller, disclose who were you getting paid by, if you’re getting paid by someone, let the other party know. You will eliminate many potential issues relative to litigation by being an open book, being transparent, communicating, over-communicating. That’s something that’s generally good in real estate, to over-communicate rather than under-communicate. Having a lot of transparency avoids a lot of potential problems. 

What are some of the best hiring practices? What do you look for not only from the brokers that work with you, the agents that work with you, but also from the rest of the team that supports you?Real estate is a very competitive business, and it’s also very team-oriented. We enjoy talking to people that played team sports growing up. We also like to talk to people who exhibited excellence in some type of competitive area, whether it was captain of the debating team or president of the school newspaper, or something that was a competition where they excelled. Secondly, we looked for people who didn’t necessarily have the best grades in the world or the best education, but were very motivated. We used to joke around that we would only hire PhDs. And those were folks who are poor, hungry, and driven because they were going to work hard. But besides being hungry and driven, they must have passion for the business. We have people who had a passion for real estate, not that they thought they could make a lot of money, but did real estate resonate with them? That was a big part of what we thought led to success in the business because no matter how good you are, you’re still going to have tough and challenging times. But what enables you to get through that challenging time is that you love the business. And we looked for that passion, the most important of them all.

With the real estate investing mindset, is there anything else that is important for our audience to know?A broker should specialize in one thing really well. Investors should do the same. Pick an area of town, a city or region, a type of property, a type of transaction, or a type of something where you can know that particular thing better than others. This ability gives you a competitive advantage.Also, be good to brokers. There’s an expression that says mean what you say, and say what you mean. Don’t lie to brokers, don’t mislead us. Treat us with respect. And that’s a two-way street.

Bob Knakal

@BobKnakal

bob.knakal@jll.com

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