Editorial
Front Page - Friday, August 28, 2009
CIC to host second bankers panel meeting, free to CAR
Samara Litvack
After spending five years on Hilton Head Island, Jeff Jennings returned to Chattanooga with one thing in mind. He’d witnessed firsthand the progression of the Hilton Head residential real estate market, and he was focused on trying his own hand in the industry.
“I always knew I wanted to move back to Chattanooga,” he says, adding that commercial real estate seemed a better fit for his interests.
Within a year of becoming an agent, Jennings came on board with the Charter Real Estate Group. Founded in 1972, the firm, he says, specializes in all things commercial.
“Charter Real Estate, myself and the entire company, do strictly industrial real estate, investment real estate,” he says. “Basically, anything besides single-family homes. We represent buyers, sellers, tenants and landlords. So we run the gamut of commercial real estate. We have found Chattanooga to be too small of a market to specialize in only one fraction of the
industry.”
Soon after landing a position at Charter, Jennings became affiliated with the Chattanooga Association of Realtors, and specifically its more individualized councils. He began attending meetings of the CIC, or the Commercial Investment Council, and in 2008, became the president-elect.
This year, Jennings is serving as president of the CIC, which he explains as simply “the commercial arm of the Chattanooga Association of Realtors.”
With roughly 330 members, the CIC includes any CAR member who sells, leases or lists any type of commercial property. The function of the organization is to help direct the association toward what’s best for
commercial brokers and clients throughout the area.
In his year as president, Jennings implemented the appointment of individual chairs for different functions of the council’s board. For example, an education chair now works to set up continuing education classes directed toward commercial and industrial brokers; another chair focuses on the retention of
current members.
“It’s a different direction to try to keep more people involved,” he says.
His main goal as president, outside of managing the board and its chairs, is to line up speakers at the CIC’s general membership meetings. Held every other month, the organization invites industrial brokers and agents to the association office for an hour-and-a-half program, including one hour of guest speaking and 30 minutes of networking and marketing.
Coming up on September 16, from 10:30 a.m. until noon, is the CIC’s biggest meeting of the year. The second annual bankers panel will be held at the association office and will include four top area bankers – John Hatfield, UP from First Citizens Bank; Mike Sarvis, CEO of Cohutta; Jim Farrar, UP at First Bank; and Greg Cullom, Sr. UP at First Tennessee – who will each be given 10 minutes to talk about current lending practices. Bankers will also discuss their industry as a whole, what is required to get a loan in the current market, how the appraisal process is working, availability of funds and more.
“They’ll come in and tell what’s going on in the industry and then they’ll tell a little bit about what makes their bank different, why you should work with their bank for prospects, certain types of deals, what they have an appetite for,” says Jennings. “They get a little time to pitch their own bank, which is not only good for them, but it’s good for brokers to know.
“If you’re working on an apartment investment deal, this bank may work on it. This may be what they’re looking for, where another bank may have more of an interest in an owner/user office building.”
At the end of each banker’s session, he will host an open question-and-answer session, which Jennings says will be highly beneficial for attendees who aren’t sure about current lending practices.
“Two years ago, simply put a buyer and seller together, they agreed on the price and you had a deal,” he says. “That’s not the case anymore.”
Out of the six CIC meetings held last year, the bankers panel was the organization’s most well received general meeting, and Jennings expects this year’s second annual meeting to be even more popular than the first.
“These are four of the big shots,” he says. “That was the highlight of our year last year, so that’s why we’re doing it again this year.”
The meeting is open to any member of the CAR, and Jennings hopes the speakers and the cost of the event (it’s completely free to CAR members) will attract anyone who has an interest in commercial real estate. If those draws aren’t enough, the association’s board of directors has agreed to raffle off a dues package for 2010.
“That’s a $395 value if you’re a Tennessee winner,” says Jennings. “If you’re in the state of Georgia, it’s a $363 value.”
There is no RSVP required for the meeting, and anyone interested in learning more about commercial real estate or current banking practices is invited and encouraged to attend.
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