The Journey

It’s been three years since I left the comfort and predictability of public accounting for the challenge and opportunity to own Property Advisors, in partnership with close friends. We bought the business on March 31, 2005 as a new venue to make a difference in the world, without a clear idea of how it would play out. Our logic was to buy an existing business just to get started, and figure it out as we went along. The three years have gone quickly, but the changes in our business and our mission could represent a lifetime of learning and conversion.

Property Advisors is about “Making Place Matter.” This wasn’t the starting place three years ago; rather, it’s been a fateful journey of change and process improvement, driven by our need to become relevant in the marketplace. Truly, necessity is the motherhood of invention, as we have scratched out our existence month by month. We have radically changed our client base, our personnel, and our approach to real estate. It hasn’t gone according to any script, and there have been challenges and frustrations along the way. However, by good fortune (although I don’t believe in coincidences) and great input from our clients and our people, we came to appreciate that the intersection of place and people is our passion. The marketplace is responding warmly.

So what does “Making Place Matter” mean? The real measure is the magnetic attraction of “place” to pull people into it; exactly how this is done lies before us to discern. However, we understand the draw of walkable neighborhoods, or places that create connections between people that are more than a hand wave through a windshield, where real estate is designed for people, and not the automobiles that they drive. Places matter when people walk from place to place. It creates a virtuous cycle through the positive interaction between place and people, repeated ever more frequently as more people encounter each other and their built environment while walking, not driving through this experience.

“Making Place Matter” becomes more relevant every day, as the world urbanizes at an astounding pace. In 2008, coincidentally, we have reached the tipping point where as many people in our world live in cities as not; by 2025, demographers predict that more than 60% of the world’s population will live in cities. In North America alone, this means that more than 80 million people will be added to the population of cities in the next 17 years.

This number is striking and is truly the economic punchline to the urban phenomenon. Global warming, rising gas prices, health and safety concerns will cause more of us to choose to live in cities, as we recognize how walkable neighborhoods address these concerns in an holistic way.

If we can understand the reasons why people choose places, real estate can be developed to attract and foster this process, and create a magnetic pull that accelerates this trend. In other words, communities that nurture the formation of “places that matter” will be the early winners in this urban phenomenon. To be part of this, and influence the outcome in a way that creates a higher built environment in sustainable neighborhoods, creating this magnetic tug, is the essence of Property Advisors’ role in “Making Place Matter”. In our quest to “Make Place Matter”, our work will influence the way that communities are developed and built, with the enduring and possibly eternal outcome of putting people in places that connect them to each other, and our built environment, in a positive way. Each day is new opportunity to learn and make a real difference. Who could ask for more out of a journey?

By: J. Scott Golan