FEATURE ARTICLE, MAY 2004

MADISON PARTNERS: ALL FOR ONE AND ONE FOR ALL
Collaboration, not competition, makes revamped ‘boutique’ brokerage a success.
Luci Joullian

Bob Safai had been running his Southern California office brokerage firm, Madison Partners, for 6 years, but after collaborating with four top-notch business associates, he decided to relaunch his company in March as a partnership of five.

Hunt Barnett, Gary Weiss, Bob Safai, Rick Buckley and Chris Houge (pictured left to right) make up Madison Partners.

Safai, who began his career in leasing and later became involved in investment sales, says his primary goals have always been to increase value for his clients, no matter what their goals or reasons for leasing or purchasing office property. Safai realized that the best way to please his clients would be to provide a full-service boutique, principal-to-principal brokerage that offered landlord and tenant representation and corporate and advisory services. Teaming up with first-class brokers Hunt Barnett, Gary Weiss, Rick Buckley and Chris Houge allowed him to do just that.

This is no outfit of amateurs. Each of Madisons’ five principals has experience to spare. “I think what you have is a group of people with a resume and a track record in all facets of real estate that’s second to none,” says Buckley of the Madison team.

Buckley, Houge and Barnett worked together at CB Richard Ellis and have also worked for Insignia/ESG, helping to open the company’s Century City office. When CB Richard Ellis purchased Insignia, the brokers re-evaluated their career path and affiliated with Safai to launch the new Madison Partners.

The four others had been acquainted for almost 20 years with Weiss, who had been with Julien J. Studley, a national commercial real estate firm, for almost 13 years before working with a developer. Weiss was also looking to make a change.

“I had done business with all of my partners and I had respect for their talents in their respective genres of real estate,” says Safai. The four new principals, who had seen their share of big brokerage houses, shared Safai’s vision of presenting Madison Partners as a small brokerage firm that would make the most of each of its five partners’ strengths and experiences.

“Generally speaking, in the past, boutique firms have been focused on one area of the business or another,” says Barnett. “In this particular case, we think we bring to a client perspectives from the landlord, tenant and investment points of view.”

While Safai’s career has mostly focused on investment sales of high-end office product, Houge has primarily focused on landlord representation, Weiss and Buckley concentrated on tenant representation, and Barnett has experience in tenant and landlord representation.

“It’s two different theories, two different businesses,” says Safai of leasing and investment sales, “but both keep the real estate ownership happy so that they can realize their gain and get a return on their investments.”

Says Barnett, “We all had looked at Safai’s business and thought it was synergistic with the business we were doing, which was primarily landlord and tenant representation. We thought, ‘why don’t we put it all together and create a little boutique firm and see if we can be more powerful collectively?’”

‘Collective’ and ‘collaborative’ are the perfect adjectives to describe Madison Partners’ five principals, who pride themselves on operating outside of the ‘big-firm’ paradigm.

“It’s a much more collaborative approach, which is unique for a brokerage firm,” says Barnett. “It’s not simply first to the flag or eat what you kill. We think that will give the client a better, more qualified person or group of people.”

Says Buckley, “We can attest first hand to the fact that if you are a broker at a larger firm, and you come across an opportunity, whether you’re the right individual for that assignment or not, you’re going to affirm to the client that you are the right individual.”

Madison’s client-centric approach removes much of the competition that is present in large firms, and, rather than hiding information or resources, the brokerage’s principals have an open-book policy with each other about all their respective deals.

Before each project or campaign begins, the group decides which principal or principals are best suited to handle each client and its needs. “We’re going to decide collectively who’s the best team or individual to pursue a particular piece of business, unlike the bigger firms that have the mentality that if you find it, you can keep it,” says Weiss. “We think that you serve the client better by putting the right people on the team.”

“We work together,” says Safai. “There’s not the internal competition or conflict in the firm.”

So far, Madison’s collaborative approach seems to be paying off. Since its March launch, the new Madison Partners has hit the ground running with several new, high-profile projects.

With offices in Century City and Brentwood, California, Madison Partners, which also employs nine associate brokers, has been striking deals all over Los Angeles. Madison represented talent agency Creative Artists Agency (CAA) in the relocation of its Beverly Hills, California, headquarters to 180,000 square feet of Class A office space in Century City at the soon-to-be-developed 2000 Avenue of the Stars on the site of the former ABC Entertainment Center. CAA signed a $150 million, 15-year pre-lease for office space in the 790,000-square-foot development, construction of which began in April and will be complete in late 2006.

In Granada Hills, California, Madison marketed and sold the site of the former Granada Hills Community Hospital to the Los Angeles Unified School District. The 11-acre site, which includes a 277,000-square-foot hospital and a four-level parking structure, sold for $22.5 million. Madison represented United Kingdom-based MBDA Missile Systems in its 10-year, $8 million lease renewal in a 100,000-square-foot building in Westlake Village, California. In Chatsworth, California, Madison recently closed on a $30 million deal for 300,000 square feet of office space for Washington Mutual, as well as a $33 million deal for music mogul David Geffen.

Madison’s principals’ client list includes Fortune 500 companies, Big Five accounting firms, law firms, entertainment companies, government agencies, insurance companies, REITS and pension funds.

“There’s really no type of business that we don’t represent in L.A.,” says Weiss. “The Los Angeles area really doesn’t have a competitor that does what we do.”

And Madison’s footprint extends beyond Southern California. For clients whose office needs stretch beyond the Los Angeles area, Madison uses its extensive list of real estate connections to recommend fellow brokers from around the country.

“We have tentacles that reach all over the nation because of the number of years we’ve been in the business and the clients we have served,” notes Safai.

Barnett says that brokers from many large firms are often expected to contract only with their firm’s branch offices, whether or not they are the right group for a client’s project. “You’re generally beholden to using the people they tell you to use,” says Barnett. “We can find for our client the best local market expert who knows what’s going on down there.”

The partners say they might consider opening branch offices outside Southern California in the future, but that right now, they want to focus on the L.A. market and all the challenges it offers. While new office construction and leasing may not be very active at the moment and vacancy rates are high, investment sales are booming. Madison has the expertise and versatility to close a deal for a client regardless of the market conditions.

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