Camille Renshaw, CEO and Co-Founder of B+E
For our latest Expert Insight series, we had the pleasure of chatting with Camille Renshaw, CEO and Co-Founder of B+E (or Brokers and Engineers Net Lease) – one of the world’s largest net lease real estate brokerage firms.
Camille Renshaw has 20 years of experience investing in both commercial real estate and technology companies and had established herself as an industry leader. We asked Camille to tell us more about how she chose a career in real estate, what she thinks of the current state of the industry and where she thinks it will go next. Read on to find out more.
Q: Can you tell us about your background and why/how you chose a career in CRE?
I started coding when I was in seventh grade, so I would say it’s been a long and winding path and unpredictable. After selling a tech company that I founded and investing the proceeds in single tenant net lease real estate, I realized what an extraordinary asset net lease property was, in terms of helping you build and protect wealth while being fairly hands off of the real estate.
Q: How have you seen the industry evolve in the past decade?
CRE is now much more engaged by new technologies and how we can innovate on behalf of the client. Deals are moving faster, with more efficiencies, and for less expense. Clients are benefiting from greater insights and data, made possible through those new technologies.
Q: Where do you see it going in the future?
AI, Blockchain, and all types of onsite urban tech will revolutionize how we run our properties and their transactions. In 5 years, the Net Lease market, in particular, will run much like stock markets and related equities technologies do today.
Q: What do you think is the “next big thing” in real estate – or what should we all keep an eye out for?
Millennials will begin investing in CRE at a higher rate, encouraging diversity and impacting the integration of new tech.
Q: Is there anything that you believe everyone in this industry should be working towards?
Diversity and opportunity for all. And while for personal and social reasons, we want an equal playing field for all in commercial real estate, companies can also benefit from this initiative. A study by a global accounting firm found that publicly-traded companies with all-male boards lost out on a total of $655 billion in potential profits across India, the UK, and the US. The study looked at 1,050 businesses—200 in India, 350 in the UK, and 500 in the US—and compared the companies with at least one female board member against those run entirely by men. It found that the diverse boards had a higher return on assets, on average, than the male-only boards.
Q: How has the evolution of technology, particularly online marketing, impacted the commercial real estate industry for you?
The B+E platform is focused on the unknown buyer, the motivated buyer who will pay the most for stabilized assets. Technology enables us to find unknown buyers at a higher rate than ever before.
Q: What’s your take on the CRE market in the U.S. today in terms of trends and challenges?
The market is going faster, and the dips and drops in activity and pricing will get smaller and closer together over time, due to the new trading technologies entering the market, like BeNetLease’s platform.
Interested in being interviewed for our Expert Insights series? Feel free to reach out to us at [email protected] or check out other articles from our series here.
