Lee Neibart: A Giant in the Commercial Real Estate Industry - A friend of mine who has made a difference!

Lee Neibart

Lee is a Partner in the Ares Real Estate Group and Chairman of Global Real Estate, focused on fundraising and U.S. opportunistic investing. He serves on the Ares Real Estate Group’s U.S. Development and Redevelopment Fund II Investment Committee. He is a Director on various boards relating to Ares' investment portfolio.

Lee joined Ares Management LLC in July 2013 from AREA Property Partners, where he was a Global CEO from 1993 to 2013. From 1979 to 1993, Lee was with the Robert Martin Company, a real estate development and management firm, most recently serving as Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer. He also serves on the Advisory Board of The Real Estate Institute of New York University. Lee is a past President of the New York Chapter of the National Association of Industrial and Office Parks. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin with a B.A. and holds a M.B.A. from New York University.

To the best of my recollection, Lee and I met in the early 1980’s when I was working for a fellow that Lee knew doing workouts of troubled real estate workouts for banks and insurance companies who had foreclosed on loans.  Through the ensuing years, Lee and I would meet every so often, to talk about the industry, our families and our lives.  Lee has always been someone willing to spend time with me when I was either thinking of doing something different in my career or had already started something new.  He’s been a trusted friend.  In 2012, when I started the presentation coaching consulting business, that has grown into Felix / Weiner Consulting Group, Lee’s firm was one of my early clients.

In 2006, I recorded my first album of original music called, “Felix…Finally.”  The project was done as a fund-raiser for Keys for Kids, an organization that donated used band instruments to under-funded public schools across.  Lee and his wife donated a meaningful amount to that project and, thanks to folks like them, the net amount to Keys for Kids was $50,000. I will never forget their generosity and support.  Lee is a class act, straight shooter and a real, real estate pro that has made a difference in the industry and in the lives of many folks in the commercial real estate world.  

One anecdote:  Many of us tell young people especially how truly small the global commercial real estate industry is.  It’s not ‘Six Degrees of Separation” – it’s more like 2!  Some time back, I’m having breakfast in a hotel restaurant somewhere in Germany.  Who is sitting two tables over from me?  Lee and his colleague, Bill Benjamin.  Lee comes over and says, “How funny to run into you here.  Then again, it just shows how global commercial real estate has become especially for those of us to travel a lot.”

Q. How did you get your start in the commercial real estate industry?

A. I had no idea what I wanted to do.  My brother in law was a mortgage broker and he suggested the commercial real estate might be an interesting area for me to explore.  I had interviewed with accounting firms directly out of business school and quickly realized I had no interest in being an accountant.  I was sitting in my apartment and saw and ad in the New York Times about Prudential Insurance Company looking for an analyst for their real estate department  - which was just being created. I answered the ad and got the job. I was the lowest man on the totem pole and I started working in commercial real estate.

Q.  What advice would you give younger people in the commercial real estate industry or graduate students looking to begin their commercial real estate industry careers?

A.  My advice is don’t seek out the high-flying, glorified jobs.  Don’t look to go to work for a private equity firm immediately or even with a developer right off the bat.  You have to have a skill that people want. If getting that skill means becoming an analyst at a pension fund or insurance company or working at a brokerage firm learning how to lease space that’s the place to start.  You must get as close to the bricks and sticks as you can in order to learn, in the field on the ground, what real estate is all about.  Don’t take a job where you’re sitting behind a computer running numbers all day when you have no idea as to what those numbers mean.  There has to be a relationship between numbers and real estate and you can’t understand that unless you’re learning out in the field.

Q.  When you look back on your career is there anything you wish you had done differently?

A.  I’m a very, very lucky guy.  I’ve gotten to travel the world and see many things.  I’ve learned my business in an orderly, gradual basis and quite truthfully I don’t have any regrets. 

Q.  Who has most influenced your career and how?

A.  I’d like to answer the question this way:  “Who gave me the greatest opportunity in my career?”  One was Marty Berger, who was the Martin of Robert Martin.  We were a significant development company in Westchester County, New York in the 80’s and 90’s.  The second was Bill Mack who created Apollo Real Estate and I was fortunate enough to be an early member of that team back in 1993 when the Private Equity world was starting.  Those two gave me the opportunity to learn the business.  and influenced my career the most. 

Lee Neibart

-->