GI299: Building a $500 Million Commercial Real Estate Empire with Ben Reinberg

GI299: Building a $500 Million Commercial Real Estate Empire with Ben Reinberg

Ben Reinberg began acquiring commercial real estate assets in the 1990s, and since that time, he has acquired and managed billions of dollars of commercial real estate. Ben is the founder and CEO of the Alliance Consolidated Group of Companies, a commercial real estate investment firm with a portfolio valued at over $500 million, spread over medical, retail, industrial, and office properties. Before establishing Alliance, Ben founded Hillcrest Trading, Ltd., a national acquisition and management firm.

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Transcript:

Charles:
Welcome to another episode of the Global Investors Podcast; I’m your host, Charles Carillo. Today, we have Ben Reinberg. He began acquiring commercial real estate assets in the 1990s, and since that time, he has acquired and managed billions of dollars of commercial real estate. Ben is the founder and CEO of the Alliance Consolidated Group of Companies, a commercial real estate investment firm with a portfolio valued at over $500 million, spread over medical, retail, industrial, and office properties. Before establishing Alliance, Ben founded Hillcrest Trading, Ltd., a national acquisition and management firm. Thank you so much for being on the show!

Ben:
Well, thank you Charles for having me. I look forward to adding a lot of knowledge to your audience and let’s get rolling. Sure.

Charles:
So before getting involved with Alliance, you were in commercial real estate for many decades. Can you tell us a little bit about how you got started, kind of a little bit about your personal and professional journey to what you’re doing now? Well,

Ben:
I, I come from Chicago. Everybody knows I’m a, I’m a Chicago born and raised. That’s where my love is. My home. I, I live in orange County, California, my office in Newport Beach, California, where I sit now, I sit in our West Coast office where I live. And so I started in Chicago been in commercial real estate for three decades. I started Alliance that long ago, and Alliance can have a group of companies. It’s also alliance cgc.com. And when I started, I started off in accounting. I graduated from Indiana University. Most people know my background, and graduated in accounting. And during a recession, my mom said, go get a job, which is what I did. Went on an audit, learned from a billionaire that I really should be an entrepreneur and decided to start my own business. I, I realized coming from Chicago, some of the largest families that were building wealth were through hard assets like commercial real estate.

Ben:
And it’s interesting ’cause when you talk about hard assets like commercial real estate, it ties into my new book, which is dropping at the end of March, called Hard Assets and Hard Money for Hard Times. And so I started in Chicago, we started, it was local, regional business. Started buying my first deal was in industrial building, 95,000 square feet. Did very well with that property. Went through some learning ch and growing pains and challenges, which helped me in my career. And long story short, we built millions of square feet of office industrial. And what’s interesting is, recently in 2024, we opened a multi-family division. We saw a lot of sponsors, colleagues of ours struggling, loans coming due. Trillions of dollars of loans are coming due in 25 and 26. And so Charles, we saw a real opportunity. So we got involved in multifamily. We now do hard money lending industrial one of the leaders in medical office with the Alliance Medical Fund, as well as retail.

Ben:
So we’re in different categories. We’re offered diversification. Our investor base is high net worth of credit investors, well as family office from all over the world. So we give a lot of education and opportunity to come into our universe. And so I’m very excited because the book has been a labor love. We’ve been working on it for a year. And I wanted to write this book because every day, if you go back through my career, which is what you’re touching on, I was asked to take a look at someone’s portfolio. I’ve always been asked, gimme feedback on investment, on tax strategies. Ask about how does someone get into real estate? And so I heard the questions for decades and I said to my staff, I said, you know what? It’s time we write a book. And the book, what’s advantageous about a book?

Ben:
I I click, I quickly learn that most people don’t know how to generate wealth and they don’t understand assets, money or time and time’s your biggest asset. And these are all tools that can be used to build wealth. So I talk about in the book, I give great stories and war stories that tie into using the book. The biggest asset in the book is every book has what I call a blueprint to build your hard asset emperor. So you take the blueprint and you have the ability to start building your own hardass empire. It doesn’t matter if you’re broke to a billionaire, everyone’s gonna be able to use this book. And it was something where you’ll be able to take it off the bookshelf, Charles, and through the test of time to be able to go back and look at, do you need to amend your blueprint?

Ben:
How do I enhance it? How do I protect it? How I defend it? So the key to the book that was really important to me is I wanted to make sure that everyone can not only generate wealth, but once you start generating wealth, how do you defend it? How do you protect it? How do you grow it? And compound it is critical to building your hard empire. And it’s very visual. It’s very easy to use and we wanna make where anyone else can use it besides us and our company, every one of my employees are using it. And so what I learned is I wanna make it visual ’cause I’m a visual person. I wanna make it where you can be accountable to yourself and you can learn and grow. The key to the blueprint is you’re building a castle, you’re building a fortress of your hard assets.

Ben:
But what’s important in it is now you’re building assets. And hard assets is more than just commercial real estate. It’s gold, it’s silver, it’s it’s cryptocurrency, it’s stocks, it’s bond. We talk about all of it. But one of the key factors I talk about in the book that will help people in their universe in building wealth and building a hard asset empire is that you gotta focus on a niche. So I focus on commercial real estate. That’s, that’s my Bailey. What, okay, medical’s, one of our sectors we’re experts in. But if you have a niche, okay, and let’s say you’re a, you’re big into stocks, that’s what you love to do, right? I always say double down on your niche. And when you wanna diversify into cryptocurrency or commercial real estate, it’s why people invest in alliance. It’s why investors invest with us is because they wanna invest in smart money.

Ben:
And I tell investors, and people in the business world that wanna build a hard asset empire is always invest with smart money. Because we go back to the word time, Charles, and this is a key point in business, in life, you only have so much time on this earth and you have to pick, your decisions are based off time. So I’ll give you an example. We had our leadership team in town in Newport Beach. We met three years ago, and the average life expectancy was 77 years old at that time. So take that example. I’m 55 years old, I know you’re probably saying, is he really 55? Yes, I am 55, 22 years. 77 minus 55 is 22 for all you mathematicians out in in the Charles Crueller universe times 52 weeks is what I can do. The math in my head, it’s 1144. So it’s 1,144 weeks I have in my life for this example.

Ben:
So let’s think about that. I’m gonna be very careful I making decisions, what podcasts I go on. I’m gonna be careful about who I spend my time with, my relationships, my inner circle, who’s my tight knit people I want to hang with. So I always tell people, show me your friends, I’ll show you your future. So when you’re in business or you’re growing or you’re developing a business or whatever you’re doing, your employee, look at who you’re surrounding yourself with. If you brought yourself to a green room, you’re going on a show, who would you bring in the green room? Who can you trust? Who would back you no matter what, even if you did something wrong, who would have your back? Those are the people you wanna surround yourself with. And this all gets explained in the book because the book is more of a holistic approach now, only building your hard asset empire with the blueprint, but also gives you life lessons of who do you surround yourself with, what resources do you bring in where do you put your focus?

Ben:
And so we talk about investing in smart money. And it’s interesting because there’s a lot of lessons in entrepreneurship in real estate that I’ve learned in my life. It’s, you know, you really, for everyone out there listening, whatever business you’re in, here’s some of the tips I’ve learned from entrepreneurship in real estate is you wanna know what you stand for and you wanna be an example of it. You wanna build a foundation for your business and your life. You wanna build a great team. And this point is really important. I’m gonna hammer this home. You wanna execute and deliver on what you say you’re gonna do. You gotta live that life. If you’re gonna be successful, you’re gonna build a hard asset empire. You’re gonna build any empire and measure off. And don’t be afraid to pivot. And then here’s a key point that I start.

Ben:
I wish I knew this when I was in my twenties, okay? I realized in my forties is always be learning and growing. And it’s important for everyone out there is that we all come from different backgrounds, different experiences and different relationships, and we all have challenges, things that trigger us. If you can manage your emotions and you can control your emotions, you’ll master your universe and you’ll be wildly successful in business. And how do you do that? You do that through personal growth. You do identifying your weaknesses, you work with someone. I always encourage people, you know, find a mentor or coach, find someone that can help you in life because it’s really important that you take that step forward. Because if I knew that my twenties, how to manage my emotions, I’d probably be a different person in business. But you know, you learn, you go on a learning curve. And so that’s a little bit about what we’re doing here and what’s going on in our universe and really excited. We have a lot of exciting things going on at Alliance and, and@thebenreiner.com personal brand. So, so Ben,

Charles:
With what you’re working on now within your, your firm at Alliance, I mean, how is your firm really navigating a lot of the changes of dynamics of like office industrial and retail sectors coming through? I know you’re taking advantage of multifamily, which obviously has been going through tumultuous time over the last couple years. But how are you doing those other asset classes that you touched upon?

Ben:
Well, when you say how are you doing the other asset classes are you talking about how we’re acquiring those properties or are you talking about how the, the capital stack or how the cost of capital right now,

Charles:
Demographic shifts influencing like the utilization of spaces and stuff like that? Well,

Ben:
Demographics, but mostly where we look to invest is high population growth states. Okay good geopolitical areas within the country that support business growth where people are moving to solid demographics. We have a certain buy box for each specific assets. So, you know, for us in a large part, so if you look at medical, let’s give that example medical, we look at the south, southeast, southwest mountain West, and then we buy around the country as well. But the reason why we focus on those industries or those areas within the United States is because of population growth density, it’s where people are migrating to. It’s, you know, it’s what we saw in Covid, where are people moving to? So that has a general theme across the board regarding all asset classes that where’s the supply, where’s the demand, and where areas are gonna support that different product type.

Ben:
And so if it’s industrial, we might look at 24 7 cities at port cities like Chicago and Miami and Savannah, Georgia and Houston, Texas product type like multifamily. We will look at certain areas where there’s growth. We mo look at where there are opportunity to get yield. So we go through different decision trees, Charles based han different asset classes. It’s not one unified box. It’s really the ability to identify opportunities. I mean, most people know me as a futurist, like identifying opportunities. And that’s why investors invest with us. They say, because we’re not just gonna send the sidelines. We’re gonna constantly grow and, and continue to learn and be leaders in what we do. Just like ai. I mean, we’re heavily involved in AI internally to be able to identify those great areas and the great properties before they become mainstream.

Charles:
Interesting. So we haven’t talked too much on this show about medical, medical office space and properties. What are some of the benefits and maybe the complexities of investing in medical office properties and why you really like that, that asset class? Well,

Ben:
I don’t think anyone on this podcast listening could disagree that the human body is never going outta style. And so that’s the foundation of our properties and our tenants. And what I like about our tenants is they invest significantly in the properties. They build deep roots within their communities and their, and their creating impact and serving a purpose for those specific property types within the medical office industry. So everyone, you and your family go to see medical office telehealth is never gonna trump the ability to go into the office. And so it provides stability and why. And then you have upper eighties percentile renewal rates. So what I love about medical office is it’s stable, secure, and profitable investing. And that’s what we offer our investors and that’s why we’re able to sell into a large breadth of buyers when we exit properties and generate great returns.

Ben:
Like if you look at our track record, 24% internal rate of return to our investors throughout the years, that’s their return. And so with that in mind it’s a healthy track record, which, you know, why people sell us deals in this universe is because we provide certainty. Certainty is very important in our business. And so we provide certainty. So the Alliance Medical Fund has been great because we realized that doctors wanna invest in with their colleagues. So we brought in a lot of doctors and investor and they realized, wow, I can invest in medical office around the United States with alliance shoulder to shoulder get great returns, but we understand the business, we don’t need to go on the learning curve. So medical office is very easy to sell into the investment community. It’s stable, it’s conservative, and there’s a high barrier’s entry because you gotta understand each of your businesses and how the tenants work, how they align with hospitals, how they fit within the community.

Ben:
And so at the end of the day, it’s really important, you know, medical office is a little bit different animal. You gotta learn how these physicians and practices are making money at their specific locations and then understanding the real estate too. So it’s really a, a bifurcated effort of really understanding the product type to be able to thrive in which we’ve done at Alliance. The key is, is that we have a very established platform. It’s very difficult for a neo fight or someone new walking into our business, especially investing in medical office. And because we have 200 plus years of leadership team experience and give our investor community white glove service that seven star experience that I thrive on, so that way they don’t have to ask questions. They just collect, collect payments and rent and checks you know, and and distributions into their preferred return payments for an investor.

Ben:
And it, it works like clockwork because at the end of the day, we want them to be enjoy their experience at Alliance. And providing that seven star experience is so critical. So we pay out distributions every quarter. We get statements and letters and financial statements, et cetera. And so it becomes a very transparent process. And at the end of the day, that’s what it’s about. You can go kick the bricks and mortars on all our properties and see. And so that’s why we have so much demand and livid supply for investors to come in that investors are knocking on our door because between the experience in the leadership team and that’s outside of me, Charles, and then the track record and the product type, it makes it for a perfect storm for investor to come in, get yield and, and have a profitable investment, but also allows great tax benefits too.

Ben:
I appreciate that. One thing that you talked about when we when we start talking about a medical office was that you, you mentioned something and you kind of gloss over at the hospital. Now I’ve had friends that are like in development for medical office and they’d always say sometimes it takes time to get that hospital. I believe it’s like a partnership or sponsorship. Can you just tell us a little bit more about how that is? Because obviously this is a huge barrier to entry and where you guys kinda shine, but a little bit about how that office partners or that hospital partnership really helps to build out the medical office space like that. Well, you have to understand how do the physic, you know, hospitals went around and started rolling up and buying different physician practices. So you have to learn like what is the hospital system’s intent with this practice?

Ben:
Or we can consolidate them to a different facility. Are we gonna keep it because it thrives in it’s good location. So you gotta, you gotta kind of roll up your sleeves Charles and know what, how is the property performing? What are they investing in, what’s the strategy for the hospital and the physician practice? What are the ages of the doctors? So we look at all these different variables, Charles, to be able to assess the risk ’cause that’s what we do. And, and we’re using AI in the future within our company and we’re doubling down at to assess risk and market analysis and data analysis to make intelligent decisions on what a healthy investment looks like.

New Speaker:
Interesting. Is that, is that something that you’ve kind of built out your own proprietary

Ben:
Software doing? Yes, we have our own proprietor system ai, we have a fractional chief AI officer that we hired because we knew we needed to get involved in this and, and if you’re not involved in ai, you’re gonna fall behind. Yeah,

Charles:
For sure, for sure. So since starting in the, in the 1990s, buying and investing into commercial real estate you know, you’ve been through a number of different pullbacks, mainly like the GFCI mean, what lessons have you learned during these periods and how do you suggest investors best prepare for market downturns?

Ben:
Well, it’s a great question and I appreciate because the key to this business is the ability to hold, the ability to hold, the ability to hold. So what does that mean? You gotta be able to write through cycles, right? And so we talk about this, how do you ride through cycles? How do you deal with vacan vacancies and carrying properties? Well number one, first thing you do is you don’t over, over-leverage properties. And that’s something I learned as a young man. Never over-leverage properties put less than 65% loan to value or less on properties. Why don’t be afraid to raise more equity. By the way, everyone listening out there is, I assume what we have commercial real estate investors out there or investors out there. Yes. Passive and active. So if, if you’re out there, one of the things we do is, I’ll tell you why we don’t over-leverage properties for if you’re investing in any capacity is because commercial real estate is about the ability to hold, I said it earlier, ability to hold, ability to hold Billy to hold.

Ben:
And why that’s relevant is because if something happens in your investment, and I’ll give you a perfect example, look at 2023, right? Rising interest rate markets values are dropping. So let’s just say a property loan is coming due, right? And I’ll give you an example. Let’s say the loan is $10 million property’s worth, you know, x and all of a sudden the property drops in value and you can’t refinance that $10 million loan because of value, because your loan to value measures have changed, your covenants have changed. And so don’t be afraid to pay investors a lower return. So for example, let’s just say you wanna pay a seven, but you end up pay ’em a six or a five, but you’re protecting the assets in a healthy way. There’s nothing wrong with that. People lose sight of that. People, investors are out there saying, well I want as much yield as possible.

Ben:
Well do you or do you wanna manage your risk and maximize tax benefits and have a profitable deal? Because what everyone forgets about is the exit. What’s the IRR? What’s the overall return? It’s great. You want current cash flow? Yeah, we’ll give you that, but we’re conservative because we wanna protect your capital. That’s our job as fiduciaries. Transparency, integrity, consistency and expertise are our core values alliance. That’s what you get when you invest with us. And so, so not over. So do not over-leverage properties. It’s it’s a bad move. The other thing is what most people don’t do, I see this in the younger generation I teach it, is understand the real estate fundamentals, vacancy rates, what’s current market rent, what kind of reserves are you modeling in your cash flow to deal with the what ifs? Things are always gonna come up. And I’ll tell you the misnomer rate goes on in our business is that everyone thinks that just rents ascend into the air and they keep going.

Ben:
But what happens is rents can compress in a property, different environments, different different situations, geopolitical risk, it, it, the list goes on and on and real estate cash flows go like moguls. And so one minute you’re at a $30 net rent, the next minute you blink, you’re a $21 net value just dropped. And so having reserves not over leveraging your properties, underwriting a property, understanding the real estate fundamentals, vacancy rates and and absorption rates and competition, supply and demand, is there vacant pieces of land near you? There are zone that can compete with you and people out there are lazy, they won’t do the homework. At Alliance, we put in the work because our tracker means everything. We’ve been around for three decades, Charles, there’s a reason behind our track record and our expertise. And it’s why investors are begging to come into our universe because we offer a lot of value. We, we don’t have to take every investor, it’s a privilege to invest with us because of all the work that we put in for decades and the work that we continue to do, but we’re also cutting edge with technology to make the investor experience outstanding. And that’s the difference. That’s what you need to do. So remember those lessons is not, don’t over leverage reserves and understand the fundamentals and you’ll have a successful investment. Yeah.

Charles:
The thing the second part too with the debt is I’ve realized when going through pullbacks is not only that you see the property value go down, but also the lenders that are gonna refinance, that they’re loaned the value of what they’re gonna loan is now going down too.

Ben:
Now are they, now are they going down? But also the lack of liquidity in the market you don’t have as this robust lending base. So they have you. So basically if, if you went into a loan and let’s say you leveraged at 75% LTV and you went through 2023 in this marketplace and now all of a sudden you’re trying to refinance and the value dropped and you’re at 95 LTV, it’s gonna be tough. And so you’re gonna have to sell the property. That’s why I’m excited for this market. That’s why we got multifamily and we’re excited about other assets because in 2025 and 2026, there’s gonna be tremendous amount of loans coming to trillions of dollars and Alliance we’re asking investors come on in our universe because we’ll diversify your capital. We’re gonna, we’re gonna show you our expertise and pay you great cash flow with great tax benefits and great upside in a safe, secure manner with a great team of people.

Ben:
And that has been around for a long, long time. So why is that? Because we see with what happened in the marketplace, there’s gonna be great buying opportunities over the next few years, maybe some of the best we’ve never seen in our careers. And so we’re doubling down. We’re saying to investors, come into our universe, let’s make money, let’s get you some tax benefits. She as well. And it’s been incredible because there’s a lot of opportunities out there. And besides office, we’re a leader in medical office, our alliance medical fund and industrial and multi-family. We’re also doing hard money lending too because there’s a lack of liquidity in the market and investors get involved in that. So when we take investors’ capital in Charles, we’re looking to diversify them not only in a fund like the Alliance Medical Fund, but what happens is you come into our universe, you’re not gonna wanna leave because we’re gonna take your capital and diversify it over a significant amount of asset classes. And that’s what creates diversification. So it’s like the perfect storm. You got experience, good track record, but you also have diversification to a lot of different assets. And so those are things for people to consider. Yeah, that’s

Charles:
A great mix because you’re able to provide upfront cash flow for investors through some of that private lending. And then also you might have some development deals or other deals that might take a little longer stabilize where they’re kind of, they’re waiting it out a couple years before they’re getting a sizable return on that.

Ben:
Yeah, I mean it depends. We do buy a lot of existing assets. We do do some development, but again, it’s all about, at the end of the day, it’s how do we protect and shelter our, our investors capital And that’s what we do really well.

Charles:
Men. As we’re gonna wrap up here, I’ve got one more question before I give the floor to you. In Building Alliance into a $500 million real estate investing business, what are the some of the key factors that have really contributed to your success and kind of building out your team and everything else to getting to you to where you are now? Well,

Ben:
A good founder and a good CEO realizes they don’t know anything. They don’t know everything. So you have to be humble. You have to take a step back and say, I don’t know everything, so I gotta build a team, a grade A team, which is what we’ve done. The other thing that we’ve done is we’ve chief people officer, we’ve gotten into human behavior in our company and that’s why people wanna work here because we have a community. We don’t believe in the word culture. It’s more like a dictatorship when it’s like, it’s Ben Reiner’s culture. No, that’s not how we do it. It’s a community. Everybody has a part of our alliance community that works at Alliance. And so what I tell people is, is that in order to build an empire, a hard asset empire like I’ve done, and it’s been more than just 500, I mean we’ve been doing it for a long, long time, is if you’re looking to get control and security in your life and you’re looking to change your life, the first thing you gotta do is look at yourself and say, what are the things I gotta work on?

Ben:
Get involved in personal development, get a mentor coach to help you with what you’re doing and pick a niche. You know, I see a lot of people out there, they say, well, I got 18 businesses or I got this or I got that. And they’re so unfocused and not an expert in what they do that when they look at their hard asset blueprint, they’re so spread out, they’re not, they’re not growing or doing anything. So pick a niche, invest in smart money, especially if you’re a passive investor. Invest is the reason why people invest with alliance is ’cause we’re smart money and it’s important to them. And so you wanna, if you wanna be empowered and get independence, focus on niche, invest with smart money, okay? Don’t over leverage and get to know people and build a tight inner circle and get to know people and ask questions.

Ben:
How do you solve challenges? How do you deal with this type of environment? Because knowledge is power. And so I suggest people ask questions do your homework and you’ll be wildly successful in business. But it goes back to your personal life and business life flow into each other is what we learn at Alliance My company. That’s why we have a chief people officer in the company. And by doing that, I said, well, what’s the best way to teach this? And it’s through the book. And, and I wanted to give this personalized roadmap to everyone is that you can do it. If you follow the roadmap, you follow the blueprint. And it’s based on what I’ve done in 30 plus years in business and all my colleagues are wildly successful in business as well. It’s a collaborative effort and it allows you to have a strategy where, you know, we have different cycles and environments that go on and wars and, and interest rate hikes and, and everything that happens.

Ben:
So how do you build it? Well, you build it through hard assets. Every major wealthy family in the world has built wealth through hard assets. And so I use that knowledge and I offer it in the book along with stories, but a real blueprint of step by step how to, how to build your hard asset empire. And by doing that, you’ll be able to deal with a world of uncertainty, be able to see what the age old format that every high net worth family has done. And most people don’t have the roadmap to build their empire and they lack the methodology and the strategy and the blueprint. And that’s where the book comes in. ’cause At the end of the day, what’s key about the book is you need to really understand where it is so everyone knows what it is. And that’s the key framework to the, to the book.

Ben:
And so to get the book, you can go to ben reiner.com, my personal website, you can go ben reiner.com/book. We’ve had thousands of people pre-order the book. It’s coming out at the end of March. And you know, love to hear from you. If you reach out to me, hopefully, you know, I’ll get you a signed autograph copy. If you reach out to me, you’re interested in investing in Alliance and some of the things we do, feel free to reach out to me. And then for people looking, you can go to ben ryberg.com, you can go to alliance cgc.com, like on the screen alliance, charlie george charlie.com. That’s if you wanna invest, you click the invest button, we’ll get ahold of you quickly and we’ll interview you and we have to interview and make sure you’re qualified and make sure you’re a good fit for us and we’re a good fit for you. The reason why Charles, we don’t bring every investor in our universe is that it’s a long-term relationship and we wanna make sure that the people we bring in our U universe really understand what we do and, and we are a good fit for their capital, what their strategy are is and, and will be.

Charles:
Thank you Ben. Yeah, a lot of great information there. We will put those links into the show notes. Ben, is there anything else you want to add before we close up

Ben:
Here? No, just again, if you’re, if you’re looking to grow and you’re looking to improve, you know, feel free to pick up the book and, and go through the Hard Asset empire. And then, you know, I go around, speak Charles, I speak at different cities. I’ll be in San Diego at the end of March speaking. And feel free to come down if you’re in the area. And and feel free to watch my show Ben Reiner. I own it streaming on all different podcast platforms. Youtube, it’ll be streaming on a network coming soon to you. Okay,

Charles:
Fantastic. I will, we’ll put those show notes links into the show notes. Ben, thank you so much for coming on today and looking forward to connecting with you here in the near future.

Ben:
Great, thank you Charles, I appreciate it.

Links and Contact Information Mentioned In The Episode:

About Ben Reinberg

Ben Reinberg is Chief Executive Officer of Alliance Consolidated Group of Companies, LLC. and, as such, provides overall strategic and investment direction and leadership to the firm.
Ben is a respected authority on commercial real estate acquisition and investment as well as the development and structuring of transactions. He is well-versed in 1031 exchanges and assessing the needs of investment capital.
Ben brings value to the deal process through his ability to build trust quickly, raise equity efficiently, solve problems, and bridge the gap between buyers and sellers. Ben has authored and published numerous articles pertaining to the trade.
Ben’s judicious management of key resources and glass-half-full-approach to the assessment of market conditions differentiate him in a market in which the perception of opportunity has diminished. Ben caters to the knowledgeable commercial real estate investor and broker by adding value and creating goodwill at every touch point. An avid marketer, Ben has positioned Alliance as a stalwart in the commercial real estate industry. Through strategic use of the Internet, he has solidified existing business relationships and extended his reach to potential investors and sellers.
Prior to establishing Alliance, Ben founded Hillcrest Trading, Ltd., a national acquisition and management firm. He began acquiring commercial real estate assets in the 1990s.
Ben received a Bachelor of Science degree in Business and Accounting from Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business and is also a Certified Public Accountant (CPA). His professional affiliations include the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), the Illinois Society of Certified Public Accountants (ICPA), The Urban Land Institute (ULI), and the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC). He is also a Charter Member of the International Association of Commercial Real Estate Professionals.

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