The Shift is a LeaseUp podcast hosted by our founder Kurt Chisholm, in conversation with brokers at the intersection of CRE and tech
✨ Article summary: In episode 8 of The Shift podcast, Tere Blanca, Chairman and CEO of Blanca Commercial Real Estate, shares insights on leveraging data and technology to gain market share in CRE. Tere's firm boasts over 30% market share in Miami-Dade County, achieved partly through a commitment to adopting new tech tools. She discusses the role of AI in enhancing efficiency and providing real-time insights, emphasizing the importance of embracing tools that create value for clients.
The Shift is a LeaseUp podcast hosted by our founder Kurt Chisholm, in conversation with brokers at the intersection of CRE and tech. The guests come from different professional backgrounds, but all leverage technology to get more deals done.
For the eighth episode of The Shift, LeaseUp’s Kurt Chisholm spoke with Tere Blanca, Chairman and CEO of Blanca Commercial Real Estate.
Tere got started in CRE in the late ‘80s, putting in 14 years with Codina Partners and 6 with Cushman & Wakefield before starting her own shop in 2009. Blanca Commercial Real Estate now has over 30% market share of all office leasing transactions that close in Miami-Dade County – a staggering number for an independent brokerage.
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Tere attributes part of her firm’s success to allocating a significant portion of their budget to improving their technological capacity, regularly adopting new tech tools that confer a competitive advantage and differentiate how her team works with market data.
“AI really is allowing us to become so much smarter, so much faster about everything and anything that you're interested in learning about. Using artificial intelligence in a data aggregation platform that we onboarded about 2 years ago is really helping us track and maintain information on a very current basis, and develop all sorts of reporting dashboards that can be customized for our clients or internally, that otherwise would take us days to produce.”
Tere shares insights on how to grow an independent business, how to transition from rainmaker to a management position, and how she’s utilized AI data analysis and other tech tools to maintain an edge: “We are not shy about signing up for tools that will create tremendous value for our clients.”
Tere Blanca is a 25-year veteran of south Florida real estate. “I fell in love with what I was doing the minute that I started in commercial real estate back in the late ‘80s,” she tells Kurt near the beginning of the podcast. After 20 years working for bigger shops, Tere struck out on her own in December 2008, making the bold decision to start an independent brokerage during a recession.
“It's the best decision I ever made,” she reflects today. Blanca Commercial Real Estate currently has 10.5 million square feet of landlord agency assignments, a number that reflects Tere and her team’s steadfast involvement in community growth, working with local chambers of commerce and regional economic development agencies.
Tere’s personal list of accolades includes numerous board of directors memberships, a past chairmanship of The Beacon Council, Miami-Dade’s official economic development agency, and “Ultimate CEO” designation from the South Florida Business Journal.
Kurt Chisholm is the founder and CEO of LeaseUp. Kurt’s been in CRE for over a decade, as a tenant rep broker, landlord, and investor. He left brokerage to build LeaseUp after realizing the need for a CRE deal platform that lets brokers leverage tech to get more deals done.
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