Teaching you the art of industrial real estate. This is On Air with Team Jensen. All right, welcome everyone to our first episode of On Air. We’re pretty dang excited to be introducing this podcast and ourselves to the world.
Kurt Jensen:
Teaching you the art of industrial real estate. This is On Air with Team Jensen. All right, welcome everyone to our first episode of On Air. We’re pretty dang excited to be introducing this podcast and ourselves to the world. And so, um, you have here myself, Kurt Jensen, and with me, I have my father, Dan Jensen, and my brother, Stuart Jensen. And we are all industrial real estate folks here at Kessinger Hunter in Kansas City. And we are now launching On Air: The Art of Industrial Real Estate, in which we’re going to inform you on just all things industrial real estate and keep you in the loop on things going on. And also teach you a little bit about what different industrial operators are doing here in Kansas City, what they’re thinking about, and how they kind of view their growth and how it could impact really your future and everything that you know you do—from ordering things on Amazon to running into the store to pick up something you need at the hardware store. And, um, you know, just excited to introduce a lot of those things to you today. But today, our first real goal is going to be interviewing Dan Jensen, who is an industry veteran and one of our owners slash principals here at Kessinger Hunter. And, uh, Dan, thanks for buying into the podcast with us and helping spearhead this as we’re excited to bring it on.
Dan Jensen:
Happy to do so. Happy to be here. And, um, go Team Jensen, right?
Kurt Jensen:
And we grew that team last year with Stuart Jensen coming on board. And thanks for, uh, helping me not be the only brother here while our younger brother just, yeah, works out on a vineyard and sells grapes for a living. So that will be a different, uh, industrial hobby that we actually will probably look to highlight at some point as well.
Stuart Jensen:
We might bring him on.
Kurt Jensen:
Yeah, you guys—the other thing you didn’t mention was that our intention is to bring some of our friends and clients on and introduce their businesses to people and let them know the roles they play in Kansas City.
Dan Jensen:
And, and right, what we do.
Kurt Jensen:
Absolutely, absolutely. So our plan really is to go through and, to Dan’s point, we intend to bring on guests on a regular basis and highlight them and let them share with the world what they do and really kind of what their company does and how their company fits into, you know, the day-to-day that you see out in the real world. And, uh, you know, our plan there is to interview those folks and just kind of talk through some of the dynamics they’re seeing in the market, some challenges they’re facing, some opportunities they’re seeing, and really kind of talk about that and how it impacts the bigger scale. And then we’ll kind of zoom out from there and talk about, really, you know, commercial real estate as a whole on a, you know, from a global macro perspective. And then we’ll really plan on zeroing into the Kansas City market as well and talking about Kansas City industrial and also just other, you know, fun facts and important things going on affecting the commercial real estate market.
Kurt Jensen:
But diving into our first guest, Dan, um, we might as well start at the beginning. So, you know, how did you get into commercial real estate and into the brokerage and development world?
Dan Jensen:
I just fell into it, luckily. I, as you know, your granddad was a salesman. He was a stockbroker for years, and, uh, so I grew up around a, you know, a sales atmosphere, and it really never bothered me, or it really was always of interest to me. Um, and so what I did when I knew I wanted to go into some sort of sales, I got a business marketing degree at the University of Missouri. And then when I came out of school—it’s a real tough degree to get at Mizzou.
Kurt Jensen:
Absolutely. Very selective.
Dan Jensen:
Yeah, there’s not many people that get in. Uh, but, uh, when I came out of school, in the neighborhood of “It’s a Small World,” um, Greg Swetnam, who is now a partner of mine here at Kessinger Hunter—and we can circle back around to that—but when I came out of school, Greg Swetnam had been talking with my brother, Rick, who had—he and Rick had become friends at the university. That’s where it started—at the University of Missouri. And Rick had been—or Greg had been trying to talk to Brother Rick about going to work for CB Commercial, which is where Greg was in commercial real estate. And Rick really had made the decision he was comfortable. He wanted to stay the course. He’d only been there a couple of years. He wanted to stay the course. Unfortunately, in the Dunder Mifflin, he was in the paper business and still is to this day. But, um, uh, he should have tried. He should have switched. But, uh, so I reached out and spoke with Greg, and Greg put me in touch with a guy by the name of Reed Teeny. Reed Teeny—guy probably 10 years older than me and was, uh, maybe 15 and was a Beta at the University of Missouri. So I went in and interviewed with him, uh, about, you know, and I got all the same answers that everybody else gets: “Gosh, we’d love to hire you. It seems like a good fit, but gosh, you just don’t have any experience.” And it’s like, “Well, how do I get experience if you don’t hire me?” So at that time, they used to give everybody an aptitude test for whatever reason, and I think they still do to this point.
Kurt Jensen:
Did you fail yours?
Dan Jensen:
I did. They came back and said, uh, he came back—you know, I did all these interviews, and I did all the testing, and came back, and he said, “Well, are you sure you graduated?” He says, “The aptitude test tells me not to hire you because they don’t think you’re fit for this business.” He says, “I think they’re wrong.” Well, I think we agreed with him. I would think he was wrong. The tests were wrong too. But they originally hired me at CB Commercial. I was the databank coordinator, and that was back in the day when companies used to track all of their own lease expirations and all of their own market data. And so I was in charge of that, and I had three people working for me in the summer that were cold-calling on all the tenants, and they were—we kept files—hard files in a manila folder kind of thing. And I hated it. I saw it. I saw everybody doing deals, and, right, you know, I did not want to be the databank. It used to be nicknamed the “databank dork.”
Kurt Jensen:
Doesn’t sound very glamorous.
Dan Jensen:
No, it was not. But it was an entree. And so, right, I was, um, you know, again, I’m rambling, but I got—so I did that for about six months, then had the opportunity to go into a cube or start training in sales. I started mentoring. My mentors were two guys that teamed forever—David Hinchman, who just retired from the business, alright, with CB—with CB—and Greg Owings. And Greg Owings passed away about seven years ago, just out of the blue.
Kurt Jensen:
And this may be a dumb question, but CB Commercial is now CBRE, right?
Dan Jensen:
Yes.
Kurt Jensen:
Okay.
Dan Jensen:
Not a dumb question. A name—they have had many changes. Uh, it used to be CNW—or no, it used to be CB Commercial, and it used to be, believe it or not, owned by Sears at that time. Sears owned CB.
Kurt Jensen:
I bet they owned it.
Dan Jensen:
Yeah, um, and then it became CBRE. Uh, and the reason that CBRE is—it merged with a company called Richard Ellis, an international company called Richard Ellis. That’s so it’s CBRE, right? Um, and a lot of people have come out of CBRE, uh, you know. So, well, so I trained under Owings and Hinchman in industrial and was there about a year and a half in production and loved it and was pretty good at it, contrary to what the aptitude tests said.
Kurt Jensen:
That’s when you were getting into actual working deals and transactions and stuff?
Dan Jensen:
Yes, right. And about a year and a half into that process, I made a deal out in the Kansas Commerce Center where I was working on some deals with, uh, Chuck Hunter. And it was my biggest deal I’d ever made—that Johnson Controls plastic bottle deal in that building—Building 16.
Kurt Jensen:
Okay, yeah. See, that’s the funny thing for me. I’m jumping around a little bit here, but you guys go out in the market, and they’re cutting your teeth, and they’re cold-calling or talking about buildings, and I, in many instances, have a very intimate familiarity with those buildings because I’ve done business in them or with them or helped create them, right? Um, and which is kind of fun. But, uh, so I made the deal. Uh, you and Chuck were on two sides of the deal, right?
Dan Jensen:
Yeah, who repped who? I repped the tenant, Johnson Controls, and Chuck and Craig Kelly represented the Kansas Commerce Center, which at the time was owned by Capers.
Kurt Jensen:
Was that your first introduction to Chuck?
Dan Jensen:
And then Chuck ended up coming back to me and, uh, approaching me about going to work for Kessinger Hunter and handling the development and leasing of the Kansas Commerce Center. And so that’s how I got involved with that part.
Kurt Jensen:
So that specific project is what kind of brought you over to Kessinger Hunter, right?
Dan Jensen:
Oh, I didn’t—I did not realize that either.
Kurt Jensen:
Yeah.
Dan Jensen:
So did you guys speculatively develop the stuff at Kansas Commerce Center, or was it mostly build-to-suit?
Kurt Jensen:
Everything in Kansas Commerce Center was, uh, way too far out. Nobody would go out there, so everyone considered it a big risk at the time.
Dan Jensen:
Well, it seemed like it, but it was spec—every spec. And at the time, you had Pine Ridge East. They were starting to develop Pine Ridge West. The competition back then was Pine Ridge East and West, South Lake, which was Hugh Zimmer was developing it, and Kansas Commerce Center. Kansas Commerce Center was really the first of its kind where, um, you know, high—there was high-end office in with the warehouses, right? Um, you know, historically, a lot of the industrial stuff you’re used to is—doesn’t have much high-end office around it, and people don’t landscape a lot.
Kurt Jensen:
Right.
Dan Jensen:
Well, that’s the same reason why their operating expenses are—
Kurt Jensen:
Oh, yeah, about twice.
Dan Jensen:
Yeah, it is. But they, you know, those were built back in ’85 to ’95, and they’re, right, they’re not functionally obsolete, but they’re underutilized because they’re 24-foot clear, they have ordinary hazard sprinkler systems, yeah, and, you know, now we have 36- to 40-foot clear, and we have ESFR sprinkler systems. It’s just night and day, right? The modern amenities are just far better.
Kurt Jensen:
Well, it’s funny to think about that being far south.
Dan Jensen:
Oh, yeah, now. But to finish the question, um, everything out there—and I didn’t really realize—except for we sold land to Winning Ways, who built their own facility, which is now Gear for Sport, okay, in the center.
Kurt Jensen:
Well, in Johnson.
Dan Jensen:
But so Johnson Controls—I thought that building was pretty specifically built for them, and that’s why there was all that power. Did they just go in there? They had to bring in all that power after the fact?
Dan Jensen:
It was, to a certain degree, under construction on a speculative basis when I brought them along. And the reason they went into that building was because they could get primary power and because they could get rail service to it because they wanted to bring in the plastic resin for all the bottles they’re making. So there’s another example of a deal we made because we had rail.
Kurt Jensen:
Yeah, yeah.
Dan Jensen:
And that’s gonna be, yeah, it’s kind of been one of the key components as you and your team put together the Astra project.
Kurt Jensen:
Well, and so kind of jumping back a little bit and just a random question—did you get your real estate license before you started working at CB, or was it—
Dan Jensen:
No.
Kurt Jensen:
How did that whole process work back then?
Dan Jensen:
I got licensed as soon as I—I guess I kind of forget, but I got licensed. I was not licensed before.
Kurt Jensen:
Do you have your license today?
Dan Jensen:
Truth be known, um, no, I did not. I don’t remember exactly the details, but I was not licensed before I went to work for CB. So I must have gotten it in that first few months in the process.
Kurt Jensen:
Yeah, yeah. Well, so, and is that kind of your first deal you really remember—is the deal you did with Chuck at Johnson Controls at Kansas Commerce Center?
Dan Jensen:
Oh, no, something else. There’s other fun ones. I mean, like, for example, as the young guy in the office, uh, we got some corporate feed that was like a 1,200-foot—I think I’ve told you guys this story before—like a 1,200-foot sublease over in some buildings we own now that we’re involved in the ownership of, uh, off of Quivira, um, and 85th, yeah, and then Congleton area. There was a sublease, and I—here, give it to the rookie. There was like—there was like seven months left on it—1,200 feet, right? I went around and knocked on the doors there and, uh, ran into and met a little short guy named Leo Long, and it was Long Motor Corporation. He’s the owner of that Long Motor Corporation. And he went over, you know, he went over and looked at the space, said, “I’ll take it,” and he was in that growth mode. And just from there, that was my first little deal I made. And then I ended up staying involved with him and working with him, and I, at least, in 58,000 feet at 106th and Santa Fe Trail Drive, which was Clemens and Sill’s building, yeah, um, was a brand-new construction. They took the whole building, and then I represented him buying that building on 108th Street, and I expanded it for him. So, you know, again, moral of the story—yeah, you turn your nose up at a little 1,000-foot sublease that won’t make you any money on, but you never know what relationship and opportunity you could create, right?
Kurt Jensen:
Yeah, even if it’s not an initial home run, right?
Dan Jensen:
Right, right. Yeah, definitely.
Kurt Jensen:
Well, that, yeah, I mean, that’s something you still teach us today, and we try and focus on. And so, um, you know, very relationship-driven industry without a doubt, and you know, you want to work with people you like and enjoy.
Dan Jensen:
So, well, but I don’t have a lot of choice because your mother’s making me.
Kurt Jensen:
Right, right.
Dan Jensen:
Well, what’s your—still kind of touching back on just kind of the history of things, but when did you—so you first kind of got into development then with the Kansas Commerce Center at that time? I mean, is that something—did Chuck kind of work with you on that and kind of teach you the ropes?
Dan Jensen:
Yes, and, and handled most of it. Uh, I just got a taste of it at that point. Um, where I would say I really kind of cut my teeth on fee development, you know, which again is when you don’t necessarily take an ownership position in a property, you simply perform the services of a developer or construction management company for someone who needs a building. And, uh, where I really kind of cut my teeth on it was another name you guys will recognize—Randy Thrall. Yeah, I was working with him at Nasdar, and again, I had been out cold-calling, knocking on doors, ran across one of his local guys, and they funneled me to Chicago, and Randy and I started working together. And we were looking at existing buildings. They were looking for a hundred thousand feet. There weren’t a lot out there, um, and it turned out that it wasn’t gonna—there wasn’t a building out there that met their needs because they had pretty specific needs, and, uh—
Kurt Jensen:
Yeah, because they’re, uh, they’re doing all the ink stuff, yeah—solvent blasting, yeah, which is extremely flammable.
Dan Jensen:
Right, right. So you can’t always just make an existing building work. So we were looking at stuff, and, you know, and what happened is, you know, when you start looking with a client for buildings, there’s one—there’s one whole kind of compensation involved, and then if all of a sudden the building goes away, and they’re going to just buy a piece of ground and build their own building, it’s a significantly different compensation. Okay? And so what I found was I was working with people, and, you know, all of a sudden the building wasn’t out there that they wanted or that worked for them, and so there was going to be a land sale instead of a building sale, and I kind of got patted on the head and sent away with a smaller fee. And then I found out that, you know, they’d start calling me and say, “Well, who should we be talking to about architecture? Who should we be talking to about incentives with the city? And who should we be talking to about a general contractor?” And I mean, they were asking me all this information, and I was starting to provide more and more information and service to people like that. So I just decided I ought to package it—I don’t know—create a scenario where I turned into a revenue generator. I take care of that. I take care of all that, and, you know, price it accordingly.
Kurt Jensen:
Right, right. That’s the same—I mean, similar dynamic I would assume back then with development, where obviously you got to make the dollars and sense of it all work—cost of construction and everything like that. But was there more of an appetite—I mean, obviously development’s been on fire the last few years, but that’s been somewhat market-driven—but with less product out there 40 or 35, 30 years ago, was there more of an appetite for that kind of thing then, maybe, than there even is now—to build-to-suit stuff?
Dan Jensen:
Yes, yeah, there were fewer opportunities out there. I mean, like, as you mentioned, you were looking for a hundred thousand feet, and there’s just nothing. You know, 30 years ago, the industrial market—we could look this up, but I’ll bet you it was 200 million, 220 million square feet, and today we’re about 325, 330. So there’s been a hundred million—
Kurt Jensen:
And what was considered a big deal 30 years ago?
Dan Jensen:
Oh, a big deal 30 years ago—25 to 50,000 feet was a big deal. Yeah, if you got to six digits on square footage, it was a monster. But like a freestanding hundred-thousand-square-foot building—it was a big deal. Those were few and far between out in the market.
Kurt Jensen:
Yes, 100,000 feet under one roof, right?
Dan Jensen:
Yeah, right. And remember, until 2007 when we did it, you know, nobody was building these 600,000-foot spec buildings in Kansas City.
Kurt Jensen:
In Kansas City, right?
Dan Jensen:
In Kansas City, right.
Kurt Jensen:
Well, and so obviously Chuck Hunter, yourself, Greg Swetnam, um, you know, Bucky Kessinger hasn’t been mentioned, but the name obviously Kessinger Hunter sure rings a bell. Um, who are some of the other players that—you know, things have obviously changed quite a bit in our market in the last 30 years—who are some of the players that you recall from your early career that you kind of remember thinking fondly of and people that you wanted to kind of replicate in your career? Um, and just people that you remember having a strong reputation for and things like that—that and a lot of them still are names that people recognize today in our market, I’m sure.
Dan Jensen:
Sure, well, no, I can tell you, and it’s been—it was the, you know, it was a great generation of people. Um, you know, Hugh Zimmer—Hugh Zimmer was a champ. He was a quality guy, ran a quality business, knew business, um, was always, you know, a friend of family friend but also friendly competitor. He was a developer.
Kurt Jensen:
And I mean, did he and Chuck have a good relationship?
Dan Jensen:
Yeah, a good relationship, yeah.
Kurt Jensen:
Because what I’ve noticed is obviously there’s a lot more institutional and national players coming into our market, and it’s kind of changed things. But the Hugh Zimmers of the world, the Chuck Hunters—um, it used to be back in the day the institutions couldn’t figure out our world because it was a very conservative marketplace, and it was tightly held. It used to be if you were going to have—if there was going to be a building developed in Kansas City industrially, it was going to be Chuck Hunter, Hugh Zimmer, Barney Carbank, Kenny Block—those really were the four. And what was interesting is they took turns, as silly as that sounds. If you had a big spec building coming out of the ground, Chuck didn’t go run and build something to compete with it, right? They kind of paced it. They got the market, and it was almost like a give-and-take. And it was not uncommon for it to take a year to get a building leased in this market. We didn’t have the velocity.
Kurt Jensen:
Right.
Dan Jensen:
And the institutions—it drove the institutions crazy because the institutions in Chicago and Dallas and Los Angeles and East and Central Pennsylvania—you know, I mean, they get a building—if they break ground and get the building 25% under construction, they usually are used to having at least—
Kurt Jensen:
Just that before completion, yeah.
Dan Jensen:
Yeah, so the nationals really had a hard time with Kansas City, uh, and that was the way it was for the first 15, 20 years of my career. Um, and then, yeah, you know, back in ’07, you know, when we—the world kind of came alive on—well, it died—it died in ’09, but, uh, the Great Recession. But, uh, we built that first spec in ’07 with Sun Life, and really, once the Great Recession came and went, coming out of the Great Recession, uh, things had changed. There was a new developer in town—Great Point, um, North—excuse me, North Point, uh, and, uh, they kind of threw all the conventional rules out the window. They started developing Riverside, and they’re building mass, you know, multiple buildings at once. They got hired on and replaced the Allen Group that got washed out out there at LPKC at the northern BNSF.
Kurt Jensen:
Would that have been after they saw some success with, with your ’07 spec build?
Dan Jensen:
Yeah, in the Kansas City market, I mean, BNSF had done their land assembly out south in Edgerton, and, you know, and I think North Point kind of looked at that as a success and like, “Hey, we can do this here too.”
Kurt Jensen:
Oh, I think so, yeah. I mean, I think, but it just took off from there, right?
Dan Jensen:
Well, and that building was first, and then Dan went and tied up a couple hundred acres with Sun Life to then do more of the same type of construction, same type of speculative development in Olathe, right? And that’s what ultimately ended up competing directly with LPKC when North Point was first getting going with that.
Kurt Jensen:
Yeah, and that was when you were an intern at Merit General Contractors, and you were on that site for Building B, where now you’ve got SNS Activewear and 1A Auto over there. Um, but yeah, no, I mean, it’s just crazy to think how much things have changed, you know, in the time I’ve been in the business. The market’s been on fire, and the national players have been extremely relevant in Kansas City, um, but for the majority of your career, it’s really been a kind of close-to-the-vest, you know, local market that local experts really kind of were able to hold—kind of keep the outside institutional investors out, almost to a certain degree.
Dan Jensen:
Yeah, and, and developers certainly, if not also investors, but because investors can—but because we all worked with different investors—institutional investors—but, um, also, you know, seems like, you know, we did a lot more back in the days, but, you know, we would work with Curt Matheson Scientific, Fisher Scientific, um, Appleton Papers, and we would do their real estate all over the country. We would represent them and go to various markets they wanted to be in, and we would affiliate with the local SIOR and, right, and represent them. And in some instances, we actually built buildings for Curt Matheson Scientific, which was a good client of ours that ended up getting acquired by Fisher Scientific, and, right, and now they’re—
Kurt Jensen:
Who’s the group that’s out there? Thermo Fisher?
Dan Jensen:
Thermo Fisher, oh, that’s Thermo Fisher.
Kurt Jensen:
Oh, yeah, yeah. They’re in the big building off—what is it—Renner, 116th?
Dan Jensen:
That I always developed.
Kurt Jensen:
Yeah, who did you build that for originally?
Dan Jensen:
That was a spec deal, although we did it with TA Associates, and then it was sold by—from by us to Great Point, which is now Washington Capital.
Kurt Jensen:
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Dan Jensen:
And they owned it for a number of years, and then along came Zapata, the silver jewelry company, right? And they needed a warehouse, and they wanted—and they wouldn’t lease it, but they wanted to buy it, so we sold it to them. And then they went broke. They sold their business to Avon, and then they went broke, and ended up—Avon ended up selling the business back to Zapata, but Zapata sold that building to Kenny Block, and that’s how he got it.
Kurt Jensen:
Yeah, now they’ve got Thermo Fisher in there, and they were in there putting masks together and all that stuff during the pandemic.
Dan Jensen:
COVID was a boon for that.
Kurt Jensen:
Yeah, yeah. That’s amazing what COVID did for the industrial market too. It’s kind of—it was pretty unprecedented for a month there. It was, you know, who knows what’s going to happen, and then quickly it was pretty clear that it was going to create a huge demand and a huge reshoring and a lot of things that are just going to drive activity we think for quite a while.
Dan Jensen:
Absolutely. Uh, we talked about this before. There’s, you know, the three components that the pandemic created was that you took an industry in mail-in e-commerce that was increasing annually but at a very much more anemic rate—steady and steady—and, uh, and just put it on steroids. And it just—because people became much more comfortable with ordering something online because they had to because they were stuck at home. They couldn’t get up to their doorstep. But to your point, Kurt, we, you know, we thought when this happened—everybody’s staying home—we thought, you know, I don’t know if we’re going to have any business to do for a while, right? And it was just the opposite.
Kurt Jensen:
Yeah, I mean, I was scared to call people for a little while because, you know, people had a lot bigger concerns it seemed like at first than, uh, when their lease expiration was coming up.
Dan Jensen:
But so, e-commerce exploded during COVID. Also, we realized the latest and greatest warehouse and tech distribution technologies—supply chain logistics technologies of just-in-time inventorying is a wonderful thing when it works, and then when it doesn’t, it’s a problem because we all saw companies—retail shelves were empty, and companies couldn’t deliver things because they didn’t have product. So the other leg of the stool is that, okay, e-commerce is growing. They want more space. That created millions of square feet of demand. People were out of safety stock. They were out of warehouse surplus, and they realized, you know, never again. We’ve got to start carrying more stock, especially if we’re importing. We’ve got to have more stock on the ground in the states so that we don’t get caught like this again. So that created millions of square feet of requirements. And then the other is nearshoring and reshoring. You know, for many years, when I was your guys’ age, the big deal was offshore. Everything was going offshore. Americans were losing manufacturing. They could do it more cost-effectively somewhere else, and we’ll truck it in, we’ll ship it in, and that was the case for a long time. But what people realized through the pandemic as well is, you know, especially some of these defense-sensitive issues like chips and, um, and some of the safety—you know, Matt, even as simple as masks—things like that. All of that was getting made and manufactured in China, and there’s just been a real mindset of, “We can’t be that exposed again.”
Kurt Jensen:
Well, it can’t be reliant on the Chinese government, right? Or any foreign government, right?
Dan Jensen:
Right, and be able to control it. So, so those three things, I really think, is why—and I’ve used—we’ve had this conversation before—everybody always says, “It’s different this time.” This time, I think it is different. I think the rest of the markets—the office and the retail—have, have been down the dumps since the pandemic and really haven’t—I think retail is coming around a little bit. Office is getting a little better, but they’ve had a hard slug of it. And, uh, and I really don’t see—even though we’ve seen prices go up on construction, and that has slowed some demand down—I still think there is going to be a reliable pace of product and demand in the marketplace for many years to come.
Kurt Jensen:
Yeah, no, and I think, I mean, just Kansas City specifically, I think, you know, things have slowed down a little bit from the historically great years we had in ’21, ’22, but I think it’s almost kind of a good thing. You know, things were over-leveraged in the favor of the landlord and the favor of the seller, and really now there’s more opportunity out there for tenants and buyers, and I think it’s just a more balanced market, which just leads to—
Dan Jensen:
’21 and ’22 were not sustainable, right? It wasn’t healthy. I mean, you know, when you’ve got tenants who you say, “If this space works, you need to make an offer right now because it won’t be here Monday,” right? You know, that’s out of whack, and it’s not good for anybody. It makes it difficult to make a quality business decision if that’s what your options are.
Kurt Jensen:
Well, and, and kind of bouncing from obviously this, you know, historically great years—record years for Kansas City and industrially in the country—what are—it’s obviously one of the hottest times. What do you recall in your career—one or two kind of windows—when do you recall the toughest times, and kind of what were some of the challenges you were seeing then? And obviously, the Great Recession—I mean, I even remember growing up, you had the big spec building sitting out there, and I remember you were having some nights where you, uh, weren’t sleeping as much as you maybe were used to, right? But just kind of some of those times—is there a time other than the Great Recession that you were called to—
Dan Jensen:
No, sure, yeah. I mean, they’re cycles. Our business goes through cycles, and yes, it’s different this time, but at some point, it’s going to slow down, uh, even now with the big warehouse stuff. But, um, yeah, well, when I first got in the business in ’85, uh, there had just been the tax law change where Congress had gone back and made a tax law change retroactive, which people had made investments in real estate based upon tax code that was law that they went back and changed. So it really—
Kurt Jensen:
Wow.
Dan Jensen:
It really set the industry on its backside, and, uh, yeah, so for a while, you know, I remember people saying, “God, ’85—in ’85, what you really want to get in the real estate business now?” And naive probably youth, uh, probably, but, you know, my response was, “Gosh, I’m getting into it at 21, 22, and it’s a down market. It’s not going to be a down market forever. When it gets going, I’m going to be—I will have learned the market, and I’ll be a participant in its uprise.” And, and I was, and it did work that way. And then in the mid-’90s, there was a little bit of a slug where things, you know, recession hit, and people were woe-is-me, we don’t know what’s going to happen. But I mean, it’s always been an idea where if you keep your head down and keep pedaling, you get through it. I mean, again, you don’t want to get—you want to be conservative. You don’t want to ever put so many chips on the line that if something—a bet doesn’t work, it’s not, you know, you’re not gonna survive.
Kurt Jensen:
How is it—was it—I’ve always been curious—just pre-internet days and everything, how has new product blasted to the marketplace? Was it all mailers?
Dan Jensen:
Oh, my gosh, yeah. They even—they would like—and I know you would—you’d actually go out with stacks of stuff and that, right? They would mail leases.
Kurt Jensen:
Oh, yeah.
Dan Jensen:
I mean, overnight leases.
Kurt Jensen:
Yeah, overnight leases.
Dan Jensen:
So, right, we made the five changes you want—we’ll send it to you, and we would overnight it.
Kurt Jensen:
The back-and-forth.
Dan Jensen:
Well, I mean, and you guys remember when we were doing something else for another user or putting some list together on CoStar, uh, Angie and I were laughing—literally, those dot maps we used to make by hand. Right? You’d get the rub-it, you’d get the—you’d get the plastic and rub number one on the map where it was supposed to be, and it would coordinate with the brochure that you’d put number one on, which is all the worries. And those, I’m sure, two are books and all that stuff was that much more important at the time.
Kurt Jensen:
Oh, absolutely.
Dan Jensen:
Absolutely. Now, you show up, and there’s usually a half dozen brochures people hand, yeah, right? Or it’s like, “Oh, I forgot the brochure. Here, here’s it on my phone.”
Kurt Jensen:
Yeah, here’s the—
Dan Jensen:
Wow. And that was the other thing. You know, it used to be that it was not uncommon to use someone like Papa—your, you know, your mom’s dad—to design a brochure.
Kurt Jensen:
Oh, right, yeah.
Dan Jensen:
And put it together, which now, you know, Angie or Stephanie can do it in 10 minutes on their laptop or on their computer.
Kurt Jensen:
Right, right. So it was very different.
Dan Jensen:
Yeah, I remember the first time the faxes came out where, you know, and you guys—man, it used to be heat-sensitive paper that it would come out on a big roll, and you’d have to tear it off and cut it into pages.
Kurt Jensen:
What? Yeah, wait, really?
Dan Jensen:
Yeah, yeah. And that was—that was high-tech.
Kurt Jensen:
Yeah, I won’t even tell you when I first—there was that. Didn’t used to be copiers. There used to be mimeograph machines where you’d put a blue—a big piece of whatever it was—blue print on that, and you’d film or something, and you’d roll it, and it would press up.
Kurt Jensen:
Yes.
Dan Jensen:
Yeah, I mean, I remember that in my school.
Kurt Jensen:
Yeah, that’s how they made copies.
Dan Jensen:
So, yeah, I still remember—
[Laughter]
Dan Jensen:
When I—do love this. Yeah, I like the story of when you’re in grade school or middle school or whatever in typing class, you’re like, “I’m never gonna have to know how to do this.”
Kurt Jensen:
Sorry.
Dan Jensen:
Yeah, you sit at a desk every day. I used to be a total turd. I’d sit there in typing class, and I’d say, “I am never going to use typing. I’m going to have a secretary that will type or do this or that.”
Kurt Jensen:
Right.
Dan Jensen:
I type every day.
Kurt Jensen:
Oh, yeah, I type every day.
Dan Jensen:
Yeah, well, yeah. And one last kind of question on when you’re getting started, but what was prospecting like, you know, before—obviously nowadays, we have so many different technologies and so many different tools and ways to reach, you know, a prospective client. Do you really have to ask that? You know, exactly how I prospect because I’m always telling you, “Get out, knock on some doors, meet people face-to-face.” That’s what I did. I spent—I would go out, I’d spend a day or two knocking on doors, taking cards, and until I got enough going that I had to spend time in the office to deal with it. And then you would just—would you make phone calls off those cards when you’re in the office?
Dan Jensen:
Yes. The receptionists used to be a far more important position that did a lot more—not that Anna doesn’t do a lot to help, but I’m just saying—first of all, even when we had cell phones, they were car phones. They weren’t cell phones. And so, but people would call here at the office, and you didn’t have a direct dial. They’d call, and they’d take a message. So I’d come in from being out knocking on doors or whatever, and I’d have five messages in my box that I’d take out, go sit at my desk, and return the calls.
Kurt Jensen:
Right, right.
Dan Jensen:
When I remember—even this was cell phone times—once we were kids, but I remember being on vacations, and every morning, you’d call in and recreate your voicemail and say, “This is Dan Jensen. Today is June, you know, 15th, and yada yada. Please, I’m out of town. Please give me a shout if you need anything.”
Kurt Jensen:
Right.
Dan Jensen:
Yeah, yeah. And he used to—and, again, you guys probably don’t remember this, but, um, at long distance used to be expensive. Right? You’d get a, you know, monthly—you’d get a long-distance bill that was $150 for long-distance calls. That’s why people were always like, “Oh, no, don’t call. It’s long distance.”
Kurt Jensen:
Right.
Dan Jensen:
You know, I mean, it really was. Now, yeah, you know, you can call—you can call Hawaii or nothing.
Kurt Jensen:
Yeah.
Dan Jensen:
You know, and then also, when these first came out—these cell phones—um, they again charged you for the minutes too. So you were getting 150
,
150,200 bills on them, right? Whereas now, you pay your lump sum, and you’re kind of—they still gouge you, though.
Kurt Jensen:
How would you know? You’re still on your mom’s—
Dan Jensen:
In my account.
[Laughter]
Dan Jensen:
That’s what they tell us.
Kurt Jensen:
I’m not married yet.
Dan Jensen:
Throwing stones. I’ve still been on my mom’s—for those, she still sends me the bill.
Kurt Jensen:
I mean, I might delay my payment sometimes, and occasionally, she doesn’t think to send you the bill.
Dan Jensen:
Yeah, yeah. Courtesy. Exactly, exactly.
Kurt Jensen:
Yeah, there’s been a few times where I’ve, like, bought lunch, and she’s like, “Well, I just—I won’t send that. This, I won’t send your phone, you know, this.”
Dan Jensen:
Okay.
Kurt Jensen:
Well, no, I mean, that kind of covers the history of what we wanted to talk through with your career, um, but I mean, are there any big deals that you’d want to touch on that were memorable or you think would be fun to share that you’ve worked on or worked through?
Dan Jensen:
Uh, there’s been tons of big deals and fun stuff, but, you know, I mean, it’s just—it is funny that the nature of our business because you spend years getting to know somebody and working to establish their trust and to make a deal with them, and then you spend a period of time—pick it, six months to a year—where you’re actually working on the deal, and then another three months later, you get actually paid for the deal. It’s kind of anti-climactic many times when you get paid because you’ve had so many different, right, jolts along the way where you’ve kind of gotten it done. And it’s, uh, you know, I don’t know—my first big warehouse lease is fun. You know, they’re fun to sign. They’re fun to finally get the deal done, to win. You know, we’re in a competitive business. You want to win. You want to win for your client.
Kurt Jensen:
Um, now, but I still get a charge out of finding a new opportunity. I mean, that’s why, again, I say, “Get out there and knock on doors,” because, you know, the feeling when you find something, and you feel like, “Oh, this could work.”
Dan Jensen:
Oh, yeah.
Kurt Jensen:
You know, when the hit rate is as low as it is at times, it’s invigorating.
Dan Jensen:
Yeah, absolutely. He actually talked to me. He didn’t throw me out. Let’s go. And you learn real quick to just completely ignore, “Oh, yeah, no soliciting” signs or—
Kurt Jensen:
Yeah.
Dan Jensen:
When you lower expectations, we’ll see how this meeting goes.
Kurt Jensen:
Well, and remember my trick, and that is, you know, you’re not going to walk out of there with a deal or a sale. Just always try and have a positive effect—whether you get a decision-maker’s name and number or you’re on a fact-finding mission.
Dan Jensen:
Yeah, yeah, right. Exactly.
Kurt Jensen:
But no, and, you know, that’s all fun. And I do—I dig getting the opportunity to work with you guys. I want you guys to, you know, be involved in stuff I’m doing, but I really get a charge out of seeing you guys chasing business and doing business. It’s fun. It’s fun to see it perpetuate. And I want to, you know, help you guys continue to grow on the business and take on more responsibility because that’s good for you, and that’s good for Kessinger Hunter.
Kurt Jensen:
And, uh, yeah, you know, well, we love working with you and being a part of the team. And I did—I was kind of curious—kind of put you on the spot, but who’s your favorite son to work with?
[Laughter]
Dan Jensen:
Charlie. And he’s in—he’s in Wine Country, so that’s an easy answer.
Kurt Jensen:
I can certainly say I’ve probably caused him less headaches.
Dan Jensen:
And he’s only been here a year.
Kurt Jensen:
Well, that means that makes sense. He should cause less headaches every year.
Dan Jensen:
Yes, yeah. Years I’ve been here.
Kurt Jensen:
No, you’re—it’s a wine connoisseur brother. He’s the easiest to work with because he provides me a service, and I send him money.
Dan Jensen:
Yeah, there you go.
Kurt Jensen:
Yeah. What do you guys got planned for Father’s Day?
Dan Jensen:
Well, that’s kind of for us to know and for you to find out.
Kurt Jensen:
You know, we’ll be golfing tomorrow. That’ll be fun.
Dan Jensen:
Yeah, playing around.
Kurt Jensen:
And, uh, absolutely. What do you have planned, Stuart? You just had your second—
Stuart Jensen:
Yep, just welcomed baby number two a couple weeks ago, getting about 90-minute stretches of sleep at a time, uh, but, uh, I don’t think there’s too much going on Sunday. Probably some pool time and maybe a couple cold ones.
Dan Jensen:
But I’ve always been a big fan of breastfeeding. As a father of four, it was always, yeah, something I couldn’t do. So, you know, I just know we’re doing the occasional bottle right now, and so it’s—yeah, dishes are minimal, but that will change soon.
Kurt Jensen:
So, well, I was always the one that would get up and get you guys and bring you to your mother, and I’d go right back to sleep.
Dan Jensen:
Yeah, yeah. I’m like, “What do you want me to do? Watch her eat in the middle of the night?”
Kurt Jensen:
So, we probably should just stop where we are there.
Dan Jensen:
Yeah, that’s true.
Kurt Jensen:
Well, jumping back to kind of wrap things up, I mean, the, obviously, industrial globally is slowing down, but I do think, to our, you know, kind of some of the points we’ve touched on, I think Kansas City especially and really with the bulk product, I think there’s still a lot of runway in around the country, really, when it comes to industrial. And, um, I mean, any feedback or input you would tell, you know, prospects out there—industrial users—on what to expect for the next six to 12 months, is just as far as, you know, what the market’s doing and what we expect to see?
Dan Jensen:
Well, I think you hit it on the head. I think, on a national scene, Kansas City is far more—people are more far more cognizant of Kansas City than ever before. Um, that’s for sure. I really don’t think there are major logistics decisions that are being made anymore without somebody looking at Kansas City. Um, and Kansas City, even though the costs have gone up significantly, um, if you see relative to everywhere else—relative to the market, to the coasts, relative to other markets—Kansas City is still a pretty inexpensive, uh, market.
Kurt Jensen:
Yeah.
Dan Jensen:
And that offers the greatest quarterback of all time—and Patrick Mahomes.
Kurt Jensen:
That’s true.
Dan Jensen:
In here, our guest next month—yeah, maybe you might have to tune in. Younger brother Charlie might be, uh, actually, he’s going to be up at catching—or not catching—Kelsey, though. That’s gonna be pretty cool next week.
Kurt Jensen:
Yeah, it is next week.
Dan Jensen:
But, yeah, our brother Charlie, who’s with Hill Family Estate out in Napa County—if you’re ever looking to buy some wine or in the area, he, uh, is the estate host there. But he’s gotten connected through the, uh, what are the Bella Twins? Which they’re now not their Garth—they’re the Garcia twins now, but formerly with WWE. And they are good friends with, um, George Kittle’s wife. And George Kittle’s wife was at a tasting and got talking to Charlie, and next thing you know, Charlie’s getting plugged into George Kittle and Kelsey, and they’re talking about coming down. And now he’s actually going to do a tasting with the Titan University crew. And apparently, they told him he needs to be prepared to spend a couple late nights out with them too.
Kurt Jensen:
So, I think they’re going to Greg Olsen.
Dan Jensen:
Yeah, I was telling him, I was like, “Please, I will fly down there at my own cost. I will just stand there, and I will do whatever you ask me to do. I won’t—and I just want to be in the room.”
Kurt Jensen:
But I don’t think younger brother Charlie was interested in that.
Dan Jensen:
Probably made the right decision.
Kurt Jensen:
Yeah.
[Music]
Kurt Jensen:
First segment of On Air with Team Jensen, and thanks for listening in. And we sure hope you’ll tune in in the upcoming weeks as we’re going to bring on some very interesting guests and some local leaders here in Kansas City, as well as from other markets around the country. And I’m excited to share, you know, a glimpse into the industrial world and kind of what we see and do on a day-to-day basis and how it really kind of grows the community we’re in and kind of enables growth for the country for the future. So, thanks again.
[Music]
Dan Jensen:
Thank you.
