Signature Associates

His industry can be a rat race, but this executive just ran an actual marathon

Posted By: Crain’s Detroit Business on November 26, 2024.  For more information, please click here to read the source article.

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Mark Woods, COO of Signature Associates Inc., has spent more than three decades in commercial real estate, an industry known for being a rat race. He’s worked for Ford Land Development Co., the real estate arm of Ford Motor Co., and Cushman & Wakefield, before joining Signature close to 20 years ago.

But in early November the University of Michigan grad completed a race of a completely different kind: the New York City Marathon, a bucket list item for long-distance runners all over the world. And he did it for a good cause, inspired by a good friend currently battling cancer and a late family member who succumbed to the same disease.

He spoke with Crain’s about where he sees commercial real estate heading, and how and why he ran 26.2 miles through five NYC boroughs.

• Obviously it’s been a wild ride in commercial real estate the last five or so years, with the COVID-19 pandemic and interest rate surges crimping the market. What’s your read on what’s ahead in 2025 and beyond, broadly? 

It’s interesting. If you’re in the business and somebody asks you, “How is the market?” it really does change depending on your perspective and what you’re doing. You could ask the same question to 10 different people and if all have a different focus of expertise, and we’re in different markets, I think the response would be completely different.

I think you would expect us, Signature Associates, that in our markets, for what we are doing — property management, advisory services and more specifically in brokerage — it’s actually remained pretty darn consistent and stable, both in activity, but in values and new transaction activity. While we are surrounded by stuff that maybe has not been that healthy, our markets have consistently been pretty healthy.

It does change based on your perspective, and our perspective is there’s been a lot of health in our markets and our core expertise. It’s notwithstanding that I think we’ve all experienced maybe the same weaknesses, maybe some fragility to the office market, which is probably the biggest hangover from COVID that we are still facing. The other stuff, whether it’s multifamily or retail, probably has to do more with the financing marketplace. On the industrial side, at least the values have been increasing with some consistency in a pretty aggressive pace and it’s been able to keep ahead of some of the financing struggles and challenges that the other products had.

• Office space still has been hit pretty hard, with some signs of progress but also some indicating that it’s still struggling to recover. Where do you see the market heading? 

I think that the market is heading towards the occupancy that’s demanded, or the presence that’s demanded, by the employers. That will start to cure some of the weakness in the office market. The other thing that’s going to help reestablish at least some improvement in the office sector, along with employers requiring a little more/all of the employees on premise. We just can’t do nothing any longer.

So if you’ve been sitting in your current environment trying to figure out what the best answers are for employee attendance and efficiency, once you demand their attention back on campus, (the issue) you’re likely to be faced with is, “I’m going to bring them here. I might as well make sure that the environment I’m bringing them to is fantastic, so let’s make sure we have all the amenities that would make them comfortable and productive.” Some employers extend that all the way to ping pong tables and pool tables and things they can do for breaks on campus. But more importantly, just better, more updated, more collaborative, more community space, more cafes, more opportunities for people to be social in a way when they are conducting business.

We are all getting older and we are also surrounded by a younger workforce that is used to being able to sit side by side with each other with a wall that’s kind of created by a desk, a chair and probably a headset that allows them to silence everything else that’s around them.

The way we used to study was go to a conference room or stay home. You’d study in a very, very quiet, secluded environment. Today, they’re sitting at tables and comfortable seating and they’re just all around each other. I think that’s the kind of environment that’s going to be more present going forward. And how does that impact our office market? Those spaces got to be created because those spaces weren’t necessarily a dominant part of our office environment 10 years ago.

• Signature was founded 35 years ago, the company has grown to be one of the biggest brokerage houses in Michigan. What are the growth projections do you have the next year or two? 

Short-term, I think industrial is going to be dominant for us. Investment sales I think, unlike our competitors, has been very stable and probably more rapid growth … It’s growing because the credit sale-leaseback environment has been and has remained very healthy, and that’s where our core focus and attention has been for the last several years. Now we’ve had an opportunity not only to make inroads into that sector, but repeat clients, and we are out there amongst many that are doing that, but we are doing it from kind of a leadership position, at least for the markets we are serving on that score.

• You recently ran the New York City Marathon to raise money for Fred’s Team, the official running program of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Talk a little bit about that experience and your training. 

This is my fifth marathon, but it felt like my first because the last one I ran was in 2004. As a 59-year-old guy, it might as well have been my first. I was looking out, doing what’s on my bucket list of what I want to accomplish, and I had run a marathon in every decade except my 40s, and I wanted to make sure I got a chance to do it in my 50s. So it’s, “The New York marathon is Nov. 3 and my birthday is Nov. 13: Let’s go!”

I started running early in the spring. I ran the Dexter-Ann Arbor Run and kind of validated myself and got out there on a half marathon. And that’s right around the time Bernie Ronnisch, a dear friend of mine from Ronnisch Construction, got diagnosed with glioblastoma, a brain cancer. My sister-in-law, my brother’s wife, had already passed away from a five-year battle with a glioblastoma tumor as well. So it was just a chance to combine the two; to get in great shape to do something I hadn’t done in a long time and kind of pay tribute to both of them. So I just started running. And that was the only way I could get into the New York marathon.

I don’t know how many people apply, but let’s say it’s 1 million people. Fifty-six thousand people finished. I think there was 60,000 people to enter that race. That was the way I got into it and I will tell you, it was so rewarding. The difference between just running for yourself and running for a cause, I can’t even describe how rewarding that was because every mile I was running, I’m thinking about them. And yeah, it might be a 26-mile run, and it might be 37 degrees out and it might be raining, but you know, that’s nothing compared to what they’re going through or what they went through. It was really, really rewarding. Love Bernie and his family, and I think we are all hoping that whatever cancer research and treatment they’ve already come up with will be to his benefit.

• What was your time? 

Three hours, 54 minutes, which is exactly what I had trained to finish the race in. The way I raised money, I basically had 20 miles of charted territory … and I would basically run by my friends’ houses, I would record myself on video running by their houses, I would send them a link — Running for Ronnisch, Kicking Cancer for Kara (as taglines). I raised $44,000 running by peoples’ housings, sending videos and saying hi.