One broker or a brokerage team? What industrial property owners should know

More coverage, connections, and opportunities

One of the most immediate advantages of a brokerage team is expanded market coverage.

An individual broker brings a network of relationships, market knowledge, and active prospects. A team multiplies those connections, creating more opportunities to identify tenants, uncover requirements, and generate interest in a property.

In Hawaiʻi's industrial market, where available space is limited and opportunities may never reach public listings, those additional connections can be particularly valuable.

"If it’s just me on the project, you’re only getting what I see in deals or what I see in the market at that point in time," explains Alika Cosner, Senior Vice President at Colliers Hawaiʻi. "My team members are talking to other people that I’m not."

This expanded reach produces more than additional leads. It also provides a broader view of market activity: which businesses are expanding, which tenants may be relocating, where demand is emerging, and how competing properties are performing.

A team also provides consistent service. If one broker is traveling, attending meetings, or unavailable, another can conduct tours, respond to inquiries, and keep negotiations moving.

As Alika puts it, "Our service never goes dark."

For owners, that continuity can be especially important when managing multiple vacancies or time-sensitive leasing opportunities.

The right expertise for the right assignment

Not every industrial property presents the same challenges.

A multi-tenant warehouse with several vacancies requires a different approach than a specialized manufacturing facility, an industrial yard, or a portfolio spanning multiple submarkets.

A strong brokerage team can align its members’ expertise with the specific needs of the assignment.

For example, one broker may have particularly strong relationships in a geographic submarket. Another may excel at direct prospect canvassing. Others may bring specialized experience in investment sales, tenant representation, or complex negotiations.

Rather than expecting one individual to excel at every aspect of the assignment, the team can draw on the strengths of multiple professionals.

This flexibility is especially useful in Hawaiʻi, where industrial users may consider both leasing and purchasing property, and where businesses expanding across islands or submarkets face very different inventory conditions.

The value isn't simply having more people available. It's having the right people working on the right problems.

Better decisions through multiple perspectives

Industrial transactions often involve complicated operational requirements, competing priorities, and unexpected challenges.

A prospective tenant may need a particular combination of warehouse space, yard area, parking, loading, and power capacity. An owner may need to weigh a proposed lease's economics against the cost of improvements, the tenant's creditworthiness, and the property’s long-term positioning.

These decisions benefit from more than one perspective. Within a collaborative brokerage team, members can challenge assumptions, identify alternatives, and develop solutions that an individual might overlook.

Alika sees this regularly within Hawaii Industrial Advisors. “Sometimes I think of something and then Patrick or Farah come up with a better idea,” he says. “People see things differently.”

Multiple perspectives also create an additional layer of quality control. When letters of intent, lease proposals, and negotiated terms are reviewed by several experienced professionals, the team has more opportunities to identify overlooked details, question assumptions, and ensure recommendations align with the owner's objectives.

This doesn't replace legal review or the owner’s decision-making authority. It strengthens the brokerage advice informing those decisions.

Speed matters, especially on complex assignments

Some brokerage assignments simply require more work than one person can efficiently manage.

Consider a large industrial portfolio with numerous tenants, staggered lease expirations, varying property conditions, and multiple vacancies.

Success requires more than marketing available space. Brokers may need to conduct tenant outreach, coordinate tours, evaluate lease economics, manage negotiations, communicate with ownership, and maintain detailed records — all while keeping the overall strategy moving forward.

A functioning brokerage team can divide these responsibilities without fragmenting the assignment.

Alika points to his team’s experience with a major ground lease reversion involving Kamehameha Schools, where numerous existing leases needed to be addressed within a compressed timeframe.

“You need a team, you need a division of labor, you need divide and conquer,” he explains. “Everybody has clear roles so that we can have a real solid machine that can execute with speed.”

The distinction is important. Assigning portions of a portfolio to several independent brokers may distribute the workload, but it doesn't necessarily create a coordinated strategy.

A true team shares information, follows established processes and workflows, and has culturally and systematically built in an expectation that they’re all working toward the same ownership objectives. That alignment can be just as valuable as the additional capacity.

Continuity protects the owner’s long-term interests

Industrial real estate relationships often extend over many years. During that time, brokers develop an understanding of the property's history, tenant relationships, operational challenges, ownership preferences, and previous negotiations.

Much of that knowledge extends beyond what can be captured in a property file. When an assignment depends entirely on one broker, a change in personnel can mean losing important institutional knowledge.

A team structure helps reduce that risk. Other team members are already familiar with the property, its tenants, and the owner’s strategy. If the lead broker’s role changes, the transition can occur without starting over.

For institutional owners and those with long-term holding strategies, this continuity can be particularly valuable. It also creates an opportunity for experienced brokers to develop the next generation of professionals while maintaining consistent service and oversight.

In Hawaiʻi, relationships carry additional weight

Hawaiʻi's commercial real estate market has another characteristic that makes a thoughtful team approach valuable: relationships are deeply interconnected.

Property owners, tenants, vendors, contractors, and community members often interact across multiple professional and personal networks.

A brokerage team with strong local roots brings not only market connections but also an understanding of how to navigate those relationships respectfully. This is particularly important when representing institutional owners whose reputations extend well beyond their real estate portfolios.

“We are their forward-facing people,” Alika explains. “It’s important for us that we understand just the Hawaiian local culture with which we operate in.”

In practice, that means balancing firm negotiations with respect for the people and businesses involved. A transaction may conclude, but the relationships continue. A tenant today may become a buyer tomorrow. A contractor on one project may be a stakeholder in another.

Effective representation requires understanding those connections and protecting the owner's long-term interests, not simply securing the next transaction.

Not every group of brokers is a team

Of course, having multiple names on a listing proposal doesn’t automatically deliver these advantages.

Some brokerage groups collaborate only when pursuing a new assignment. Others operate with a senior broker who wins the business, but then delegates most of the work to junior people without remaining actively involved.

Neither arrangement necessarily provides the coordination, accountability, or strategic oversight that owners expect from a team.

A high-performing brokerage team operates differently.

Members understand their individual responsibilities, share information, follow established processes, and remain accountable to a common strategy. The senior broker stays involved, providing direction and oversight while allowing other team members to contribute their expertise.

That structure doesn't happen by accident. It must be deliberately developed and maintained.

For property owners evaluating a brokerage team, the most revealing questions may have less to do with the number of brokers assigned and more to do with how those brokers actually work together.

Seven questions to ask before hiring a brokerage team

Before selecting representation, consider asking prospective teams:

1. Who will actually work on my property?
Ask each team member to explain their responsibilities, expertise, and expected involvement. Look beyond the names and titles on the proposal.

2. How involved will the senior broker remain?
Will the lead broker actively participate in strategy, negotiations, and major decisions, or primarily oversee the relationship from a distance?

3. How do you coordinate prospect outreach and market intelligence?
A team should have a process for sharing leads, tenant requirements, market observations, and feedback so that information benefits the entire assignment.

4. What systems guide your work?
Ask about marketing plans, reporting schedules, follow-up procedures, transaction management, and internal accountability. Established teams should be able to explain how they operate.

5. How do you review important decisions and transaction documents?
Look for meaningful collaboration and quality control, particularly when evaluating offers, negotiating terms, and advising on property strategy.

6. What happens when a team member is unavailable or leaves?
The team should have a clear plan for maintaining communication, preserving institutional knowledge, and ensuring continuity of service.

7. Can you show me an example of the team working together on a complex assignment?
Ask for a real example that demonstrates how responsibilities were divided, challenges were resolved, and the team contributed to the outcome.

The answers should reveal whether you're hiring a coordinated team with a shared operating approach — or simply several individuals working under the same brokerage banner.

The real advantage is coordinated execution

Ultimately, owners aren’t hiring brokers simply to market space or negotiate transactions. They’re hiring professionals to protect and improve the performance of their real estate assets.

An individual broker may be highly capable of fulfilling that responsibility. But a well-structured team can offer additional reach, complementary expertise, greater continuity, stronger quality control, and the capacity to execute complex strategies more efficiently.

The important distinction is that these advantages must be built into how the team operates.

A brokerage team is more than a collection of professionals. At its best, it’s an execution platform — one that combines people, relationships, processes, and accountability around the owner's objectives.

For industrial property owners, that’s the standard worth evaluating.

Hawaiʻi Industrial Advisors, a team within Colliers Hawaiʻi, specializes in industrial leasing, sales, and strategic advisory services throughout the Hawaiian Islands. Led by Alika Cosner, the team combines local market knowledge, specialized expertise, and a collaborative approach to help owners navigate complex real estate decisions.

Considering a new brokerage assignment or evaluating your current representation? Contact Hawaii Industrial Advisors to discuss your property’s objectives and the approach best suited to achieving them.