Answer extracted from The Crexi Commercial Real Estate Podcast — listen to the full episode below.
How have your daily responsibilities evolved from working solo as a leasing broker to managing a team?
Daily work centers on consistency across the Texas market—primarily Houston and Dallas—split roughly 75% landlord representation and 25% tenant representation. Tasks range from lease negotiation and tenant communication to property site visits, sometimes driving 45 minutes to investigate operational issues. With a team, work scales by delegation: while one person negotiates with a tenant, another manages landlord relationships, multiplying deal velocity.
The solo broker's daily grind: no fixed routine
As an entry-level leasing specialist, each day presented a different set of challenges. There is no fixed daily routine in retail leasing—one day might be consumed by negotiating lease terms with a stubborn tenant, the next by driving to a property to investigate an operational problem directly. This unpredictability is part of the job's core appeal: your effort maps directly to your results.
The geographic spread matters. Working across Houston and Dallas markets requires real flexibility. A 45-minute drive to a shopping center to diagnose an issue is not uncommon—you're expected to be both strategist and on-the-ground problem solver.
Team leadership: multiplication through delegation
The shift to team management fundamentally changes the work. Instead of handling every task yourself, delegation becomes the multiplier. While you're deep in a landlord relationship negotiation, another team member can be managing tenant communications elsewhere—two deals moving forward in parallel where only one could before.
Tuva Patoli built her team from zero to 36 represented shopping centers, which means scaling the operational complexity as well. Your role shifts from execution to orchestration—ensuring consistent market coverage across both landlord and tenant sides, managing deal velocity, and maintaining the relationship infrastructure that keeps deals flowing.
"I always like to put on my landlord hat so I sometimes I don't act like I'm just a broker and I act like I'm a landlord and I own this property."
Tuva Patoli — Senior Retail Specialist at Huntington Properties. Starting in commercial real estate at age 22 after leaving a corporate salary job, Patoli developed deep expertise in retail leasing across the Texas market. Her focus on both landlord and tenant representation, combined with extensive market canvassing, enabled her to build a third-party retail leasing team managing 36 shopping centers while handling nearly 95 leases annually across a team of three brokers.
The mindset shift Patoli describes—thinking like an owner—applies even more at the team level. You're no longer just closing individual deals; you're structuring the operations and tenant mix that maximize each property's value, which requires seeing the market through a landlord's strategic lens.
Key takeaways
- Solo leasing work is task-driven and unpredictable, mixing negotiation, tenant communication, and field site visits across dispersed markets with no fixed daily schedule.
- The split between landlord and tenant representation (75/25) shapes daily priorities and relationship management demands.
- Team leadership shifts your role from execution to orchestration, multiplying deal velocity by enabling parallel negotiations and scaled market coverage.
- Thinking like a property owner—not just a broker—becomes essential both at entry level and especially when managing team strategy and tenant placement decisions.
See also
How can excessive pressure from one party in a real estate negotiation compromise the deal?
When brokers relay landlord pressure directly to tenants, it can damage relationships and kill deals. Early in her career, Tuva transmitted a landlord's unrealistic demands without framing or negotiation strategy, which nearly derailed the transaction.
What role does tenant canvassing play in building a retail leasing practice from scratch?
Tenant canvassing is recommended as the starting point for new brokers. When canvassing tenants, the broker is the expert teaching them about market conditions, available space, and strategic location options.
How does retail leasing activity function as an early indicator of consumer behavior and market trends?
Consumer behavior changes fast and can be observed month-by-month through retail leasing activity in real time. What tenants are leasing reflects the actual state of consumer demand and emerging market preferences.