Burke Brokers Catching On After Closure

When Burke Commercial Real Estate closed its doors earlier this month, its two dozen brokers suddenly found themselves knocking on doors in search of new places to hang their hats--not a small task in today’s harsh economy.

But many of those brokers have already landed on their feet, reported former Burke broker Joe Miller, himself a new face in the Anaheim office of CB Commercial Real Estate Group.

In the span of only two weeks, three of the former Burke brokers went to Grubb & Ellis, three more to Bishop Hawk of Southern California, two to Lee & Associates, two to Scher-Voit and one to CB Commercial. Others are still job hunting. At least one Burke veteran left real estate sales altogether to try mortgage banking.

“Most of us are staying in the business, crazy as that seems,” Miller said.

Burke Commercial was started in 1968 by Bill Burke, founder of Burke Commercial Development, an Irvine building company. Last year he sold the brokerage to Jerry Adams and Ken Hulbert, who at the time were executives there. Hulbert later left to join Charles Dunn Co., a property management firm in Irvine.

“I knew the market was not good when I bought the brokerage,” Adams said. “That’s why I was able to strike a favorable deal, assuming the market would not stay in this condition as long as it has. I just ran out of funds before the market came back.”

Adams consolidated the brokerage’s Riverside and Orange offices into its Irvine office last year in an effort to cut expenses. “I reduced overhead $1 million in six months,” he said. “But you can’t save your way to prosperity--you can just go broke more slowly.”

The last nail in the coffin came in January, when four major transactions fell through. “We had well over $1 million in commission in the deals, all of which died in a five-day period,” Adams said.

Industry sources said that over the years the brokerage made the mistake of relying too heavily on transactions handed it by its corporate sister, the development side of Burke. “When the market went bad, Burke (brokerage) had not developed enough outside relationships to keep it going,” one broker said, adding that the brokerage had practically become an in-house sales department for its parent company.

Burke brokerage still has an office in Las Vegas--though in name only. Adams said he turned it over completely to the manager there. A number of brokerages, including Lee & Associates, are courting the manager to post their logo on the door.

For now, Adams is running the Irvine office by himself, tying up loose ends and closing transactions that were already in process. “I’m a one-man band,” he said.

He doesn’t know what he’ll do next, Adams said. “But I’m not worried about that yet. I’ll be all right.”