In this issue of Voit’s “Meet Our Professionals” Broker Profile Series, we highlight Chris Drzyzga, SVP/Partner of our Irvine office.
While commercial real estate brokers come into the profession from a wide range of backgrounds, one of the primary pathways to a career in the business is early exposure to the industry. Such was the case with Chris Drzyzga of our Irvine office. Born and raised in Las Vegas, the thirteen-year CRE veteran was introduced to the possibilities and rewards offered by CRE development by his father, a pit boss in one of Las Vegas’s premier casinos, who augmented his income by investing in hotel and retail center development.
“My dad was doing ‘friends and family’ deals with his friends, and he would take me to the construction sites,” says Drzyzga. “I loved construction and the built environment — playing around on the heavy equipment and pretending I was driving the dump truck — the tangibility aspect always resonated with me. Taking a piece of the desert all the way to a finished product seemed incredibly rewarding. So commercial real estate was always in the back of my mind, but it wasn’t in the forefront by any stretch.”
Instead, he became a teen entrepreneur.
Launching a Business in High School
Growing up, Drzyzga and his friends were avid dirt bike (motocross) riders. In the summer following his junior year in high school, they hit upon an idea to earn extra cash. Pooling their money, they purchased a repossessed motocross bike at an auction for $1,500. “It was a Honda CBR1000 street racer, and it was brand new — there wasn’t a scratch on it,” he recalls. Instead of riding it, they took it apart, cleaned up the individual parts, and uploaded photos of the parts to eBay. They netted $4,500 in sales for their efforts. Encouraged by the experience, they found an investor and purchased more bikes. The business rapidly grew necessitating a move from the Drzyzga family garage to a 4,000-square-foot warehouse and later expanded to a 10,000-square-foot space.
Despite the success of the enterprise, Drzyzga’s father insisted that he take advantage of the golf scholarship that was offered to him and go to college. After a brief stint at Cal Lutheran, he transferred to Loyola Marymount University (LMU) and continued operating the business with his partners while studying and playing golf. After graduation, Drzyzga sold his interest in the business. With those proceeds, he made his first foray into the world of commercial real estate — purchasing a four-unit multifamily property in Las Vegas.
Commercial Real Estate Calls
“I bought a little fourplex in Vegas and decided, ‘I’m going to do this commercial real estate brokerage thing,’ because going back to my childhood, where I was seeing the lifestyle — these guys making plenty of money, playing golf all the time, traveling — and realizing that it was because they were investing in real estate, I wanted to be like those guys when I grew up.”
Following his graduation from LMU in 2012, Drzyzga began applying to CRE brokerage firms, sending out over a hundred resumes with little response. “Everybody was still trying to shake off the effects of the Great Financial Crisis, so it didn’t matter that I had a 4.0 or that I had internships on my resume. It didn’t even matter who you knew. You were not getting a job right out of college with no experience,” he remembers.
The Early Years in CRE
His persistence eventually paid off, and he landed a job with a small boutique brokerage shop in Orange County, learning the ropes over the course of three years in the barebones operation. “On day one, they basically gave me a CRM system and said, ‘Start cold calling.’ I learned the business on the fly, shadowing the managing principal for the first year, and I’ve got to tip my hat to him. He did an incredible job teaching me the business and sales. Once I got to a point where I felt I couldn’t learn anything more, I moved on.”
His next stop was with SilverPoint Advisors in Irvine, a full-service brokerage. The shop also had a division that specialized in acquiring obsolete or underperforming restaurants and retrofitting the properties for medical uses. The team would then sign a dialysis operator like DaVita or Fresenius to a long-term lease and sell the property as a single-tenant, net-leased investment deal. The experience at SilverPoint allowed Drzyzga to hone his brokerage skills while also “getting my toes wet on the principal side,” giving him the set of tools that have proven critical to his success at Voit. “For someone like me who wanted to get into the business to be a landlord, to be an investor, to build a portfolio…tenant representation only was the wrong direction.”
Finding a Home at Voit
After three years with SilverPoint, it was time to move on. Drzyzga knew that the larger corporate brokerage shops would not be a good fit, and friends who were working there suggested coming to Voit. “Voit had just become a broker-owned company, so I knew there was an opportunity for me to become a partner,” says Drzyzga. “I knew they had a very entrepreneurial model that aligned with my personality, and they were under-represented in the office specialty, so I viewed that as an opportunity to grow Voit’s market share. It ended up being a no-brainer. I went to Voit — it’s been nearly eight years now — and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”
Drzyzga joined the Voit team as an office specialist but has widened his net to include industrial in recent years, primarily because there is so much crossover between the two product types. “I know it’s something of a contrarian viewpoint, and some of the veterans in our space frown upon doing two product types, but after being in the business (for a while), you start to naturally develop relationships, and deals just find you,” he explains. “I started doing more industrial deals after coming to Voit, then COVID hit, and I was just in the right place at the right time with the right relationships, so I did a lot more industrial, but it’s still 70-30 in favor of office.”
Drzyzga has completed over 275 transactions throughout the Western United States in his career, totaling more than $300 million. Recent deals include the $36.5 million sale of a 17,500-square-foot office property at 100 Newport Center Drive in Newport Beach to the Irvine Company and the $15.7 million sale of a 14,250-square-foot industrial asset at 11511 Tennessee Avenue in Los Angeles.
Keys to Success
Drzyzga believes a large part of his success with Voit has been his understanding of both sides of the owner-tenant equation. “It astonishes me how many real estate brokers do not own real estate – especially the uber-successful ones,” he notes. “You can do as many brokerage deals as you want, but there’s a limit on your expertise and ability to advise your clients if you don’t know what goes on after the lease or after the escrow has been closed. So, I think the fact that I own my own real estate puts me in my client’s chair and gives me a unique perspective and the ability to advise them accordingly.”
He also stresses the ability to listen as a key factor in any broker’s success but offers this thought for anyone looking for a long-term career in the business:
“You cannot ever, ever, stop learning. The moment you get comfortable is the moment you start to become irrelevant. It may not happen immediately, but it’s like a melting ice cube. It happens slowly and incrementally over time, and before you know it, you’re getting beat by the junior guys in the business.”
As for the current market, he sees opportunities in uncertain market conditions. “The disruptions and volatility we are experiencing today are, ultimately, where fortunes are made. Lean into it and be a contrarian, and don’t be afraid to take the road less traveled!”
Additional broker profiles are scheduled over the next few months. Check back to see who we highlight next.