Filling a Need in Real Estate
The cannabis industry has quickly grown over the last decade, due to many states legalizing it for recreational use. In 2015 alone, legal marijuana sales grossed over $3.4 billion in revenue. Due to this rapid growth, more and more people are looking to get into the industry, either as investors or just looking to buy property to grow cannabis on. The many regulations and restrictions on what properties are allowed to grow has proven to be, in some cases, a headache for those investors. This is where companies like Cannabis Real Estate Consultants (CREC) come into play.
“The goal (of CREC) is to help find legitimate compliant properties. A lot of people can just list properties online and say it's in the appropriate zoning, go for it, go buy it, it is the cannabis property that you want,” Chief Marketing Officer for CREC Roger Tower said. “But there are just so many different regulations and requirements and methods of acquiring a property. It really becomes complicated for the individual as every single municipality has their own set of regulations. While they are all pretty similar, it is not a cookie cutter approach so you have to understand the specific zoning requirements per municipality basis.”
Founded in 2017 by Erich Rubio and Rick Payne the two started working together when they created Breath of Life Delivery. The business quickly grew into one of the most popular delivery services in San Diego County. In order to stay compliant due to the transition of prop 215 to prop 64, they had to get a licensed retail location to continue doing business.
“In the search for one, we were talking to local commercial brokers and we realized that a lot of these agents didn’t know how to attack this. It was just way more complicated than they expected,” CEO of CREC Rubio said. “From there, we said that we needed to figure this out on our own. So we started building systems and putting things in place to really try to handle this for ourselves initially.”
Rubio and Payne wanted to help individuals by creating a one stop shop for investors, agents, brokers, and others looking to get into the cannabis industry.
“We are here to help support everybody in the industry as it is always growing and changing. We are really the only ones doing this from all these different angles to help broker deals and ensure success for our clients, “Rubio said.
Since the industry has exploded in popularity, so has the client base that CREC deals with. They work with a variety of clients from the experienced veterans to those who are just getting their feet wet. “The pipeline that we have is very interesting because of our public nature.We deal with the full spectrum of clients. All the way from people who are very educated to those are coming in from different municipalities,” Managing Director for CREC Miklos Campuzano said. “The main inquiries that we get are already existing operators looking to expand or operators coming in from different states looking to expand here in San Diego. The other large portion of clients that we get is those trying to get into the industry that have no idea what they are doing. It is an educational process getting them up to speed on the various licensing requirements.”
Since each state and city has their own different set of requirements to grow cannabis, CREC has multiple different agents to help clients figure out what they need to do in order to legally conduct business. As with every business during this time, coronavirus has affected the way CREC operates. They haven't taken the hit that many others have had to take.
“Delivery has gotten really huge and retail businesses haven’t had much difficulty due to people being home a lot more." Tower said. "We have been primarily focused on building more referrals and growing our network during this time.”
As CREC looks to grow and expand to different states, there is also a shift in the technology they plan on using. Recently launching CREC portal, the company aims to gather all available listings into a quick, easy to use tool.
“It opens up our data to our users or monthly subscribers to give them a bigger overview on what properties fit into what zoning,” Tower said. “What you are able to do is layer the zoning over the top of the properties and better identify good locations as a buyer. As a seller, it gives you that better awareness of your property so that we can easily connect the dots.”
“We want to have conversations with each cannabis real estate agent across America. We want to give them the tools they need in order to succeed,” Tower said. “Whether it is the smaller guy who is just getting into the industry or those with experience, we want to see each agent succeed through our platform.
Have a comment, tip, or concern?
Thanks for reading Elite Informer! Here's more where that came from.