Auburndale Realty Company

Rob Nahigian, FRICS,SIOR,CRE,MCR has completed a five year project to sell Twin City Center, a 300,000 sf retail center located in Leominster, MA. The project closed the first week of May, 2023. Rob has advised to the ownership since 1994 repositioning the tenancy and financials. He then worked on contacting institutional and regional buyers for this retail project.

The Maryland Association of Realtors Commercial Division invited Rob Nahigian of Auburndale Realty Co. to speak at its regional event in Hanover, Maryland at Live! Casino on the future of global logistics and supply chain. The event attracted 90 commercial attendees and was held on Thursday, May 4, 2023 in the Grand Ballroom not far from the BWI airport. The annual symposium is held for real estate brokers and practitioners interested in commercial real estate. The MD Secretary of Commerce, Kevin Anderson, spoke prior to Rob Nahigian about the investment that Maryland is making to build its infrastructure and to spur new company growth. Both Rob and Secretary Anderson met prior to the event and spoke about the Trade Point Logistics Hub that Rob has visited the day prior to the event. Trade Point is located at the former Bethlehem Steel location at Sparrow’s Point and will be the largest logistics hub on the U.S. east coast. It currently houses over 10 million square feet of distribution space to such companies as Amazon.

Rob’s program “From Shanghai to Your Shelf” discussed the 4 intermodals, the changes with the Suez and Panama Canals, the advantages and disadvantages of east coast ports, rail, air and trucking systems, 3PLs and logistic hubs. Most importantly he shared the mathematical regression models that internal real estate departments engage to develop an industrial real estate decision on site and facility options in the marketplace. Rob had also recently delivered this presentation in Boston at the 2022 Counselors National Conference and has delivered this program numerous times since 2013. He has visited over 20 ports and inland ports for his research.

Rob Nahigian, FRICS, SIOR, CRE, MCR of Auburndale Realty Co., Newton, Mass. was invited to speak at the Counselors of Real Estate National Convention on Logistics Supply Chain in Boston on September 12, 2022. The convention was held at the Fairmont Hotel and was the first live convention held since 2019. Over 190 attendees were present creating one of the largest CRE conventions. Mark Duclos, CRE and past President of SIOR was the moderator. Hagood Morrison, CRE, SIOR was also a panelist with Franc Pigna, CRE.

The focus of the panel was: Supply chain logistics are at the epicenter of what makes the economy function, and commercial real estate is the field on which it all plays out. The panel centered around the state of the supply chain, what is being done to ease it, and what can be done to ease it moving forward, encompassing traditional and non-traditional thinking.  The panel also discussed remaking America’s supply-chain; how population migration is influencing the logistics and supply-chain; what’s working and not working in logistics; and the inland port model and how it is transforming ports of preference and making rail connectivity paramount. 

Rob has delivered a program named “From Shanghai to Your Shelf” for over 6 years throughout N. America on Logistics Supply Chain real estate decisions. The information from his national program was of assistance in this program and a national expert on logistics supply chain. To supplement and prepare for this program, he also interviewed 7 companies including Amazon. Lucas Robotics, ARCO, Dacon, Cannistraro, HMI and Sur-Real on the current global supply chain issues. Rob shared those results and concluded that the supply chain will continue until 2023 but is slowing. Many CEOs felt that the recession will help to gain time to solve the supply chain issue but that there were many factors that contributed to the problem. It was not one factor. The room was overcrowded with attendees for this program.

On September 14th, Rob delivered the SIOR national designation program “Art of Negotiating Commercial Real Estate” in Atlanta for over 32 students. The course revealed new models in negotiating skills that have elevated the success of professional negotiators. As an SIOR national faculty member since 1986, Rob incorporated his professional experience as a “for hire” negotiator that dissected two negotiating traits that can tip the playing field.

On September 29, 2022, Rob moderated a CRE panel that included Bob Cleary, SIOR, CRE of Colliers, Taran Grisby, Esq, Vice-President and Global Delivery For Transactions and Leasing, Fidelity Investments and Patrick Mulvihill, Senior Vice-President of Leasing for Boston Properties. The topic was an update on the current status and future of the office market. The national program was on Zoom for CRE members only. Rob serves as Chair of the CRE Tenant Leasing Special Interest Group.  Rob introduced the fact that to say that the office sector has transformed in the last two years is an understatement. The panel would focus on what’s happening now in the market—and with tenants—that perhaps no one else is talking about? What are the trends on downtown vs. suburban office leasing? How is hybrid work changing the tenant space? What are the hot lease clauses tenants are demanding and what concessions are landlords offering? How will tenants transform their businesses if another strain of COVID leads to further disruptions?

On February 24, 2022 Rob Nahigian, FRICS, SIOR, CRE, MCR of Auburndale Realty Co., Newton, Mass. was invited by the SIOR Carolina Chapter to be its keynote speaker at its annual SIOR Carolinas Regional Event. Rob’s presentation was entitled “Chaos, Calamity and Confusion: The State of Logistics/Supply Chain Industrial Real Estate.” There were over 100 SIORs and guests attending the event at the Grand Bohemian Hotel in Charlotte, NC. The Grand Bohemian Hotel is a new addition to the downtown Charlotte area. Rob spoke on logistics-supply chain real estate site selection decisions and the state of the logistics-supply world. His recent research and experience revealed new game shifters in the logistics world, the update on the impact of e-commerce, the mid-west and gulf port shift, where we are headed with the port logjam and why it occurred. He also looked to the future on where industrial logistics is headed and what solutions are necessary to relieve the inventory chaos. He had multiple slides of ports and intermodals with new site selection metrics that brought the SIOR attendee the ways of future trends.  

April 29, 2022 CoStar Group, Inc., the leading provider of commercial real estate information, analytics and online marketplaces, today announced the CoStar Power Broker Quarterly Deals winners for the first quarter of 2022. Rob Nahigian,FRICS,SIOR,CRE,MCR of Auburndale Realty Co. came out on top in the list of winners in Portland, Maine. The CoStar Power Brokers Quarterly Deals winners are determined by the top deals executed every quarter, based on price and square footage.

Rob Nahigian is has been engaged by DeepEdge, Inc. of Boston as its national real estate consultant acquiring properties and data centers in a number of major ciities. Rob is a 42 year veteran in commercial real estate and is the principal of Auburndale Realty Co. in Newton, MA. He holds four designations in commercial real estate including CRE and SIOR. His speciality has been office, industrial and retail counseling and brokerage. He also serves as litigation support and investment lab development consultant. He is also a long-time instructor for Boston University, SIOR and MANAIOP. He has recently completed a 120,000 square foot industrial lease in Millbury, MA with WoonTech and has completed the sale of an office building in Portland, Maine for DeepEdge. He has also completed the lease of a downtown office building in Columbus, Ohio for DeepEdge and moved DeepEdge’s corporate offices this quarter in downtown Boston.