Commercial property buyers agency Costi Cohen has appointed Shani Costi as general manager, as it looks to significantly grow the brand over the next 12 months.
Mrs Costi comes to the role with extensive industry experience honed in more than five years at The Rubinstein Group, where she was operations manager and then general manager.
At Costi Cohen, Mrs Costi will work alongside her husband, Tas Costi, who is a co-founder of the commercial buyer’s agency alongside Simon Cohen.
“My role is very similar to what I was doing at TRG,” she said.
“I’m growing the business, all the processes, team management, all the legalities and basically everything I did before but now on the commercial buyer’s agent side.”
Mrs Costi said while her background in residential real estate was standing her in good stead in her new role, she was also learning a lot of new things about the commercial market.
“Commercial and residential real estate really is very different,” she said.
“With residential the process is pretty consistent through every property sale.
“You’re either going to auction, so you’re running a four week campaign, you’re prepping the property, you’re running open homes and you’re selling the property.
“But with commercial, you’re looking at multiple different asset classes and it’s very interstate, we’re not just buying in Sydney.
“It could be Queensland, or Victoria, it’s about wherever the right asset is for the client.
“There’s a lot more detail, a lot more due diligence and the agents really need to know a lot more about the properties, rather than just focusing on the main features.
“Commercial is a lot more about the numbers and making sure it works for the client so they can make money from it in the future.”
Mrs Costi said as well as ensuring she was there to help the agents with anything they needed, she was looking forward to helping grow the business.
“Right now there is Tas, and we have two agents, Sasha and Zack, and we’ve got Veronique who is our EA and marketing assistant,” she said.
“The goal is to definitely grow the team and it’s getting busy, we’ve done a lot of deals over the past few months.”
Those deals include 226 Bridge St, West Tamworth, for $5.5 million, with a national tenant Guzman Y Gomez and a 4.7 per cent net yield.
They also facilitated 2660 Logan Rd, Eight Mile Plains, which is leased to 7-Eleven & Subway, for $8 million with a 6.425 per cent yield.
“We’re really focusing on recruiting more buyers agents, growing the team and expanding interstate as well,” Mrs Costi said.
Mrs Costi said buyer’s agents were becoming more widely used in both residential and commercial real estate, given the complexity of the deals, the opportunity to gain access to off-market properties and to pay the right price.
“We also save a lot of money for our clients,” she said.
“Our average recently is between 11 and 13 per cent off the asking price.
“We really do save them a lot of time, money, effort and stress.”
