There are a lot of designations in real estate. Some are valuable. Some are mostly evidence that someone attended a class, paid a fee, and now gets to add a few letters after their name.
The CCIM designation is different.
CCIM stands for Certified Commercial Investment Member. It is awarded by the CCIM Institute and requires a serious course of study in financial analysis, market analysis, user decision analysis, investment analysis, transaction experience, ethics, and a final comprehensive exam.
That is the official version.
The more personal version is this: CCIM taught me how to think. Then, after a few years of overthinking, it eventually taught me when to stop.
I first learned that I needed more formal training in 1985, when I sold a 90,000 square foot shopping center in Palmdale, California. I got the listing through a relationship I had developed playing paddle tennis in Venice Beach. That, by itself, is probably a perfect 1980s Los Angeles commercial real estate story.
A guy I knew from paddle tennis asked me if I wanted to market his shopping center for sale. I said yes immediately, because I was young, ambitious, fired up, and absolutely certain I wanted the listing.
I was also painfully aware that I did not really know what I was doing. My client knew this as well; I guess he was a friend first!
I knew the basics. Income minus expenses equals net operating income. Net operating income, compared to the purchase price or equity invested, produces a return. Debt changes the picture. Leverage can improve a deal or destroy it. A cap rate is not magic; it is just a relationship between income and value.
That was about the extent of my investment analysis toolkit at the time.
Somehow, I sold the shopping center. That deal helped me become Rookie of the Year at Charles Dunn. It also convinced me that I needed to get much better at the analytical side of the business.
Not long after that, I took my first CCIM course in San Diego. It was CI 101, Financial Analysis for Commercial Investment Real Estate. Back then, it was a week-long course: eight hours a day of learning how to analyze income property, cash flow, return metrics, debt, discounted cash flows, IRR, FMRR. The class was like giving a mediocre golfer a golf instruction book like Ben Hogan’s Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf. I should have been reading The Power of Prayer or Golf in the Kingdom.
It was one of the best courses I’ve ever taken.
Every commercial real estate broker should have to take that class, or at least something like it. Not because every transaction requires advanced modeling, but because every broker should understand what creates value. Sometimes the opportunity is not in what the property is today, but in what it could become if someone sees the upside before everyone else does.
A couple of years later, I took another CCIM course in Los Angeles focused on market analysis and user decision-making. That course dealt with how companies and property users make real estate decisions: where to locate, whether to lease or buy, and how to compare alternatives. Maybe more practical than “Themes in American Literature” at UOP.
Then, in the 1990s, I took a CCIM course that no longer exists in quite the same form: advanced taxation in commercial real estate. That was another full week, forty hours of instruction, digging into the tax code and the favorable — and sometimes complicated — ways it intersects with commercial real estate. Depreciation, exchanges, basis, recapture, entity structure, after-tax returns. It opened my eyes to how much of real estate investment performance is affected by things that do not show up in the first five minutes of a property tour.
By 1996, five years after I had moved to Sacramento, I completed the coursework, submitted the required proof of transaction experience, passed the final exam, and earned the CCIM designation.
So naturally, that made me really smart. Just like I told my first manager, Larry Batliner at Charles Dunn, “Larry, I don’t need a mentor, I have read all the books.” I am embarrassed to say that out loud. In my defense, it would take Carl Jung many sessions to unearth the real basis for such a comment.
For several years, the designation gave me more confidence. It helped me analyze deals. It helped me communicate with investors. It gave me a common language with lenders, institutional owners, and accountants.
It also helped me create solutions for clients that I would not have seen otherwise.
CCIM introduced me to a network of commercial real estate professionals who speak the same language. There are more than 9,000 current CCIM designees. When you are working on a transaction in another market, looking for reliable information, trying to understand local conditions, or simply need a qualified professional who has undergone the same analytical training, the CCIM connection creates a level of trust. It is not a secret handshake. It is more practical than that. It is a common foundation. You know the other person has done the work and is likely to approach the assignment with some level of competence, ethics, and seriousness. I meet with CCIMs once a month in Jack London Square, and as a solo agent, the engagement is awesome and fruitful.
But there was a downside. I already had a complicated mind. CCIM gave that complicated mind a spreadsheet, a financial calculator, and permission to run wild.
For a while, I overanalyzed everything. I built extensive models. I calculated internal rates of return, financial management rates of return, discounted cash flows, sensitivity tables, projections, re-projections, and probably a few things that sounded impressive but did not actually move the deal forward.
That was part of my evolution. Or maybe my de-evolution.
Eventually, I learned that the point of analysis is not to make real estate more complicated. The point is to make decisions clearer.
Yes, discounted cash flow analysis matters. In many cases, it is the best way to evaluate a property over time because commercial real estate is not a one-day event. Leases roll. Expenses change. Capital improvements happen. Debt matures. Tenants leave. Markets shift. A property that looks average today may become excellent five years from now. A property that looks safe today may become a problem when the assumptions change. Consider investments like Walgreens and Rite Aid. How about today’s behemoth AI tidal wave?
But most private clients do not need reams of analysis to decide whether a deal makes sense. They need to know the numbers and assumptions that actually matter.
What is the real income?
What are the real expenses?
What is the true cost of occupancy?
What are the risks?
What assumptions are we making?
CCIM training is useful because it gives you tools. And after enough years in the business, you learn which tool to use, which tool to leave in the box, and which tool will make everybody miserable if you bring it out too early.
Every buyer has a different reason for buying. Every tenant has a different reason for leasing. Every owner has a different reason for selling, holding, exchanging, refinancing, or doing nothing. My assumptions are not always their assumptions. My idea of the “right” return may not be theirs. Their motivation may be tax-driven, lifestyle-driven, business-driven, estate-driven, or risk-driven. The motivation might be based on emotions. Said the depleted spouse, “They can have everything, I just want out!” The CCIM can take emotions out of the situation, assuming that they aren’t lost in the numbers.
The Outsiders, the Complicators, and the Invaders
I also want to be careful about something. There is a tendency, especially among people coming from larger markets or institutional environments, to view Sacramento as an unsophisticated Cowtown. That is a mistake.
Sacramento may not always talk like Wall Street, but this is not a simpleton market. Some of the most successful real estate people here have done extraordinarily well precisely because they do not overcomplicate deals. Consider Buzz Oates and others who built serious real estate portfolios in this region. The common thread is not that they buried every deal under a mountain of analysis. The common thread is that they understood land, timing, tenant demand — the State back then — cost, basis, risk, and execution.
In many ways, the institutional world is where deals become overcomplicated. Lenders require boxes to be checked. Committees need reports. REITs need models. Investment funds need projections. Analysts need assumptions. That world has its place, and I am comfortable speaking that language when necessary.
But most of my work is with individuals, business owners, nonprofits, investors, and companies trying to make practical real estate decisions. For them, the goal is not to produce the most elaborate model. The goal is to understand the deal well enough to make a sound decision.
That is where my CCIM background — and de-evolution — helps the most.
It allows me to move between worlds. I can talk to an institutional investor about discounted cash flow, cap rates, debt coverage, and exit assumptions. I can talk to a business owner about total occupancy cost, lease flexibility, tenant improvements, operating expenses, and whether the building actually supports the business plan. I can talk to an owner about whether it makes sense to sell, refinance, exchange, or hold.
In that sense, CCIM did not turn me into a different broker. It made me a better version of the broker I was trying to become. Then experience taught me restraint. The designation matters because, when properly used, it helps clients avoid expensive mistakes. It helps identify risk before risk becomes obvious. It helps convert instinct into judgment.
But at the end of the day, commercial real estate is still a human business. Relationships, motivation, creativity, and experience matter. But most of all, a Danish proverb said it best:
“Common sense is the least common of all.”
If you are making a commercial real estate decision that involves real money, you deserve someone who takes the analysis seriously. Call (916) 761-1202 or reach out at tom@baconcre.com. Let’s look at the numbers before we look at the space.
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