Justin Smith - Building Better Leases

Name: Justin Smith - Building Better Leases
Address: 9838 Research Drive, Irvine, CA, 92618, US
Telephone: +19497903151
Price range: $$

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Justin Smith - Building Better Leases

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Tenant representation at its finest. Renew, relocate, or consolidate. Assess your options here.

Justin has experience representing tenants from small local startups, to private family owned companies, to large public international corporations. He has successfully completed over 500 assignments nationally representing roughly half a billion worth of consideration. You’ll find his expertise balancing the operational and financial needs of the company unparalleled.

10/02/2026

“I’d love to serve you as a great customer, but I can’t connect you for five years, six years.”

That’s what utilities are telling new data centers and large advanced manufacturers, according to Rob Gramlich of Grid Strategies LLC. Rob started his career at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the agency that oversees the nation’s power grid, and later served as economic advisor to its chairman. Today he is president of Grid Strategies.

Five years. You can find the land, sign the lease, even finish the building, and still be waiting on power.

The timing of our conversation was hard to miss. The same day Rob and I recorded, September 30, the Senate released a bipartisan permitting bill. It would give FERC a bigger role in approving power lines that cross state lines and require data centers to pay their own transmission costs. A vote is expected after the November election.

In this clip Rob helps us understand the state of the union for the grid and why we’re at this inflection point.

If power matters to your next facility, check the grid before you fall in love with a site.

Full conversation with Rob on Industrial Insights in the comments.

08/07/2026

Back to school is upon us soon! The end of summer usually marks the start of budget season for institutional landlords.

It’s common for us to sit down with our asset managers on portfolios and game plan for the year. We think through what the supply and demand signals are telling us and forecast rental rates, downtime, TIs, and CapEx for next year.

If you’re working on a deal right now, it’s worth thinking through where your landlord is in that process. Before, during, or after the budget, you might get a slightly different answer on what kind of deal they’re willing to do. And once a budget is set, depending on the institution, there can be real friction in doing something different than what’s in it.

Most of the business never thinks about this unless they sit on the asset management or landlord leasing side. We do both, which is why it shows up in how we run a tenant rep assignment.

So for the landlords reading this: what rental rate assumption are you penciling for 2027?

05/19/2026

Inspecting 15220 Canary in La Mirada to help assess the condition after having two 3PL’s as tenants. Exterior paint, landscaping, a whole lot of pressure washing, fence repair, a security trailer, interior paint and bathroom refurb for starters.

It was cool to see new crossing guard boxes being installed as the rail lines go through some upgrading for the neighbors.

The pipes coming up from the saw cut concrete, the go through the tilt wall panel and outdoors to the pump are the ground water injection pipes to help finish off the historical groundwater cleanup.

03/18/2026

Single family rental renovation time again.

03/12/2026

There are a lot of small businesses out there that are extremely profitable with entrepreneurs figuring out that buying their own warehouse is another “must do” in order to put their capital to work, secure the property that they are going to be investing heavily in, having a great place to come to work that is easy to get to, with great food options near by, and to create the biggest tax shelter possible.

This is one of the reasons 5,000-20,000 SF warehouses in Newport Beach, Costa Mesa, Irvine, and Huntington Beach are perpetually in demand and there never seems to be too much inventory.

Grant La Bounty Chris Vassilian

10/16/2025

New Episode: The Unfiltered Truth About Scaling a 3PL w/ ShipMonk SVP Jonathan Briggs.

Whether you’re a PE-backed brand considering your first 3PL, a real estate broker trying to match tenant specs to reality, or an operator staring down Q4, you’ll come away smarter.

Here’s what you’ll hear:

▶️ Why ShipMonk pulled out automation after COVID
– They invested heavily in AMRs, put-to-light, robotic arms… then reconsidered if that was the right path.
– Manual pick paths = 3x the volume in some instances

▶️ How they disqualify deals fast
– Cultural fit, operational fit, capability fit
– “Excitement is not due diligence.”

▶️ Why multi-tenant buildings beat dedicated sites in 2025
– They’re not selling a building, they’re selling a network.
– No single-site CapEx plays. If you need a million SF, they’ll spread it across multiple countries and nodes and still win on speed.

▶️ Real talk on sales in a volatile market
– December 2023 to Q1 2025 was chaos: tariffs, de minimis drama, Mexican border policy, and Supreme Court reversals.
– Jonathan’s team ran four major spin-up cycles, lost sleep, and still hit goal.
– “Status quo is my #1 competitor. If it’s not a hell yes, it’s a no.”

▶️ Inside ShipMonk’s go-to-market engine
– In-house WMS, OMS, TMS, and WES: one codebase, one dashboard, global control.
– Virtual Carrier Network can replace your TMS + BI + carrier management stack.

▶️ Returns, personalization, and value-added services are the next moat
– Same building. Same software. Same team. Returns are not an afterthought.
– They’re leaning into embroidery, engraving, labeling; differtietors that build margin and stickiness.

▶️ What he’d do with $50M tomorrow?
– Not robots. Not a fancy WMS.
– He’d add more locations: Australia, Netherlands, Germany, West Coast Canada.
– “The future isn’t US only. The winners will run bonded and forward stock globally.”

🔥 This is the kind of interview that cuts through the fluff.

10/15/2025

When companies finally decide to hand off fulfillment to a 3PL, most are walking into a world they don’t fully understand.

As Jonathan Briggs, SVP at ShipMonk, shared with me in our interveiw:

“Companies often think it’s just labor. But what about the building, the software, the quality, the utilities, the risk? Even when they know the cost, they expect a 3PL to be cheaper, forgetting that fulfillment is our product.”

We go on to spend the podcast episode highlighting:
• The hidden costs most first-time outsourcers miss
• Why scaling doesn’t automatically mean cheaper
• How true value comes from network, reach, and reliability, not just the rate card

If you’ve ever debated going from in-house fulfillment to outsourced, or advised a client doing it, this will help you get you thinking.

The full hour long episode drops tomorrow and will be great for executives, operators, industrial real estate brokers, and PE shops alike.

Grant La Bounty Chris Vassilian

Address

9838 Research Drive
Irvine, CA
92618

Telephone

+19497903151

Website

http://www.smithcre.com/

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