Position: Owners
Company: Waters & Pettit Commercial Real Estate
Revenues: Too early to say, since the business opened a little more than two months ago
Goals: To provide the best service with the highest integrity to clients
Robert Pettit III and Geordy Waters first met as fraternity brothers 20 years ago at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. That friendship led to several business ventures, most recently the decision to launch their commercial real estate firm.
Waters & Pettit Commercial Real Estate opened in October. So far, the company has several listings, including the renovated 421 Third Street building downtown and space in the Goodwood Village Shopping Center.
Pettit and Waters were successful agents with NAI/Latter & Blum, one of the leading commercial real estate firms on the Gulf Coast. Leaving the security of that firm, especially during a recession and a credit crisis, might seem strange. But Waters says the time was right, regardless of what’s going on in the national economy.
“There’s always a need for real estate, even in slow times,” Waters says. “And putting our names out there when no one else is gives you the spotlight.”
Pettit says he and Waters talked about going into business on their own for the past four or five years. But the opportunity never presented itself. “You get enmeshed in work and the things you want to do,” Pettit says. “It wasn’t until about three months ago where we had the time freed up to think about this.”
The actual decision to go into business on their own only took about a day for Pettit and Waters. But finalizing the details took a little more time. “It took about a month and a half or two months to get our feet firmly on the ground,” Pettit says. One of the biggest holdups was developing a logo. “We had listings, but no signs to put up front of them,” Waters says.
Waters and Pettit certainly don’t have the national networking system as that of Latter & Blum. To promote their company, they’re selling the angle of having two experienced commercial agents working on every deal. “We can team up and still be productive,” Pettit says.
