Gutsy guy from Gotham.

Tough-talking Jim Travers makes his mark in L.A. by driving hard deals for office tenants

Whenever a loud, New York-accented verbal blue streak emanates from a top executive's office, it could be that Jim Travers has come to call.

If that blue streak is being spewed by an intense-looking guy with manicured wisps of reddish-brown hair, stark blue eyes with big dark bags underneath, looking as if he hasn't slept in a week, and the guy's pounding on your boss's desk with absolute abandon -- chances are very good that Jim Travers has come to call.

Travers has been browbeating L.A. execs into submission with his in-your-face, guerrilla-style negotiating tactics for the past 18 years, and making a fortune at it.

According to prominent industry sources, Travers has now become L.A.'s second-most-successful commercial real estate agent. Year in and year out, only the near-legendary John C. Cushman III closes more deals, sources say.

Estimates on Travers's personal income last year range from $5 million to $11 million, depending on whom you talk to. Not bad, considering the local commercial real estate industry was in its worst slump in recent history.

The notoriously private Travers isn't about to reveal his income. But he's happy to point out that he has already negotiated nearly 1 million square feet of commercial office space on behalf of his tenant-clients so far this year.

Move over, Cushman.

Don't expect Travers to follow Ivy League business etiquette in his pursuit of that No. 1 ranking, however.

"The first time I met Travers was 20 years ago, when he walked into my office unannounced, claiming to represent a client of mine that I thought was represented by another broker," remembers one prominent L.A. real estate attorney. "He wouldn't leave my office. So I finally had to call the security officer and have him removed."

Travers finally ended up representing that client, and "did a damn fine job," the attorney concedes.

"But to this day, I still have to ask him not to use the 'f' word so much in front of my clients," the attorney adds. "Sometimes he listens."

The Southland's continuing real estate slump has actually been something of a boon to Travers's Mid-Wilshire-based brokerage firm, Travers Realty Corp.

The hard-boiled maverick and his cadre of 19 devoutly loyal broker-agents specialize in tenant representation, a business which Travers claims to have invented shortly after he arrived in L.A. from New York in 1974.

Other industry veterans argue the tenant-rep concept was actually the brainchild of Mitchell Leit and Peter Laszlo, who began representing national tenants exclusively at CPC Corporate Planners & Coordinators at about the same time. Still others claim the tenant-rep concept was created in the late 1960s by John Cushman.

If the issue is ever put up for negotiation, Travers will likely win.

Suffice it to say, Travers was an early pioneer of tenant-rep work. And such work has become all the rage in today's glutted office market, where tenants call the tune and landlords dance as fast as they can.

Throughout it all, Travers is having a field day.

Like a shark smelling blood, he reacts to local landlords' vulnerability by chomping down all the harder on behalf of his tenant-clients. And an increasing number of tenant-clients are praising Travers' shark-like feats.

"From my company's point of view, Jim Travers is one of the best," gushes Rich Lewis, chief administrative officer at Countrywide Funding Corp., a long-time Travers client. "Some landlords are less pleased with Jim, some view him as gruff. But Jim's style is effective for him; he's very good at what he does."

A few weeks ago, Travers negotiated Countrywide's purchase of the 43-acre former Gibraltar Savings headquarters property in Simi Valley for $16 million. Three weeks later, Countrywide received an unsolicited offer from someone wanting to buy the property for $20 million. No wonder Lewis is gushing. (Countrywide turned down the offer, and eventually plans to develop a sprawling new corporate headquarters campus in Simi.)

Travers says he learned how to squeeze every last dime out of commercial landlords by cutting his teeth as a landlord rep in New York City.

"I had been representing landlords in New York for about four and a half years," Travers remembers. "So I knew all the games landlords come across with to get tenants to think they're getting the best deal."

Travers landed his first L.A. job with Milton Meyer Co., working as a landlord-rep leasing agent at the company's then-new Mutual Benefit Building in the Miracle Mile district. While there, Travers worked for Steve Del Pero.

"I told Steve about my idea of representing tenants exclusively," Travers explains. "And he told me to go for it."

At that time, commercial brokerage firms were "full-service," meaning they represented both tenants and landlords. But, in effect, brokers always focused on "making a marriage between the landlord and tenant, rather than on getting the best deal for the tenant," Travers asserts.

Lease negotiations were pleasant encounters between gentlemen (commercial real estate has always been a heavily male-dominated industry). Talks were rarely confrontational and always conducted with the utmost civility.

That was before Travers hit town and raised hell.

"The entire real estate community thought I was absolutely crazy, which was compounded by my New York personality," he recalls. "I was causing a lot of commotion among landlords and their brokers. But I knew that what I was selling made sense because tenants were always leaving so much money on the table."

Travers expanded his fledgling tenant-rep business in 1976, after joining Del Pero and Leonard Nadler in their newly independent brokerage firm, Del Pero & Nadler.

Then Travers, at the age of 30, left Del Pero & Nadler in April 1978 to found Travers Realty in the Mid-Wilshire district.

While clients praise Travers to the skies, and his broker-agents express a loyalty akin to that of a Doberman Pinscher raised from puphood, Travers has plenty of detractors.

He never goes to mixers or open houses, like most other brokers. He prefers instead to spend evenings with his wife of 20 years and two teenage daughters in their expansive Georgian-style home in the flats of Beverly Hills.

None of his broker-agents has ever been to Travers's house, although most of them have worked for him for several years.

"I prefer to keep my business and private lives separate," Travers explains.

But even if Travers wanted to socialize with his industry cohorts, many of those cohorts might not welcome the idea.

When three of Travers' closest industry colleagues had the audacity to nominate him for membership in the oh-so-refined Jonathan Club in downtown Los Angeles about a year ago, the club was inundated with a record number of calls and letters opposing the nomination.

"The Jonathan Club has a ton of gentleman brokers as members," explains one source familiar with the situation. "They just didn't want this guy (Travers) going face to face with them in their social club, leaning across the table with his tie in his soup, telling them they're jerks. It's bad enough dealing with him in a meeting."

Travers shrugs off his social ostracism, attributing it to petty hurt feelings and envy on the part of his less successful competitors.

One prominent real estate executive puts it this way: "Travers may not be the kind of guy you want to have dinner with. But he is the kind of guy you want representing you on a real estate transaction."

SNAPSHOT

James Neil Travers

Native of: New York, N.Y.

Current residence: Beverly Hills

Age: 45

Education: Bachelor's degree in political science from University of Cincinnati