| Who is Mike Woods? |
Early Years
I was born in Rochester Minnesota and was raised in Hartford Wisconsin until I was six years old. That's when my dad came back from World War II. While in the army, dad was a young physician who lived in many parts of the county. After the war he and mom decided to move to southern California to begin his practice. Besides being a doctor he was an avid sports fan who became an active fan club member for the Los Angeles Rams and the Los Angeles Angels (the local minor league team). After awhile my dad became the team physician for the Los Angeles Angels with Dr Bob Kerlan. Dr. Kerlan was the orthopedic physician and my dad was the internist.
When the Dodgers moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles the Dodgers also acquired the Angels and my dad and Dr. Kerlan became the physicians for the Dodgers. That was huge because I was able to go to any game I wanted. I saw Sandy Koufax pitch his no-hitter against the Giants. I also went to many of the World Series games. The memorabilia that I have because of this is something I still cherish today.
I graduated from Loyola High School in 1958 and still today get together with many of my high school classmates. In fact, there is a group of us who have an annual golf outing in Palm Springs. I graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 1962. My wife and kids think I go overboard about the Irish - but you really can't go overboard about something you love. I have served on the Board of Directors for the Notre Dame Club of Los Angeles and also served as Vice President of Club Affairs. I take at least one trip each year to South Bend for a football game & always run into many of my classmates.
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Family
In 1963 I married the woman of my life, Mary Betz Woods. She has stood behind me when times were tough and has supported me when we undertook a new venture in life. We have three children who we are extremely proud of. Keith is married to Jenny and they have two children, Ryne and Josh and third whom they are guardians for Kyle (Jenny's brother's son). Keith graduated from Washington State University and today is a computer consultant who owns "To Go Online" which serves as an IT advisor for individuals and small companies. Ryne and Kyle are seniors in high school. Ryne has received a baseball scholarship from Notre Dame, which he accepted; naturally his grandfather is extremely proud. This also means that his grandparents will be able to make more trips to South Bend. Look for them in the stands at baseball games. Kyle will be going to a Community College next year and then to a four year school with Josh when Josh starts college. Kyle is very interested in art and his grandfather could see him as a commercial artist in the future. Josh is very outgoing, with a great personality. The type of kid you can read in an instant, the poor kid can't get away with anything. He and Kyle will probably go to school together and I could see Josh doing any number of things after college utilizing his good people skills - provided we can get him off the slopes (he is an avid snowboarder).
Tracy is my daughter and she is the creative one in the family. She also graduated from Washington State University with a degree in Interior Design. Today she works for Callison Architects in their Santa Monica office. She is a project manager and is involved daily in getting Callison projects approved by the appropriate municipality. Tracy is single but does have a steady guy - Dean Ballard.
Chad is our youngest son; he graduated from SMU with a degree in Finance. Chad is the most technical of our children. He also owns his own company, TECK.net. TECK.net designs database driven web sites; in fact he designed this web site. Chad married Maura in 2004 and the prospective grandparents are still waiting for any siblings. Chad and Maura reside in Carson City and Chad's business is in Minden.
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Work
After college one of my first jobs was in the marketing research department for Max Factor. This was a very important job because it gave me the foundation on which to build my eventual career in real estate. After Max Factor I went into real estate, selling residential properties. That became old quickly; my personality does not lend itself to dealing with residential home sales. I feel much more comfortable in commercial real estate where decisions are based more on financial information and business implications.
I worked for several local firms in Southern California, namely Daum Commercial then I became the Industrial Director for Knight, Frank, Faulkner, Ballieu. At Daum I focused on the local market and local firms. Knight, Frank was more of a boutique firm that specialized in consulting and corporate representation. During the real estate downturn of the early 1990's Knight Frank had to close its doors. In looking around I decided to work for Grubb & Ellis, the first truly national firm I experienced. They continued my exposure to corporate real estate decisions. While at Grubb I became a CCIM designee and furthered my emphasis on the analysis of real estate both as an investment and as a corporate asset. Eventually I ended up specializing in national tenant representation and selling land to developers for industrial projects. The most notable projects I worked on were a 500,000 sq. ft. facility for Cost Plus World Markets in Virginia and I sold a 300,000 sq ft corporate campus, including 350 acres of property, owned by Lockheed Martin with the buyer being Lincoln Property Company. The Cost Plus transaction was in excess of $40,000,000 and the Lockheed Martin sale was over $27,000,000.
My strength in real estate is my analytical ability. While working on the Cost Plus transaction I became aware of a possible problem with a high water table. So I decided to have the each developer selected for the RFP evaluate the four land sites for improvement costs and suitability for a large distribution project. In essence, we ended up doing all the due diligence prior to making the deal which prevented selecting a parcel that had significant off-site improvement costs. The other problem in this transaction was comparing each developer's RFP response. Here my CCIM training came into play, because each response was different in some aspect much like insurance quotes. Because of the CCIM training we were able to adjust each quote so that we could compare each quote to the others.
The sale of the Lockheed Martin site was similar, yet different. This was just after the real estate recession in California caused by the reduction in defense spending. The key in the sale to Lincoln Property was to show them how they could "add value" through their development expertise. We recommended developing the excess land into land sales and speculative building projects. The existing buildings could be used as office and R & D facilities. Those facilities that didn?t work as either office or R & D could be used as temporary sets for movies and television shows because of the extremely high clearance in some of those facilities.
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Semi Retirement
Like many people, I looked forward to retirement and leading the life of leisure. However, when you enjoyed what you were doing and all of a sudden you are no longer in the ball game - you get the itch to get back in action. This was the situation I quickly found myself.
When Mary and I retired we moved to northern Nevada, it was close to our kids, close to our cabin in June Lake and we could unlock the equity in our California home and use it for investments. So I looked around at all the real estate opportunities; those which stood out were hospitality and multi-family properties. This got me thinking, if I really wanted to learn about these markets and invest in them, why not start a brokerage company and specialize in selling them. This was the inspiration behind Sierra Realty Group.
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Outside Interests
To really understand a person you need to know about his outside interests. I enjoy golf, fly fishing, bridge (really cards of all sorts), and reading. I try to read at least two books a month & I try to include books of all types:
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Fiction |
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Current events |
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Historical |
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Business |
I feel this makes me well rounded and makes life that much more enjoyable. If you know of a good book I should read let me know about it. Or if you want me to recommend a good book to you in a specific area send me an e-mail (mwoods@sierrarealtygroup.com), I'll get back to you.
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