Boise: One of the West's Top Growth Markets (I-84, Micron & Highway 16)

Nick Provenzano 00:16

Thank you, Justin. Happy to be here. Appreciate the invite.

Nick Provenzano 00:23

Yeah, so I was recruited to come play football here in two thousand sixteen. out of by way of Southern California, Glendora, California. so

Nick Provenzano 00:34

spent a lot of time hanging out in Orange County, Inland Empire. two thousand sixteen, came as a preferred walk on, played football for the Broncos and Had a nice career, got my degree, earned my scholarship, wrapped up my career in 2020, had some internships in the real estate brokerage world during those times, because in the summer, you we had to be here. Like a lot of the students leave town except for some of the athletes. so we're here all summer from

Nick Provenzano 01:05

a.m. to noon. And then you're trying to fill the second half of your day with something productive. For me I figured

Nick Provenzano 01:13

pretty fast that going to the NFL wasn't in the cards. So my dad was like, you better find some internships that are gonna be applicable to maybe some industries you'd find your way in and I was like, what's that gonna be? And he was like, I don't know, maybe just like maybe sales. he kinda pushed me in that direction just based on some of the experiences he had. He's retired longtime Southern California Edison employee. So he

Nick Provenzano 01:36

pushed me towards the entrepreneurial route a little bit. And got ha got my foot in the door interning at Lee & Associates in the summer of 2020. And then in January or winter of twenty, new year of twenty one is when I got my Idaho real estate license. And just hit the ground running. That's been my first and only job since graduating college. So it's been like six years now. I've been a principal for a couple of years and it's going good.

Nick Provenzano 02:06

Yeah.

Nick Provenzano 02:12

Mm-hmm.

Nick Provenzano 02:16

Yeah.

Nick Provenzano 02:55

Yeah.

Nick Provenzano 02:56

Well in Boise that the whole COVID like scare and shut down, like that plane took off and landed very quickly. Like and that's what really got the party started here

Nick Provenzano 03:08

in Idaho was people were noticing on like this place really hasn't closed down. People here are still

Nick Provenzano 03:14

doing things.

Nick Provenzano 03:16

People

Nick Provenzano 03:16

are being

Nick Provenzano 03:18

Yeah, but people weren't it wasn't such a big deal for some reason. And I think that was had a little bit of the influence on the inward migration that really accelerated

Nick Provenzano 03:27

here like mid two thousand twenty one throughout the entire year of two thousand twenty one.

Nick Provenzano 03:32

So

Nick Provenzano 03:39

right. And then in two thousand twenty one is when people who were in the industry for, you know, five plus years really benefited from the growth and their pipeline and the values just skyrocketed so fast. I didn't get I didn't catch that tailwind. I didn't know anybody

Nick Provenzano 03:57

in this industry besides the people in my office. I didn't know a single person who owned commercial real estate in my

Nick Provenzano 04:04

life. So for me

Nick Provenzano 04:05

it was like really starting from scratch here. So I miss that take off by a couple of years but so but it was a good time to, you know, start planting some seeds that would you know, start producing fruit over the next few years till to now.

Nick Provenzano 04:39

Yeah, we have had a lot of new construction. we there was probably like a six to eight month period when that rate hike went down in two thousand twenty two where people kind of maybe put the pencils down a little bit, but we were still moving around, you know, tenants and owner occupants who were just like, hey, I don't care what interest rates are doing. I'm out of space and I need more of it now. So we were still able to capitalize on some of those deals and it didn't last very long. That slowdown didn't last very long. It kind of ramped back up and still at our peak. Like right now in Boise industrial real estate, our lease rates are at ATH like they say in the stock market all time high. So it's kinda strange to say that because I don't know how many you know Western state markets can say that right now. So we're there is a little bit of a anomalous.

Nick Provenzano 05:42

That is a little bit of challenge.

Nick Provenzano 06:09

yeah. Matt's been a great mentor for me and has grown to be, you know, a friend to me now being here for long enough. And yeah, he does a good job kind of showing, you know, what profo professionalism and commitment looks like to your career. all the principals in our office were great mentors to me. Him, Jason O'Very, just the name of a few, all really help me out.

Nick Provenzano 06:32

I don't know. I don't know what he's benching right now.

Nick Provenzano 06:37

I kind of I definitely probably peaked on that when I was playing college football and I'm more focused now on you know, my cardio and mobility and whenever when I bench too heavy my shoulders kinda flare up. So

Nick Provenzano 06:49

more focused on mobility

Nick Provenzano 06:50

right now and flexibility and

Nick Provenzano 06:51

cardio.

Nick Provenzano 06:55

No,

Nick Provenzano 06:55

he

Nick Provenzano 06:56

Yeah.

Nick Provenzano 06:58

he does stay looking buff.

Nick Provenzano 07:06

Yeah,

Nick Provenzano 07:06

so

Nick Provenzano 07:08

yeah, so I work a team. you know, we all kind of team up as much as we can in our office. some of the mentors that have been here for me, we still have clients that we share relationships with. but I've kind of I've built I've started building a team myself. My partner Mike, he's an associate in our office, been here for two years now and we're really out trying to try to take some market share together.

Nick Provenzano 07:32

it was just I I've just really loved the idea of teaming up with somebody that was kind of, you know, similar to my age, running the same speed as me, hungry. and he's an Idaho native and we were friends in the past. we met through some mutual friends, went to Boise State together, so it was just a good fit, good time and good opportunity.

Nick Provenzano 08:08

That's right. Yeah, I wasn't really, you know, set out on saying, Hey, I need to go hire someone to build a team. It was more of just the right opportunity with Mike coming in, it just felt like the right time to kind of form a team.

Nick Provenzano 08:31

So every day we kinda I like to model my business kind of just the way we modeled you know our process for success playing football at Boise State. And for me we have like our four step process and every day we come in we have to know like are we spending time completing activities in one of these four things. It and it's kind of like my flywheel, it's all in order, it's all through the coaching program, the Massimo coaching program that I went through. But

Nick Provenzano 08:59

it's build market presence, run effective prospecting campaigns, work with high quality clients in my niche. and exceed client expectations in every deal. So if it's not one of those four things, it's like, hey, we're getting a little distracted here. what what's a revenue producing activity we can do? Lately,

Nick Provenzano 09:17

you know, for us it's been that fourth one that exceed client expectations on each deal, come in and make sure that you know the deals we have on our contract, the listings we have marketed, like what are we doing to make sure that we're moving that deal relationship forward and the client knows what we're up to make sure they know they're getting a great service from us. As we've been getting busier, that's been kinda taking up a lot of our time, but I mean you still have to time block those hours to make sure you're, you know, running your effective prospecting campaigns. If we have listings, we're gonna make sure that we're gonna turn over every stone. We wanna make sure everybody in the immediate area knows about that opportunity and why they should be considering it. And then building market presence is something that I've really tried to take I guess control of as I have more experience that I can, you know, advertise to people going

Nick Provenzano 10:07

out in public and really knowing what my value is and what people might need for me. So whether it's going to my networking clubs or taking, you know, a client out golfing to see, you know, where I can help them next or if they know anybody I can help out with. So that's kind of what our days look like right now.

Nick Provenzano 10:28

Yeah.

Nick Provenzano 10:31

Yeah.

Nick Provenzano 10:56

Yeah.

Nick Provenzano 11:12

Yeah.

Nick Provenzano 11:20

Yeah, sometimes you're a little more reactive than you'd like to be, versus having control of like, no one's gonna take away my prospecting hour, but sometimes it's like,

Nick Provenzano 11:29

Hey

Nick Provenzano 11:29

Yeah.

Nick Provenzano 11:32

don't touch that prospecting hour, but hey, sometimes like we just got this deal this new deal in our contract and this owner needs to get this property, you know, or we just got this new deal listed and this owner needs to get this property marketed ASAP. Like they're counting on us to get going because they have plans and they have stuff they need to do. So there's a few things that I need to handle on my back end so that our marketing team can have what they need to get their process going. Whereas if I spend the whole morning prospecting and I don't get to that new listing till the afternoon, now I just pushed it back another half day. So

Nick Provenzano 12:04

yeah.

Nick Provenzano 12:08

Yeah.

Nick Provenzano 12:23

Yeah, I mean, no doubt, there are stuff that will we will work on outside of industrial. We just kind of like targeting our prospecting towards industrial because we really enjoy the clientele of working with, you know, owner occupants and developers that kind of personality just fit who we enjoy spending time with. but yeah, when you're in a market at that size, you're definitely not gonna say no to many deals that are outside of what you like to prospect. Like a lot of time you know, industrial building owners in our market could also own an office building and they say, Hey Nick, can you help us sell this office building? Well industrial and office kind of go hand in hand. Like we know how to sell an

Nick Provenzano 13:01

office

Nick Provenzano 13:03

Yeah. We know how to sell an office building and we know who the buyers are for that and how to find the tenant for it. so that's like stuff we'll work on too as well.

Nick Provenzano 13:29

That's right.

Nick Provenzano 13:38

You know, most of my deals have came off of you know piggybacking off of other people's listings and just being proactive and prospecting. So when you first start out, you don't really have anybody that's gonna trust a new guy or you haven't built those relationships yet to go out and have someone hire you to list their property for sale or for lease. So what you gotta do is take other people's off other people's listings in your office as your own. And they'd be glad to have you go peddle their listing to help them get it leased or get it sold and everybody wins. So

Nick Provenzano 14:13

some of my best deals is have just been saying, hey, this is a sellable or leaseable property. let me see if I can go find a buyer or tenant for it. let me go canvass the neighbors or call people on that submarket. And I've made hay that way.

Nick Provenzano 14:36

That's right.

Nick Provenzano 14:40

sure.

Nick Provenzano 14:51

That's right.

Nick Provenzano 15:22

Yeah, so you were

Nick Provenzano 15:24

looking

Nick Provenzano 15:24

on some

Nick Provenzano 15:26

Yeah, you're probably you're oh yeah you were probably looking at the blog on our website, some recently sold land deals. yeah, so when I started, and I hadn't really found my niche yet you know, working with industrial property owners and occupants and developers. My first assignment when I when one of my mentors gave me Jason, he he's got a pretty good longstanding relationship with one of the national home builders in town. So he was like, Hey, this would be a great way to get your feet wet and learn about land development very fast was start calling on you know 20 to 40 to 100 acre sites that might be fit for residential development. And if you find someone that says, you know, they've maybe sell or look at an offer, we'll kick it to these guys and they'll make an offer. So I started learning really fast what the difference between current zoning is, future land use designations and what the future zoning is gonna be. Annexation, I had no idea what that was as a property in city limits or is in the county jurisdiction, I started learning how to look at a site and see where the utilities are. access, shape, topography, what makes a land development site interesting to a home builder. It could be more efficient with their site planning if it's square, if there's access points, if there's no way to access it from a rain main road, how are they gonna access it? Who's gonna put in that road? If it's not in city limits, can it is it contiguous to city limits so it can be annexed and have those city services if not is their capacity to dig a well and build septic tanks. So I learned about all that stuff really fast and then that's obviously kind of translated to you know being able to look at a development site and say, man this could be good for you know what's the highest and best use for this site? Is this gonna be good for you know multi-tenant industrial? Is it just gonna be you know single tenant industrial? Is it gonna be spaces is this just gonna be is this need to be farmland for a while if so maybe it's not priced industrial right now maybe it needs to be priced for ag land prices so it that experience just kind of in the ringer learning and I guess bird dogging for a home builder taught me a lot about land development.

Nick Provenzano 17:43

Yeah.

Nick Provenzano 17:49

That's right.

Nick Provenzano 17:53

That's right.

Nick Provenzano 18:18

Yeah, and there's just a lot more like social challenges to building houses. Whereas if there's a public hearing for someone to go build some warehouses, you know, on Main and Main, that's not gonna be very contentious. But if there's a public hearing for someone to go build a hundred and fifty homes on a tract on a farm tract, you know, next to another couple hundred homes, none of those neighbors want more homes behind them. So it's just it yeah.

Nick Provenzano 18:48

I mean the

Nick Provenzano 18:49

warehouse

Nick Provenzano 18:49

just

Nick Provenzano 18:49

doesn't

Nick Provenzano 18:49

get much

Nick Provenzano 18:51

they'd rather just have open space. The warehouse doesn't get as much publicity or attention.

Nick Provenzano 18:58

Unless it's

Nick Provenzano 18:58

a

Nick Provenzano 18:58

data

Nick Provenzano 18:59

center as of recently.

Nick Provenzano 19:19

Right.

Nick Provenzano 19:30

No, it's definitely competitive in our market. You know, a lot of my

Nick Provenzano 19:33

competitors

Nick Provenzano 19:35

Yeah, there's no, a lot of my competitors do a great job as well. And it's definitely a small town still. Like it you'd be it's very tough to find a piece of land that, you know, a developer doesn't already own or is open to, you know, for a new developer to come in town. There's a few players in town that kind of have their flag already planted on almost every corner. So there the it's definitely you gotta that's that kinda goes back to my point when saying that if you say I'm only gonna you know, sell industrial land and lease up those projects and sell 'em, that's all I'm gonna do. There you might not, you know have enough on your plate, which is why if somebody says, Hey Nick, can you help my brother purchase a four million dollar office building then yeah we'll

Nick Provenzano 20:21

Come on.

Nick Provenzano 20:26

It is.

Nick Provenzano 20:41

Right.

Nick Provenzano 21:51

Yeah, so we really only have one interstate freeway that runs east and west through our market. And you've gotta be along that corridor to attract tenants. So like for us, a lot of people in Boise when they think of inward migration and nice places to live, a lot of people think of Eagle Idaho. Well, Eagle Idaho is up north about twenty minutes from the interstate, so there's no industry in Eagle Idaho. It's a luxury bedroom community. So

Nick Provenzano 22:19

you're

Nick Provenzano 22:19

it

Nick Provenzano 22:21

you can buy your house there, but you won't find a warehouse there. Or if you build a warehouse there, you might be having trouble getting a company that wants to be there. Or you really won't find land-zoned industrial there, anyways. But basically, our market kind of starts with Boise and it really right now only runs one way west, which goes to Meridian, Nampa, and Caldwell. Anywhere between Boise, Meridian, Nampa, and Caldwell along the I-84 is gonna perform pretty well if you're close to an interchange and you're zoned industrial. We southeast is where things are starting to change a lot pretty fast. That's where Micron is making their major, you know, whatever it is now, $25 billion expansion to their fabrication facility. And if you go southeast there's a little bit more develop it development happening now. there's a big developer in town putting some more houses out there and gonna do some business parks and gas stations, a little bit of retail there too. But it gets more challenging to go southeast because of the landscape. It's a little bit more like lava rock they call it, and it's just it's more expensive to blast and grade and design.

Nick Provenzano 23:29

Yeah,

Nick Provenzano 23:29

soil. When you go west, that's where all of our farm ground is and that farm ground's a little bit more

Nick Provenzano 23:39

Yeah, that's it's kind of our low hanging fruit to talk about right now.

Nick Provenzano 23:59

Well, they've owned that land around them for a long time. So

Nick Provenzano 24:02

th I guess when you're when your basis is so much lower than what the market rate is today, you can make things pencil and you're just a billion dollar company, it's all it it's just a different world, right?

Nick Provenzano 24:21

That's right. Yeah. They've Micron has had an office here and all their land holdings out there for, you know, longer than I've

Nick Provenzano 24:31

You know, I they I don't know how much

Nick Provenzano 24:35

yeah,

Nick Provenzano 24:36

I don't know how much they're really buying more stuff. I've heard of them, you know, kind of just leasing some of the warehouses around 'em for overflow and storage, just kind of going direct to, you know, whoever's building it and whoever's listing it. But yeah, no, that's that would be a pretty large account.

Nick Provenzano 25:13

Yeah.

Nick Provenzano 25:19

Yeah, I I'd say that I'd say the lar the largest buildings in our market are probably near the Boise Airport. and a lot of new construction for Class A concrete tilt ups has sprawled as of recently, as of the last five years, into Meridian, Nampa and Caldwell, where not too long ago, those were markets where you would drive along the I-84 and see zero concrete tilt-ups

Nick Provenzano 25:42

from the freeway. And now there's a lot more. One interesting sub market in that, right in the middle, kind of like they're what people are saying is we're resetting you know the 50 yard line in the center of the valley with our new highway

Nick Provenzano 25:56

16. So you may have heard of that along the I-84 you'll have a new highway 16 that runs north and south and that'll get you better connection from the I-84 if you live in some of those northern bedroom communities like North Nampa, East Caldwell, Star, Eagle, even all the way up to Emmett, Idaho. And if you if you look at what they're doing in the new fifty yard line or center of the valley, you'll see like a lot of stuff that reminds me of what went down kind of like when the two ten got expanded when I was a kid over in the Inland Empire where all of a sudden along that I along that new highway sixteen is a high school, a gas station, some more industrial buildings, some more houses. So that's a really interesting sub market to be looking at right now.

Nick Provenzano 27:08

That's right.

Nick Provenzano 27:29

Yeah, definitely. That's definitely been a big driver for our market. our I say our commercial real estate driver, I would pinned down to one thing is probably our inward migration, not just of people come to live here, but companies following that as well. we I mean we get calls and tours weekly from coastal markets of companies of all sizes and all types that wanna be here that just say, Hey, we really just kind of need to get started with, you know, a three thousand or two thousand square foot office space, just the lease, because we have enough jobs going on over here now. We need to we need engineering company. We need administration here in this area now. And then we're gonna expand that to, you know, an IOS yard where we have a regional kind of hub for us to get all the way around Idaho and Eastern Oregon. but yeah it it's definitely happening. We see that coming from Washington and California and Oregon.

Nick Provenzano 28:36

Yeah, definitely.

Nick Provenzano 29:20

Yeah, the small bay stuff is definitely has a little bit of a barrier to entry because it's so much more expensive to build. You don't get the economies of scale like you do on a, you know, 200,000 square foot concrete tilt-up. And some of those projects are really setting the benchmark for new rate rental rates in our market. Like some of these new small bay projects that are in the you know two thousand to four thousand square foot units are getting lease rates that our market has never seen, like a dollar fifty or a dollar sixty a square foot. triple net with triple nets in our market somewhere in the twenty to thirty cent a square foot range monthly.

Nick Provenzano 29:57

yeah

Nick Provenzano 29:59

and IOS How do you rebuild IOS? You can't. That IOS is the lowest vacancy in our market, in my opinion. just because it really can't be replicated. It's so strange to, you know, go buy a parcel of land that's ten acres and only build a building on it that covers about fifteen or ten percent of that land. It just it's impossible to make work. So replicating that stuff is a challenge if you can find it. there's pretty quick turnaround to getting that.

Nick Provenzano 30:53

Yeah.

Nick Provenzano 30:57

You know, my wife and I, we just bought our first house a few years ago and we're doing well on that. We're getting some appreciation. it's in a good market in Boise South East and I think we're catching some synergy from, you know, the micron wealth that's being created and

Nick Provenzano 31:13

the incomes that are going up over there and their stock price that's going up over there. I think we're catching some synergy there. so and we have a six week old, seven week old now daughter now, I'm a new dad and Alright, my focus

Nick Provenzano 31:26

Thanks.

Nick Provenzano 31:27

Yeah, my focus is just kind of you know, taking care of them and taking care of my clients. But yeah, I don't own any commercial real estate yet, but I would predict that it's probably in my retirement plan someday to, you know, be a landlord, but not quite yet.

Nick Provenzano 31:58

Yeah.

Nick Provenzano 32:11

Nice.

Nick Provenzano 32:21

Yeah.

Nick Provenzano 32:52

That's

Nick Provenzano 32:52

right.

Nick Provenzano 33:02

Yeah, I'd say right now I definitely don't have interest in buying myself another job, which was is kind of the situation I see sometimes with being a landlord is buying yourself another job and my time needs to either be going to taking care of my clients, drumming up opportunities in my business, or taking care of, you know, my wife and daughter. But like you said, there's those opportunities to have, you know, great clients who, you know, will let you invest with them and you don't really have to think about it, which sounds pretty attractive.

Nick Provenzano 33:38

Yeah.

Nick Provenzano 33:58

let's see. Well I guess there's business out there to be made, so it's yours to go take is kind of what I think about every day. So if you have I guess your goals without a plan, then our coach used to say, That's just a dream. You gotta have a plan and you gotta stick to it. Doing your you and executing that plan every day and not necessarily thinking too hard about those goals will get you there. So whether it's you know, being an entrepreneur or being a successful real estate broker or being, you know, a successful real estate investor or developer, I think everybody knows that sticking to your process and not really expecting, you know, instant gratification is what will get you places, especially in this industry when it's such a long sales cycle. I mean, this is not an industry where, you know, we're selling you know, doormats and you get someone who's gonna close right on the spot, you catch them like, Yeah, I actually needed a new doormat in here. Whereas Our sales cycle can take, you know, one, two, five, ten years before some you know, a seed you plant turns into, you know, some fruit and it's a client you can help out with or a deal you can make some money on. so that long game is paid dividends.

Nick Provenzano 35:11

Yeah.

Nick Provenzano 35:31

Yeah, absolutely.

Nick Provenzano 35:43

Yeah, it'd be great to do some business together and even just hang out as well. I'll be down visiting Southern California probably this holiday season, so if I catch myself and you're in Orange County, I'll reach out and reciprocate it when you're back in Boise visiting and call.

Nick Provenzano 35:59

Yeah.

Nick Provenzano 36:02

Thank you, Justin. See ya.