The Case for Strong Personal Branding in CRE Brokerage
Networking is rapidly evolving. Here's how successful agents stay ahead.
Commercial real estate has always been a relationship business. But today, clients and investors are getting to know you way before the first call or meeting. They’re Googling you, checking out your bio and portfolio, reading your posts and forming an opinion before picking up the phone. This is where personal branding comes into play.
A personal brand defines who you are, demonstrates your value and pushes you forward. It’s like the corporate brand of your employer. Except, well, it’s yours.
Why CRE brokers need it
A personal brand can help you differentiate yourself and compete more effectively—against brokers at competing firms and within your own company.
“Within my first year as a broker, I was sitting on the 22nd floor of 200 Park Ave. (his brokerage office), and I saw a sea of desks, with everybody doing the same thing I was,” recalled Evan Fiddle, a senior vice president at CBRE in New York City. “I realized I needed to be more strategic.”
Since then, Fiddle has been posting religiously on LinkedIn, where his target customers reside. He posts market updates and trends—valuable info—rather than new listings or recent sales. He has more than 7,000 followers and believes he stays top-of-mind due to his posts. In fact, in late 2025, Fiddle closed an office-leasing deal at 915 Broadway, a 20-story building in New York City’s Flatiron district, for a client who initially reached out in 2017 via LinkedIn. Since then, they’ve done multiple deals together.
Aviva Sonenreich, managing broker of The Warehouse Hotline in Denver, has specialized in industrial real estate for about 10 years. In 2020, she devoted herself to building a personal brand.
“Instead of having to pick up the phone and beg owners to listen, I knew I could institute a way where an owner has a need, does a Google search and finds me,” Sonenreich said.
Today, she has more than 1 million followers on TikTok, 50,000 on Instagram, 10,000 on X and 5,000 on Facebook. She posts an episode of her podcast weekly and then disseminates the content across social media platforms.
The result: Sonenreich no longer has to cold call. All leads come to her. She recently sold two warehouses in Boulder, Colo., for $9.6 million to a buyer who found her via social media. The seller had seen her videos and was familiar with her brand. “I was working on that deal before I even knew it,” she said.
Getting your company on board
Just because your employer spends time and money to build a corporate brand doesn’t mean that it will benefit you. In some cases, it might be the very thing that creates friction.
“The brokerage is a corporate entity that’s there to make money from one of their agents selling,” opined Tyler Mount, founder & CEO of Henry Street Creative, a digital marketing agency and personal branding consultancy. “(The firm) doesn’t care if it’s Agent A or Agent B as long as one of their agents closes so they get their cut. That’s why a personal brand is so necessary.”
Jade Shenker, a founding member of Serhant’s commercial division in New York City, who has appeared with her colleagues on the Netflix show “Owning Manhattan,” mentioned that her employer “encourages each agent to develop their own personal brand and to shine.”
Yet, not all companies take the same approach. Some brokerages have a strict no-personal-brand guideline, Mount noted.
“They’re in the minority,” he said. “But if an agent they hired can’t showcase their personal brand because it goes against the values and ethics of the company, that’s a hiring problem.”
Some larger brokerages worry that individual branding efforts might drift from the overall brand identity. But personal and corporate branding do not have to be at odds. Many of the companies that do permit individual branding efforts, however, issue branding style guides to provide clarity and alignment without stifling individuality.
It boils down to trusting that you’ve hired the right employees, one source said.
Of course, personal branding is not without its challenges—it takes time, and experts say there’s a learning curve to get it right. However, many CRE professionals believe it’s worth the effort.
“It’s about long-term credibility, genuine connection and consistently showing up as the kind of person others want to work with, refer and trust,” noted Brenda Elliott Karp, vice president of business development for The Breeden Co. “When you focus on these fundamentals, your personal brand grows naturally—and powerfully.”
Steps for building your brand
Brokers say the place to start with personal marketing is to create a visual identity for yourself, including a logo, typography, a color palette and imagery and to use it consistently.
Next, be active on social media by posting information of interest to your followers—rather than just listings
And be authentic. Shenker started “being herself” on social media about five years ago, posting videos from New York Fashion Week and offering fun financial advice to her followers.
“When I started letting the creativity flow, people started engaging and following me,” Shenker said. She now does daily news updates for her 130,000 Instagram and 70,000 TikTok followers. This exposure has organically attracted new business.
Collaborating with other influencers can also be effective. Shenker, for example, suggests “cross-pollinating your audiences by doing collaboration videos.” That will help expose you and your brand to new prospects.
Finally, get involved in the community and give back. Karp said her involvement in organizations such as CREW, ULI and GRACRE has played a significant role in shaping her personal brand and professional success.
“These groups offer opportunities for deep relationship-building, long-term collaboration and continuous learning,” she said. “By consistently showing up, contributing and staying engaged, I’ve been able to form trusted connections that have lasted throughout my career.”
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