An entrepreneur at heart, Marc Morin is embracing the challenge of building Ottawa’s newest commercial real estate brokerage from the ground up.
Morin, one of Ottawa’s leading brokers of office and industrial space, didn’t wait long to launch his latest venture after he and former business partner Graeme Webster dissolved their previous company, Koble Commercial Real Estate, last month.
He officially unveiled his new business, Seva Commercial Real Estate, on Monday. For now, Morin is a one-man band, and he couldn’t be happier.
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“I knew that I didn’t see myself, at this point anyway, joining a big national commercial firm,” the personable 47-year-old told OBJ this week. “It’s been such a great experience for the last 10 years being on our own, I thought that my best opportunity was to continue as independently as possible.”
Ultimately, Morin felt that hanging up his own shingle would give him the best of both worlds: the chance to partner with some of the bigger national players when the deal warrants it and the flexibility to choose his own clients.
“I have always felt that one of the best ways to collaborate with everyone is to remain independent,” Morin explained. “At this stage, I think I’ve got quite a long runway left. I thought I had the energy and the excitement and enthusiasm to do it on my own.”
Like Koble, Seva – a name suggested by Ottawa marketing agency karmadharma that refers to “living a full life” of community service and generosity, according to Morin – will focus on brokering the purchase and sale of office and industrial properties.
That’s been Morin’s specialty for more than two decades. He’s happy to leave the leasing side of the business to other agencies so he can concentrate on what he does best.
“That’s just not an area that I ever want to compete with,” he said with a smile.
Morin, who worked at Colliers and District Realty before launching Koble with Webster in 2014, has also registered as a broker with eXp Realty, which bills itself as one of the world’s fastest-growing cloud-based real estate brokerages.
He says aligning with eXp will give him access to other markets and services while freeing him up to focus on building his book of business with his preferred client base – entrepreneurs and business professionals who are looking to invest in commercial real estate as a means of generating income and creating a “nest egg” for retirement.
“Really, what I wanted to do was to create an independent commercial brand, and at the same time leverage the back-end expertise of a company that has scaled in the last number of years faster than almost any other brokerage in the world,” Morin added.
“The asset class, for me, it’s always been secondary. The thing that drives me is the people that I’m working with. I get to speak to people who inspire me every day and those are the people I want to work with.”
Seva currently has two listings on the market – a 1.95-acre plot of industrial-zoned land on Auriga Drive in Nepean and a group of condominium-style units on Denzil Doyle Drive in Kanata that are designed for warehouse, light manufacturing and retail uses and are aimed at businesses that want to own their space.
That’s no surprise considering Morin’s forecast for the industrial sector calls for brisk business as buyers scour the red-hot Ottawa market for whatever small-bay industrial space is available.
“We’re seeing a strong need for that type of space and there’s very little supply,” Morin noted, adding that selling the condo units in Kanata will likely be a “multi-year” project.
“I’m really excited about that,” he said. “It gives an opportunity for entrepreneurs to own their real estate.”
The outlook for the office market, meanwhile, is a little cloudier. Morin predicts it will remain turbulent for a while yet even as interest rates begin to stabilize or fall in 2024.
“We still don’t have a clear path for what the future of the office environment looks like,” he said. “There’s a lot of discussion out there, but there are not a lot of trades closing. It takes a while for sellers to adjust to a new reality.”
