Sometimes even Realtors don’t know clients’ names

The last time Dan Stroh pitched his real estate holdings, he was summoned to a Fort Collins meeting room where he faced five nameless suits, identified only as representatives of a Fortune 500 company scouting locations in Northern Colorado.

With the calm focus he shares with the cutting horses he raises and trains at the family ranch near Berthoud, Stroh fielded a battery of more than 100 questions about the market.

“It was kind of like a grand jury,” Stroh said. “So I answered all their questions, about utilities, the tax base, the political climate. I was honest with them, and I gave them a lot of information.”

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Then he went back to his Loveland office to wait.

“Maybe the next guy that was going in may not have had as much depth,” he said. “That’s probably my strong suit.”

Stroh heads up the family-owned Stroh & Co. Realty and Auctions Inc., a major force in Northern Colorado’s commercial market since 1954. He said that although representatives from large companies sometimes require a tremendous amount of deferential treatment, the rewards can be great.

When the Wisconsin-based Shopko Stores Inc. was looking for its first Colorado location, Stroh spent three weeks giving a grand tour of Northern Front Range retail sites before the battery of young attorneys decided to reveal their employer.

And Stroh had to reveal that he had no idea who they were talking about.

“They didn’t think it was quite as funny as I did,” Stroh said.

But by then, the self-described local yokel had earned their confidence with a breadth of knowledge accrued over 25 years in the same real estate market, and eventually sold them on the East Eisenhower location that would become the first Shopko store in Colorado.

“A lot of times we work with people who we have no clue about. They just won’t identify themselves,” Stroh said. “I’ll drive them up and down the Front Range and tell them stories about different aspects of life, whether we have an adequate labor base and labor pool, how far people will commute from different communities, and talk about the political climates in the different cities.”

And if the client is smart, he or she has already done their research on those topics and is planning to seek yet another opinion, perhaps from a residential Realtor, to confirm their conclusions, Stroh added.

“You kind of have to crawl on your knees to do business with them, but I always try to say the truth,” Stroh said.

Because his firm is relatively small, Stroh said, companies that need to be assured of confidentiality often find their way to his door.

“I’m one person they can kind of own, if you will,” Stroh said. “They know you’re not going to divulge what they’re doing and why.”