Former Real Estate Hotshot Stays Grounded in the Sky

Redemption, or something like it.

Each time Jeff Collins jets across the United States to tout the benefits of Big Data, he flies farther from the wreckage of yesteryear and closer to the promise of tomorrow.

In December 2006, Collins, the former director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Arkansas, left that job and its prestigious title to try his hand at real estate development.

And things just didn’t work out.

He and wife Amy Farmer got a divorce. The economy tanked. Then came a $10-million bankruptcy and the nagging question of how a man with a doctorate in economics could be blindsided and choked by the Great Recession. Indeed, Collins lost it all, and as the public face of the Northwest Arkansas real estate boom, his story was well-told when it all went bust.

But give this to Collins: He may have shed a few tears in the darkest of hours, but he didn’t quit. When his real estate consultancy, Streetsmart Data Services, struggled in 2009, Collins picked himself up and got a job with PROS, the Houston-based purveyor of pricing software to billion-dollar companies.

Though his work is linked to sophisticated analytics, the end goal in pricing is simple: “If you sell a pen, you’ll get a little bit more for each pen you sell,” he said as an example of what he does for a living.

The work pays well and keeps Collins extremely busy. He was out of town on business a grueling 10 months last year, meaning he spent a lot of time in the sky, in hotels, and working with competitive decision makers at some of the world’s largest companies.

It’s a long way from the lush comfort and safety of academia, and Collins openly admits that he still has a few regrets about leaving UA. But the world keeps turning and, thus, Collins must endure the rigors of life on the road — economy flights, rental cars, dinner by himself and lonely nights without friends and family.

“When you get on a plane on Sunday, get off in London on Monday, work all day Monday and Tuesday, and come home on Wednesday, you’re really tired, and then you get up and work Thursday,” he said.

Collins, 50, was a member of the 2001 class of the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal’s Forty Under 40. In his heyday, Collins was the one who told everybody how strong the real estate market was, and it was Collins who helped found the Skyline Report, a quarterly assessment of commercial and residential property in Northwest Arkansas. He went to a lot of luncheons, shook a lot of hands and did a lot of press interviews. His was the booming voice of regionalism.

The question is, will anyone here ever listen to him again? Collins sure hopes so.

“I get to work with big companies and help them solve big problems, but what I don’t get to do is be part of working with this community,” he said. “I would be willing to give up income to be able to come back to the community in a significant way.”

Collins has not turned his back on the market, though now he invests in equities, not real estate. He said he leads a leaner lifestyle, knows his weaknesses and lives with the knowledge that at one point in time he’d gotten in over his head — a place to which he does not want to return.

“I’ve had a lot of time to reflect, and I have a much better idea of where my blind spots are,” he said. “I have a plan and I’m executing my plan.”

Collins still lives in Fayetteville and owns a house in Rolling Hills with his new wife Kristin. And Collins still has two daughters, Erin and Zoe, who live here.

His girls are the main reasons he stuck around, Collins said, and as long as they remain, so will he. But he just went out to California with his 16-year-old daughter to look at different colleges. If she decides to attend UA, Collins would be glad to stay in Fayetteville, but if she heads west, he might just head that way himself. Thanks to his work as an international consultant, he’s flexible.

“I can live anywhere,” he said. “Anyplace is on the radar. All I need is an airport.”