Then and Now: Bennett completes merger to meet changing demands

When Clinton Bennett got his start in commercial real estate 20 years ago, he had a “sense that something unique was happening in Northwest Arkansas,” he said. “You could get a sense for the energy, trajectory and growth opportunities that were playing out.”

Now he continues to see the level of sophistication and scale of commercial real estate owners and deals evolve in the region.

“Commercial real estate owners, tenants and deals – the complexity of them is changing quite rapidly,” he said. “We’re growing into more of a second-tier market rather than a tertiary market that we’ve always been thought of as a small town.”

The deals are bigger and more complex, “and the interest in our market from people outside our market has grown significantly,” he said. “It was not common earlier in my career to have people from New York … Miami, or Chicago showing interest in investing in Northwest Arkansas — and now it’s quite common. We have a lot of outside money trying to find its way into this market. With that, you’re dealing with participants in the market that are much more sophisticated and experienced than was typical here in the past.”

To meet those demands Bennett recently merged his firm, Bennett Commercial Real Estate, with Focus Commercial Real Estate, which also made him co-owner of a property management division. Now, as co-founder and co-managing director, he believes the company, Focus Commercial Real Estate, with 11 brokers, is poised to meet the changing demand.

“We don’t want to be the biggest, but we do want to have a complete offering of commercial real estate services,” he said.

In his role, Bennett lays out “strategy and growth” to create “an office full of the most skilled, energetic, client-focused brokers in the market,” he said. “We’re trying to be commercial real estate specialists that have a level of knowledge that exceeds any of our competition. [Because] if we’re not creating value for our clients, then we’re irrelevant.”

A Pocahontas native, Bennett grew up in a rice farming family and worked on the farm for six years after graduating with an agriculture business degree from the University of Arkansas. Deciding that wasn’t the right path for him, he earned a master’s degree in business administration from the UA in 2004, then worked for Dallas Real Estate in Fayetteville. In 2007, he and some partners formed a Grub & Ellis Arkansas affiliate in Northwest Arkansas. In 2012 he opened a CBRE affiliate, and in 2015 the CBRE corporation acquired the affiliate.

“Ultimately I realized I was a little too entrepreneurial to enjoy being part of a multinational Fortune 500 company,” he said. “So at the end of 2019, I opened my own firm, Bennett Commercial Real Estate.”

Chosen for the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal’s Forty Under 40 class in 2009, Bennett also earned two prestigious designations within the commercial real estate industry. He is a Certified Commercial Investment Member (CCIM) (2006) and a member of the Society of Industrial Office Realtors (SIOR) (2016). He serves as president of the Arkansas SIOR chapter.

Bennett’s advice to younger brokers is “to operate with a sense of urgency, but patience is a virtue.” So, spending time on strategy is important, and consistency is key, he said. “The life of a commercial real estate deal is not short. It takes a long time to develop client relationships and takes a long time to execute on assignment, and it takes a long time to close on a commercial building. So, for us to get a commercial deal done, it can take 12 to 24 months, and people can get impatient and don’t stick around to follow it through to success. So that’s where I’m always trying to harp on — do the right thing every day and then be patient because it takes a while for results to come.”

Bennett is on the board of Equipped NWA and a member of the Northwest Arkansas Council.

An instrument-rated pilot, he flies for the nonprofit Angel Flight South Central. After work, he attends his teens’ sporting events, relaxes with his family on Beaver Lake and enjoys flying his airplane.