In this episode of Broker’s Angle, Hal Coopersmith sits down with Matthew Siegel, co-founder of Lantern, to discuss his journey in commercial real estate—from his early days at Cushman & Wakefield to co-founding his own firm. They dive into the importance of hard work, attention to detail, and long-term relationships in the brokerage business. Matthew shares valuable insights on building a service-driven, mission-oriented company and his thoughts on the evolving retail landscape.

Transcript

Hal Coopersmith: Welcome to Broker’s Angle. I’m Hal Coopersmith. In this episode, we are talking to Matthew Siegel, co-founder of Lantern. Welcome, Matthew.

Matthew Seigel: Thank you, Hal. Nice to be here.

Hal Coopersmith: here. So, how did you first get into brokerage?

Matthew Seigel: It was a little bit of a story of timing and luck. I come from a retail background. I grew up in Los Angeles. My uncle was in, and his family was, generationally in the retail business. And, I came to New York after university and, I was planning on going to law school to join the ranks of your colleagues and decided that it wasn’t going to be the right fit for me for a number of reasons. And, I spent a lot of time researching how to get into commercial real estate. And I applied at probably 20 different firms, ranging from, public REITs that were, lenders to boutique brokerage firms and large brokerage firms. And, a little bit of luck, which, frankly, was greatly appreciated at that time in my life. One of my closest friends was resigning from position at Cushman & Wakefield. He introduced me to, who became my mentor, Joanne Podell. And, I applied to Cushman and started in 2005.

Hal Coopersmith: And so what did you learn in, at Cushman?

Matthew Seigel: Cushman was a great learning experience for me. The corporate world has changed so much over my professional career. But starting at Cushman & Wakefield was a great learning experience in discipline. The firm at the time still felt like a partnership. It’s become much larger now. But the discipline, the attendance for meetings, the dress code, the presentation, the accountability, the demand on phone calls and canvas outreach, attendance of meetings, it was invaluable for me, starting out in the business to understand, how to be accountable as a professional and I look back at my time at Cushman & Wakefield very fondly.

Hal Coopersmith: How long were you at Cushman for?

Matthew Seigel: I was at Cushman for almost 10 years. Yeah, almost 10 years.

Hal Coopersmith: And then you decided to start Lantern.

Matthew Seigel: There was a brief stop in between. I had a chance to go work with another mentor, somebody who taught me, equal amounts but very different skill sets. I had a little over five years where I was had the good fortune of collaborating with Joe sit to run what was, it is still called Thor Retail Advisors. It was a third party brokerage business, which was affiliated with Thor equities. So I reported to Joe, we built that business into a really reputable, division of Thor and had great success and equally look at that time very fondly and contributing to my professional style in a very different way.

Hal Coopersmith: How did you build that business?

Matthew Seigel: Really, that was hard work because the business unit was, had been established, was kind of finding its, foundation when I joined. And, I would say, some of the professionalism, the hard work, the skill set that I, you know, now that I look back with almost 20 years of professional experience, and understand is, important to me as an individual, I brought to the table there, which is really hard work, attention to detail, administration, and focus.

Hal Coopersmith: You’ve mentioned attention to detail, accountability, those sorts of things repeatedly. What are some examples of that that you’ve kind of learned and they were really important in your career?

Matthew Seigel: I’m very comfortable in the role of service provider. We are, I think there are a number of really successful brokerage professionals across all verticals in commercial real estate whose names are brands. I see myself as a humble servant to the client and I feel genuinely committed to that role, and so, just focusing on the best possible work has always been my number one priority. And that comes before anything else. And sometimes the work isn’t sexy. Sometimes it’s, repetitive, labor intensive, and doesn’t require creativity. Sometimes it’s really, really exciting and you get to see and touch and feel results. And that’s one of the beautiful things about retail real estate is to be able to go and actually experience your work. But across the board, I think it’s really important to stay even and balanced across all aspects of the trade in the industry. Because at the end of the day, you have to get comfortable in my role, accepting the fact that you don’t make decisions.

Hal Coopersmith: And so just bringing it back to detail, right? What’s an example of details that you’re looking at for your clients?

Matthew Seigel: Well, we’re not attorneys, but we review the lease from start to finish, we confirm business terms and conditions, we are actively involved in making sure that all of the necessary documents are populated, up to date. We stay involved in all correspondence and confirm with outside council or with design and professional teams to make sure that everything is buttoned up.And, really have just invested a lot in process. And so everything gets touched by our firm across the whole life cycle of the transaction.

Hal Coopersmith: And so you talked about your journey. You started at Cushman & Wakefield, went to Thor Retail Advisors, then you decided to start Lantern. What was behind that decision?

Matthew Seigel: Well, I felt that, alongside my co-founder and the two of us had what I would describe as comparable institutional professional experience, both in terms of size of organizations we had worked for, duration that we had been, serving in roles for other people’s visions. And myself and my co-founder shared a vision of a high touch kind of mission oriented, long-term thinking organization. One of the challenges in the brokerage business is that, the compensation model rewards short-term thinking. And so we wanted to build something that provided service equally at times of need and at times where we were really just investing in relationship capital.So our goals have always been to be partners for the duration as opposed to serving, enthusiastically when there’s an opportunity for us. So we believe in co-investing in the relationships, and that’s really, really important to us.

That was kind of the shared vision for starting the company. We also believed, in, as the, the institutional commercial real estate. Provider landscape continued to consolidate through acquisitions and initial public offerings and companies got bigger and bigger that there would be a place in the market for an independent firm that really provided best in class service. So we thought that there was an opportunity in the market and we also believed in our vision.

Hal Coopersmith: And what’s an example, aside from investing, in terms of a long term shared vision, or shared values?

Matthew Seigel: I would say, you know, consistency of service, and attention, responsiveness again, you know, I think there’s plenty of, this is not intended to be disparaging for the industry, but there’s plenty of my peers in the brokerage business that are excited to show up when there’s a fee opportunity presented, and it’s very different to be able to have the patience to continue to provide support, knowing that there may not be commercial opportunity in it for us and for the firm. And so, you know, continued service through in specifically, you know, let’s make a tangible sort of reference like, retailers go through growth cycles. So, for us to be able to provide the same quality of attention, the same accountability to show up on the same calls to invest in portfolio maintenance when it might not be a period of growth. And for our clients to know that we’re there through all aspects of the cycle is something that we felt was really, really important.

Hal Coopersmith: What are you seeing in the retail landscape right now?

Matthew Seigel: It’s an interesting time. I think, I would say in general, the market is healthy. rents have crept up in New York City pretty quickly. Retail rents, getting back to par in excess of par of, pre pandemic sort of cycle highs. So I think that’s something to pay attention to. The market, the supply demand, dynamic, I think is pretty healthy. The volume of high quality available space is, quite low. And so we’re starting to see that absorption put pressure on secondary and tertiary markets, to fill in, which is really nice. So I think in general, the market’s in good shape. Retail real estate coming out of COVID had, really seven years of cyclical, downturn. And so there was a period of time coming out of COVID with dynamic growth. I think that settled and we’re more towards a, sort of like balanced year to year growth, dynamic.

Hal Coopersmith: What do you think the future holds for Lantern?

Matthew Seigel: Oh, the future for us is, we do not have plans to materially grow in terms of size or head count. We really like our place in the market. So the future for us is very much organic growth. We believe strongly in mentorship and investing in young professionals. We have a very young team that we welcome to contribute to all aspects of the company, vision and growth and operations. So we’ll continue to grow organically and mentor and lift up our younger professionals, because they’re the future leaders of the company. And myself and my co founder both feel that you know, nothing would make us prouder than to have new leadership and strong voices at the company.

Hal Coopersmith: Well, that is a wonderful note to end things on. Matthew Siegel, thank you for being a part of Broker’s Angle.

Matthew Seigel: Thank you so much.