WORTHE/1stjc/mark2nd

Jeffrey M. Worthe

Broker

M. David Paul & Associates LLP

Age: 29

There’s really no secret to cutting multi-million dollar real estate deals, says Jeffrey M. Worthe of M. David Paul & Associates LLP.

“It’s mostly a lot of hard work and a lot of hours, as this is a real competitive market,” Worthe says, adding that he puts in about 70 hours a week at the office and at home.

The extra effort helped Worthe close some of the hottest commercial deals of 1996 in his specialty area the entertainment industry.

Worthe led efforts to acquire a 200,000 square foot office building in Burbank that was converted into a production building for Walt Disney Co.

He was also responsible for the acquisition of a 300,000 square foot building in Santa Monica, 100,000 square feet of which he helped lease to Viacom’s MTV Networks division.

“His real estate savvy is well beyond his years,” notes Dennis Richardson, vice president of Cushman Realty Corp., which represented MTV on the deal.

Worthe describes M. David Paul, which is headed by the company’s namesake and his own father-in-law, as “conservative” in the business it assumes. For example, it refrained from adding even one office building to its portfolio between 1985 and 1996.

“You need to focus on tenants from industries that have the financial strength to go through the down times and will be around for a long time,” Worthe says of his “stable” entertainment industry clients.

“Every day I’m dealing with different tenants, which means top people at large companies, and top lawyers and then an executive from an international company,” he says.

Graduating from UC Santa Barbara in 1988 with an economics degree, Worthe’s first job was with CB Commercial in its investment properties division. He says he jumped into real estate “when the industry was at its hottest. When the market went down, I believed that it was going to come back, and a lot of people got out of the business then, which opened some doors.

“Real estate is a great way to accumulate wealth and you can do it on your own,” he says. “Plus, you can do it forever unlike professions like being a pilot where you have to retire at a certain age.”

However, he doesn’t plan to keep up the all-consuming work lifestyle he has led the past several years indefinitely. “I’ll keep up like this as long as the market is strong, but obviously I don’t want to work like this forever,” he says.

Wade Daniels