Cannabis clients are, in short, a major source of revenue. Brokerage is a commission business. While commission rates may be the same for cannabis tenants, they often pay major premiums in rent if they're leasing. That means larger commissions for brokers.
Ripco, a brokerage that operates in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, is preparing for a boom in its cannabis business because all three states legalized marijuana this year. Some of its brokers have already built up practices by working in the medical-cannabis industry, so the company has held seminars and workshops on the variety of legal concerns and challenges for brokers that are new to cannabis real estate.
Bones said the market for industrial space exploded during the 2017"green rush" in California. He said he remembered smaller auto shops and contractors that suddenly saw prices for their 10,000-square-foot warehouses jump from $100 to $150 a square foot as cannabis tenants lined up to fill them with plants and processing equipment.
Property owners who hold mortgages from traditional nationwide lenders may be scared to sign a lease with a cannabis company as long as it's federally illegal. This means that brokers who work on cannabis deals have to get creative with finding funding for their clients, instead of working with more typical sources of funding.
The legal risks stem from the Controlled Substances Act, the statute that makes cannabis illegal at the federal level. DiPisa, the cannabis attorney, told Insider that the act permitted the Department of Justice to use civil-forfeiture laws to seize the property of anyone involved in the distribution or production of illegal drugs.
"There can be a perception that the cannabis dispensary is going to be the flower-child store of the 1960s," Spiegel of Coldwell Banker told Insider.
horrible