One of the things Cory Zelnik and I talked about on his podcast — and a theme I keep coming back to in every leasing meeting we have at the firm — is that the best brokers don’t follow the market. They understand it better than everyone else.

That distinction sounds small. It is not. It is everything.

Following vs. Understanding

Following the market means watching what just happened — what comp just closed, what rent just got paid, what tenant just signed where. It is necessary work. Every broker does it. But following the market means you are always a step behind, because by the time the comp prints, the deal is done and the next opportunity has already moved on.

Understanding the market is different. Understanding the market means you can tell a client, six months before the comp prints, why that deal is going to happen, who is going to do it, and what it will mean for the surrounding submarket. Understanding the market means you know which tenants are quietly expanding and which are quietly pulling back. It means you know which landlords will hold the line and which are about to capitulate. It means you can see the deal before the deal exists.

Where Deep Market Knowledge Actually Comes From

You cannot buy market understanding. You earn it, year by year, deal by deal, conversation by conversation. The brokers in our market who have it share a few characteristics:

• They are in the market physically, every week. Driving the corridors. Walking the centers. Sitting in parking lots watching how the trade area actually behaves on a weekday afternoon. There is no substitute.
• They talk to operators, not just to other brokers. The leasing director at the regional grocer. The acquisitions officer at the off-price chain. The franchisee who just opened her third location. These are the people who know what is actually happening — not the people circulating the same broker rumors.
• They study the data and ignore the noise. Anyone can pull a demographic ring. Few people can tell you which ring matters for which tenant — and why the ring that matters for a Trader Joe’s is not the ring that matters for a Lidl.
• They remember. The best brokers in this market can tell you what every center on a given corridor traded for, when, to whom, and why. That is not luck. That is forty years of paying attention.

Why This Matters More in 2026

Every retail real estate firm in America now has access to the same heat maps, the same mobile-device foot traffic data, and the same AI underwriting models. The data has been commoditized. What has not been commoditized is the judgment to know which data to trust, which to discount, and what the data is leaving out.

An aerial photograph does not tell you that the center across the street has a new owner who is starting to negotiate harder. A demographic report does not tell you that the school district just rezoned and the trade area composition is shifting. A foot-traffic dashboard does not tell you why the anchor tenant is suddenly closing earlier on Sundays. The market tells you those things — but only if you are in it.

What We Tell Our Team

Every new broker who joins Schuckman Realty hears the same thing in their first month: spend your first six months canvassing. Not at a desk. Not on Zoom. In the car. Walking the centers. Meeting the operators. Asking questions. The brokers who short-circuit that process are the brokers who will eventually get out-positioned by the ones who didn’t.

It is the same discipline my father modeled when he founded this firm in 1978, and it is the same discipline that has kept Schuckman Realty in front of every meaningful retail deal in the New York metropolitan trade areas for nearly five decades. The technology has changed. The geography has changed. The tenants have changed. The discipline has not.