In the competitive world of industrial real estate, Aviva Sonenreich offers something few others can match: a lively Instagram presence and a TikTok account with more than 1 million followers.
In fact, her Instagram account is so popular the third-generation Denver-based real estate veteran was recently named the No. 1 commercial real estate professional on the platform by the Commercial Real Estate Influencers, or CREi, a group created to promote the use of social media by property professionals.
"Aviva has amassed the largest following on social media revolving around commercial real estate which she leverages for her client’s success," CREi said in its ranking of the top 85 CRE influencers on the social channel owned by Meta.
@realestatesource Follow my page to get ahead in real estate. #whenwomenwin #commercialrealestate
Sonenreich said she took to social media to expand her network and source business. She started her TikTok account, for instance, in early 2020 as the pandemic took hold. At the time, Sonenreich said, the phones stopped ringing because business basically shut down for three months. Shortly after she got on the platform, with the header "Learn Commercial Real Estate," she realized two things pretty quickly.
"One, I noticed that there was nobody on the internet giving people basic tips about commercial real estate," Sonenreich said in an interview. "And two, I noticed that people wanted to learn this. There was a need and very few people actually providing the information."
By simply sharing tips and knowledge, Sonenreich said she's been "able to amass the following and do deals and meet people [and] like-minded brokers literally nationwide. And it's been very rewarding and amazing for our company."
Her TikTok account @realestatesource now has more than 1.1 million followers, and her posts have garnered 8.6 million likes. Sonenreich's business Instagram account, where she includes a photo from her recent wedding, has more than 41,600 followers.
Sonenreich looks to generate buzz in other ways, too. Last week, she and her father, Izzy Sonenreich, who's been in commercial real estate for 43 years, renamed their firm The Warehouse Hotline, specializing in the leasing, sale and management of industrial properties. Founded in 1984, the brokerage previously was known as Sun Empire Properties.
The company began to focus on warehouses when her late grandfather acquired an industrial building at 6070 E. 49th Ave. in Commerce City, Colorado, in 1984, Aviva Sonenreich said. She said she takes pride in continuing the business her grandfather Moishe Sonenreich started after he and his wife, Dysia, survived religious persecution in Nazi Germany.
"I wanted to name our brokerage something that the second a consumer saw the name, they knew what we did," Aviva Sonenreich said. "And so The Warehouse Hotline was established because I want to be the source for warehousing in the world, and that's what we plan to do."
Moreover, the name reflects the strength of the U.S. industrial market and urgency to find large storage and distribution and fulfillment centers, Sonenreich said.
"I decided that I wanted to take us into the future with social media, and I wanted to give us a company name that could stand out and stand up to the big firms and show that there's more to a commercial real estate brokerage than a few last names," she said.
Over the weekend, The Warehouse Hotline closed on the sale of 320 acres about five minutes south of Denver International Airport to Opus Group, a Minneapolis-based commercial property firm that plans to develop several industrial buildings on the land, Sonenreich said. The site, part of a larger 640-acre property, sold for about $50 million.
The sellers were two partnerships controlled by Izzy Sonenreich and the McVey family, whose ancestors homesteaded the property in the 1800s, Aviva Sonenreich said.
While some might question the value of spending time on TikTok and Instagram, Sonenreich sees nothing but potential.
"I plan to continue to build this brand and really just push the ball in commercial real estate further because we can do better when it comes to the internet," she said. "I genuinely feel like commercial real estate, as brokers, we haven't even figured out 2% of the power of the internet."