Specifically, what Coate is doing is something few in commercial real estate are devoted to: serving small nonprofit organizations.
That's not a group typically at the center of eye-popping deals for high-end office space that set the real estate world atwitter - conventionally or social-media-wise.
Quite frankly, it's a venture Coate's current boss wasn't sure about when he hired her in 2009, in an economy unkind to even veteran real estate deal-makers focusing on more traditional markets.
"I thought we were taking a bit of a chance," Doug Sayer, president and chief executive officer of Colliers International-Philadelphia, said last week. "I really did not understand the nonprofit real estate business. I do now."
Not only that, Colliers matches every donation to a nonprofit that Coate makes. She usually contributes 5 percent to 10 percent of her commission to each organization whose deal she brokers.
"I'm sure I'm the only real estate broker with a master's in social work," quipped Coate, 57, a South Philadelphia Quaker and mother of three, who started her career as a social-services caseworker in Chester County.
In general, nonprofit groups are a burgeoning sector in Philadelphia, growing 40 percent between 2000 and 2009, said Sean Coghlan, a market-research analyst at Jones Lang LaSalle Americas Inc. Nonprofit groups occupy 3 percent to 4 percent of the office market in the city's central business district, or 1.4 million to 1.8 million square feet, he said.
Coate's target clients are nonprofit groups typically in need of 2,500 to 15,000 square feet.
The organizational structures of nonprofit groups, their funding challenges and notoriously slow decision-making tendencies, aren't for everyone.
