SDSU real estate program director trades travel for academia

The walls were practically bare in Michael Lea's office. Décor on his desk and bookshelf was sparse and a laptop he brought with him from home sat atop a desk with no paper on it in sight.

The office was quiet.

It was the opposite of the hallways on the other side of the wall to his right, which were teeming with students heading to and from classes in San Diego State University's business administration building.

Most of the students didn't know Lea was there.

A visitor asked a small group of business students chatting in the hallway if they knew where Lea's office was and was met with puzzled looks and the question: "Who's Michael Lea?"

It was to be expected, to a certain degree.

When the visitor found her destination, Lea joked there wasn't much to his office, but couldn't be blamed. He was only appointed the director of the university's fledgling Corky McMillin Center for Real Estate a couple weeks prior.

But Lea is definitely not new to academia.

After studying economics and business administration at Iowa State University and the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, Lea went straight into the academic arena. He taught at Cornell University in the early 1980s and was tenured.

However, he heard Washington, D.C., calling with the opportunity to help shape national policy, and joined Freddie Mac. Through the mid-1980s, Lea served as Freddie Mac's chief economist. After four years, he headed to San Diego with an opportunity from the now-defunct Imperial Savings. The bank went under in late 1990, and Lea had to go back to the drawing board with his career plans. "I'm sitting here in 1991, thinking 'OK, what am I going to do now?'" said Lea. "But my academic and Washington, D.C., training really helped me a lot for allowing me to rebrand myself."

He and a partner put in a proposal with Fannie Mae to study international mortgage markets and won a yearlong contract. The year launched Lea into a new phase of his career: international real estate with his new firm, Cardiff Consulting Services.

Over a span of nearly 20 years, Lea did business in countries like Canada, Australia and Denmark -- eventually getting stamps for about 40 countries on his passport.

He would bring his wife and son along when he could -- something crucial to his family life, as he had about 180 days of travel a year in the late 1990s.The lifestyle was hectic, but he relished it.

"It was constantly different," said Lea about his international consulting work. "I was never doing the same thing over and over like at some desk jobs."

The travel toned down when Lea continued his international work with Countrywide from 2000 to 2004.

He helped the company expand its global market development. However, Lea said he thought the company "really wasn't serious about doing anything overseas" and returned to Cardiff Consulting.

Lea would travel up to half the year, but still tried to find time to teach. He was a lecturer at the University of California-San Diego for three years, but found it was too difficult juggling international consulting with being a professor.

Within the last couple of years, Lea slowed down his international travels. He said he feels like it is the right time for him to contribute to both students and the local industry.

He began teaching a few courses each spring at San Diego State as an executive in residence for its real estate program. It was there that the real estate advisory board asked him to lead a full-time real estate center.

"I thought that's a great combination for me because I'd like to be involved with academics but I also want to be involved with industry," he said. "This particular position is just an interface between that."

San Diego is not known for having a real estate hub like some of the other national, major metropolitan areas -- by Lea's account, it is a relatively small market.

However, he said he sees potential for local universities to take a larger role by providing highly-qualified employees and practitioners for the future, as well as doing research to benefit the industry.

While the University of San Diego has the Burnham-Moores Center for Real Estate -- which hosts large, regional events like forecasts -- Lea said he envisions the SDSU center as something smaller and more intimate.

Lea said SDSU plans to focus on its undergraduate program -- another difference between it and the Burnham-Moores center.

"At a school like San Diego State, a large portion of the students is not going to graduate school. It's not a vocational education, but you want your students to be prepared for the professional world," he said. "You have to teach the theory behind (real estate practices), but you have to bring it into reality for students."SDSU has a student-run real estate society as well as a real estate major. The 90 undergraduate real estate majors make up less than 0.3 percent of the approximately 34,000 students on campus. But Lea hopes to see that number grow.

One of the goals of the center is to increase the exposure of SDSU's real estate program.

He said the center's design is "multi-faceted" and hopes to bring in students who are interested in related fields like construction management, city planning and economics.

He said he wants to the faculty work together to show how the disciplines are interconnected in the real world."We want to provide something of value for our students," he said.

Though the plans have not been set in stone nor has the center truly launched, Lea said he is enthusiastic to increase the exposure of SDSU's real estate department.Most business majors may not know him yet, but if all goes according to plan, the San Diego real estate industry will not need to ask, "Who is Michael Lea?"