The Fourth-Generation Broker Who Never Planned to Be One
The Crexi Team
April 7, 2026
Gordon Lamphere grew up watching his family run a Chicago commercial real estate brokerage and wanted nothing to do with it. Instead, he went to law school at Tulane. But in his words, it didn't take. He came home, picked up a phone, and started doing brokerage. Nearly a decade later, he's a Vice President at Van Vlissingen & Co. one of Chicago's oldest commercial real estate firms, working industrial and office deals across Chicagoland, and a 2026 Crexi Award winner.
You didn't plan on going into the family business. What happened?
I wish I could say it was intentional, particularly because I'm a fourth-generation broker, but I did not intend to become a commercial real estate broker. I watched how hard my parents worked growing up to run a successful firm, and I thought, maybe there's another way to do things. I went to law school and fully intended to practice. And as soon as I left Tulane Law, I realized very quickly that law was not for me. I came home, started doing brokerage, and I loved it.
Was there a deal early on that made you feel like you'd found the right career?
One deal I remember involved a small manufacturer. We helped them find a home despite the fact that they needed a very high amount of power for the small amount of space they were in. Watching somebody who was a first-generation American, who did everything the right way, come in and struggle to get their business off the ground, and being able to be part of that success, that's when it clicked.
This is an awesome job. You're helping people make their dreams a reality. That's very different from a lot of law jobs where you end up fighting with people quite often. This is really a job about finding a meeting of the minds and helping someone's dreams come true.
Chicago's industrial and office markets are moving in very different directions. How do you navigate that?
It's a massive divide between asset classes. Industrial remains pretty robust relative to historical trends, particularly in the logistics world, and for Chicagoland, trucking is huge. And then you have sectors of the market that, since 2020 and the COVID pandemic, have seen massive declines. The office sector especially. It's a tale of two cities.
In that environment, data can be the difference between pricing a deal well or pricing it very poorly, because things are evolving so quickly. You don't want to be caught holding a property with a ginormous price tag.
You've described speed as the defining competitive factor. What does that look like in practice for Van Vlissingen?
Speed, it's all speed. We're doing the same things we've always done; data is similar; it's just that the process of acquiring and processing both data and transactions is so much faster than it ever was before. And the consumer demands more. If you don't facilitate that speed, you're either leaving your consumer behind or you're going to be left behind.
The alerts we get on Crexi, particularly on our phones, showing who's looked at a listing so you can respond quickly, are especially valuable for the institutional investor who might be scanning the market on their own. Being the first voice on the other end of the phone when they're reaching out about a commercial real estate need can be really valuable.
When you won the Crexi Award, what was your reaction?
I was proud of our team. Effective brokerage doesn't operate through one individual. It operates through a team. Our team has done a great job of helping facilitate deals, and I think Crexi provides an excellent platform for that team to operate from. The folks in the back of our office do a phenomenal job of taking data and leads and transforming them into results.
You use AI heavily for data processing but you're skeptical about it for pricing. Why?
AI is tremendous at processing information in a way that helps explain concepts, details, and strategy, and can augment and assist. But I think it is particularly overvalued for pricing in commercial real estate. We've seen deal after deal where AI, if you're the buyer, will say the property is worth less, and if you're the seller, it'll say it's worth more. A lot of that comes down to the fact that it's designed to tell you what you want to hear. And as a result, it doesn't always tell you the truth. Ultimately, it's not the AI buyer or the AI seller that tells you where the price is. It's the market.
What do you think brokerage looks like in ten years?
Less grinding through data, more time in the field. I think AI is going to lead us into a world where there's less back-office data processing and less of the worst part of our industry, which is just grinding through data, and more human connection and time spent out in the field really understanding properties and how commercial real estate works. I'm excited for the next ten years. There's a tremendous opportunity ahead for people. They shouldn't be nearly as scared as they are, but they do need to be prepared for a lot of change.
Learn more about the 2026 Crexi Platinum Awards and see the full list of recipients here.
