It's not easy being lean.

• Author: Shackelford, Susan
• Position: North Carolina real estate developers face slowdown

As the fat '80s give way to the hungry '90s, developers are learning to live on property-management fees.

In the roaring '80s, real-estate developers enjoyed the same kind of glamour image otherwise reserved for Wall Street sharpies and computer whiz kids.

Now, the highfliers are coming down to earth - and for some, it's a painful landing. Take Chris Branch. After three years in the roller-coaster construction business, he couldn't wait to finish his M.B.A. at UNC-Chapel Hill in '89 and become a developer. "Little did I know," he says, "I was jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire."

Before he finished his first development at Charlotte-based Summit Properties, he found out it was going to be his last - at least for a while. Summit moved him into property management.

To put his nose to the grindstone doing something as unsexy as managing a building is a comedown for a budding Donald Trump. But Branch considers himself lucky. Many former developers "are walking the streets with resumes in hand," he says. "It's a marginal business right now."

That view seems a bit overstated, based on BUSINESS NORTH CAROLINA's 1991 list of the state's most-active developers. The rankings, based on projects that are under construction or newly completed during the year ended April 30, indicate the construction market isn't dead. Big downtown office buildings in Charlotte (developed by Charter Properties and Hesta Properties) and Raleigh (York-Hannover Developments) pumped up the office-space listing. New shopping centers in Pineville (Carter & Associates), Asheville (Crown American) and Cary (New Market Development) lead the retail ranking.

But the slowdown is obvious when compared with last year. For example, five developers said they each built more than a half-million square feet of industrial space in 1989; last year no one reached that level. Next year's list is expected to be even skimpier, given a dearth of start-ups.

Not surprisingly, more commercial developers are elbowing their way into property management, fighting for the fees that can keep them afloat. In good times, management fees are "just something that comes in and aren't paid a lot of attention to," says Charles Madsen, vice president of Binswanger Southern in Charlotte.

"Now, management fees that come in on a monthly basis are being paid a lot of attention to. They pay the bills. Developers have all gotten into the management business."

But it's a major shift in diet to go from...