Leo Cohen is an inspiration in the real estate industry throughout Whatcom County. As a team owner and broker at Cohen Group NW, Leo has hit his stride while enhancing the community at large.
“I’ve done real estate for 10 years, but my perception of what I consider that I do has changed,” Cohen says. “It’s all the same fuel and all the same vehicle, but as I’ve gotten older and done the business longer, my perception has changed.”
Cohen labels his company as a true alliance between the Cohen Group, the Bellingham Regional Chamber of Commerce, and the Downtown Bellingham Partnership, alongside a number of other associations. “We want to help show people in Bellingham how to live in Bellingham,” he says. “Like where to find great businesses; that’s part of how I attract people to my business.”
But Cohen hasn’t always been in real estate. He is a working professional that has built a solid foundation and continues to grow in his career every single day, after dropping out of college. “I’m 32 years old, I’ve been in Bellingham for about 14 years, so all of my post-college life,” he says. “I came to Western on a soccer scholarship before deciding to drop out and get my real estate license. All of my best friends were doing it. I was a little more impulsive then, but I was ready for a path change once soccer was kind of fizzling out.”
After joining real estate and fully entering the workforce, Cohen began to understand Bellingham on a deeper level. “I started to see Bellingham,” he says. “I feel like when you’re in college, you only see one part of the city and I started to see all these different parts and components, organization, and hidden pockets — the beautiful things that make Bellingham what it is. That was in tandem with growing my real estate business while I was 22 years old.”
Working in corporate real estate helped get Cohen’s feet wet before he started his own business.
Cohen is immensely grateful for being named one of the Top 7 Under 40 for Whatcom Young Professionals, but he feels more comfortable discussing another passionate facet to his business: community work.
“A huge component of what we do in the community is events,” he says. “We do a Clean Water Happy Hour every month at Overflow Taps in partnership with a ton of local businesses, but it’s also to raise awareness for, and contribute to, clean water projects around the world. That’s our global picture. Locally, we do an event with Max Higbee, a May the 4th event, so it’s a Star Wars-themed trivia event at Stemma. We also love to connect with people we already know and love and support them, as well.”
The Cohen Group’s philosophy revolves around community with about 95% of their business based in Whatcom and the other five percent in Skagit. “We all live in Bellingham and a few people live in Lynden and Ferndale,” says Cohen. “This is where we live, and we care about what happens outside of this area, but we really care about the impact we have on the area we live in.”
As a business owner, Cohen sees the need communities feel for basic fundamentals and is drawn to helping in any way he can. “There’s a lot of people that don’t have the means, [who] need them,” he says. “If people have a disability, if they can’t provide food for their families, if they’re homeless — there are all these human needs. I think it’s our job to contribute effort. Everybody should be doing it and contributing. Every time something good happens for your business, something good happens to someone else.”
So, what’s next for Leo Cohen and his thriving real estate business?
“A big component of our work is with Live Bellingham Now and Building Bellingham; they’re not monetary components to the business, but they are marketing and connection arms of the business,” says Cohen. “We’re going to keep working on growing those and the goal is to be the glue between all these different organizations, helping them and lifting them up.”
The Cohen Group takes a pretty unique approach to real estate and sometimes Cohen is told he isn’t quite doing it the “right” way. “I’ve been told things like I’m not looking at the bottom line enough but the way we’re doing things is very different and we’re still in business so we must be doing something right,” he says. “We treat everyone with respect and our vendors with the utmost care and quality. That impact is launching us forward. I’m, of course, looking forward to growing my business. That’s the goal.”
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