You could say commercial real estate runs in Mark Kolsrud's blood. It would be a bit of a cliche, but it's true nonetheless.

The 50-year-old commercial real estate veteran recently left longtime employer Cassidy Turley for a senior vice president's position at competitor Colliers International.

Kolsrud was well schooled in the the art of the deal by his grandfather and father, both of whom were commercial real estate brokers. (His dad leased space at the IDS center in the 1970s.) The younger Kolsrud got into the business in 1984 at Robert Boblett & Associates, leasing space in about 20 industrial buildings. By the mid-1990s, he had developed into a full-fledged investment sales broker.

A Burnsville native, Kolsrud says the pull of the real estate business is simple: No two days, no two deals and no two people are alike. Every day at the office is different, offering a level of challenge and variety that he still finds tantalizing.

He says he jumped to Colliers (a division of Welsh Cos.) because it's a bigger organization with more resources and a bigger team. He'll stay on the investment side of commercial real estate. He started a week ago. "It's been fantastic," he says.

Janet Moore covers commercial real estate for the Star Tribune.