Commercial brokers bemoan end of wheeling-dealing era.

When Craig Stevens looks at the recent infusion of Wall Street investors into the Los Angeles real estate market, he sees the end of an era. And the end of a lifestyle.

"I'm a dinosaur," said Stevens, a self-described "rainmaker" commercial broker who has sold more than $1 billion in real estate during his 25 years in the business.

"Real estate used to be about salesmanship - schmoozing and socializing and getting people to trust you. Now it's just the spreadsheet that's based on very little knowledge."

Stevens, 53, finds his career at a crossroads now that the investment terrain has changed around him. He left the commercial brokerage Lee and Associates in December because he felt that "the guys back on Wall Street" - the real estate investment trusts and opportunity funds -weren't interested in mid-sized brokerages when dealing with the L.A. market. Instead, they chose either national commercial brokerages that offer an armada of analytical services or boutique firms that intimately know niche markets, he said.

Stevens, who is currently running a real estate consulting and brokerage operation out of his Sherman Oaks home, plans to join either a national or boutique firm by next month, But he looks toward his future with some resignation.

"It's not as much fun anymore," he said. "You don't have the relationship with the client that used to be there."

Allan Kotin, a real estate consultant at KMG Consulting, agrees that Wall Street has changed the way that West Coast brokers operate. And brokers, such as Stevens, are being hurt the most.

Those brokers "historically sold properties by using their personal knowledge," Kotin said. "Investors today are buying less into personal judgment and more into statistical and financial analysis."

That's in part because today's investors are more publicly accountable for their investments than the real estate buyers of the '80s.

Nationwide, REITS are buying more commercial properly these days than any other investor group. REITs accounted for 45.1 percent of the 750 big-property buys totaling $12.1 billion in the first quarter, according to the Koll National Real Estate Index report. That's up from 33.2 percent of the 1,200 similarly sized properties purchased in the fourth quarter.

Individual investors and partnerships accounted for 20.7 percent of the transactions in the first quarter, down from 31.3 percent in the fourth quarter of 1996, according to the Koll report.