Executives at Big Brokerages Snap Up Boutique Firms To Get Talent for Expansion

Newmark executives are doing it. Cresa’s leadership is doing it, and so are the heads of Cushman & Wakefield, Savills and Colliers.

They are all buying boutique brokerages, grabbing up the brokers who are accomplished enough to let those smaller shops stand on their own as a way to enter a new market or fortify their presence in an existing one. And the global shops are looking for more opportunities to add more of those big fish in the small boutique ponds.

Take the leadership of Cresa, which just closed on its acquisition of Esrp, a Frisco, Texas-based tenant representation firm with offices in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and Houston. Cresa bought Esrp to add the latter’s 50 brokers to expand Cresa’s presence in Texas. And the top executives of Chicago-based Cresa have more potential purchases in the pipeline.

“We are in discussions with a few other firms around the country that fit culturally and strategically and will continue to grow via recruiting, winning new business and acquisition, where the fit is right,” Cresa CEO Tod Lickerman said in an email to CoStar News.

Esrp was founded in 2013 as E. Smith Realty Partners by industry veteran Sharon Morrison, who served as CEO, and Hall of Fame Dallas Cowboys running back Emmitt Smith. Morrison now is a managing partner and director at Cresa. Esrp had opportunities to be acquired in the past but concluded that private firm Cresa seemed like the right match.

“We were looking for an opportunity to grow, and we didn’t have to do anything, so it was a really great position to be in,” Morrison said in an interview. “But as a leadership team, we’ve had other initiatives over the past several years that were not necessarily geographic growth and scale. It allowed just a natural transition into not being forced into a big global public company that does everything with hundreds of thousands of employees.”

Cresa’s acquisition of Esrp is the latest indication that brokerage executives think business will get back to pre-pandemic levels as evidenced by jumps in earnings reported over the past week by several publicly traded firms.

Late last year, Chicago-based Cushman & Wakefield paid $500 million to acquire a 40% stake in Greystone’s agency, servicing and FHA financing businesses, and Cushman appointed John O’Neill, an 18-year veteran of the firm, as president of U.S. multifamily capital markets to oversee its investment.

Cushman & Wakefield said the partnership would give its clients more direct access to debt products to buy, refinance, build and refurbish apartment properties. In July, Savills acquired T3 Advisors in an effort to expand its business in the life science industry.

Newmark just picked up a Dallas-based boutique brokerage operation of its own when it acquired Open Realty Advisors and Open Realty Properties, collectively known as Open Realty. Newmark said Open Realty’s Mark Masinter, Johnny Spiegel and Steve Merkle would join Newmark in leadership roles to help Newmark expand its global retail platform. Open Realty once advised Apple’s Steve Jobs on the Mac and iPhone maker’s North American retail expansion

For Newmark, it marked its second acquisition of a boutique brokerage in two months. In April, the New York-based brokerage bought McCall & Almy, a Boston-based tenant representation and real estate advisory firm. Bill McCall, part of the team that founded McCall & Almy over 32 years ago, said joining Newmark would provide his operation with resources to let it better serve clients in Boston and beyond.

“As Newmark continues its growth course, bolstering services in key U.S. gateway cities is paramount,” Newmark CEO Barry Gosin said in a statement. “Acquiring firms with best-in-class talent and unparalleled expertise strengthens our client offerings in these markets.”

The firm also made an overseas acquisition with its purchase of BH2, a London-based real estate advisory firm in what was a major statement of the brokerage’s intent to grow in the United Kingdom. BH2 is led by Tony Gibbon, one of London’s best-known investment agents. He joined Newmark with his partners Dan Roberts, Sam Boreham and Rupert Williams. The acquired BH2 business will operate as Newmark BH2.

Big brokerage houses are also snapping up affiliates in secondary and tertiary markets and buying project, construction and investment management firms as well as they look to grow revenue quickly.

In March, Colliers acquired its Colliers Greater Cincinnati-Dayton and Colliers Cleveland-Akron operations and incorporated them into the company to give the brokerage a stronger presence in the four Ohio markets. Shenan Murphy, who had served as CEO of those operations, now is vice chairman of Colliers Greater Cincinnati-Dayton and Colliers Cleveland-Akron.