CBRE more than doubling brokers in industrial sales, leasing

In the battle for market share of Southern Nevada’s burgeoning industrial real estate sector, a big brokerage has scored a major win.

CBRE Las Vegas said Tuesday that it will more than double the number of brokers in its industrial sales and leasing practice.

Five industrial brokers on Monday left Voit Commercial Real Estate Services for CBRE, leaving Voit with two brokers in the submarket.

Voit’s Higgins and Toft team, made up of Kevin Higgins, Garrett Toft, Zac Zaher, Sean Zaher and Jake Higgins, made the move to CBRE. Brittany Kemer, a Voit marketing assistant, came with the team.

CBRE also lured industrial broker James Griffis away from MDL Group.

The additions boost CBRE’s industrial contingent from five to 11 brokers and “bring a tremendous amount of credibility” to an “already-great” industrial team at the brokerage, said Michael Newman, managing director of CBRE Las Vegas and industrial practice leader for the company’s Southwest region.

The move isn’t a surprise given the city’s hot industrial market. The subsector is by far the brightest spot in Southern Nevada’s slow real estate recovery. Industrial vacancy dropped to 5.8 percent in the second quarter, down three percentage points from 8.8 percent in the second quarter of 2014, and less than half of its 12.4 percent peak in 2012, said JJ Peck, CBRE’s research and marketing manager.

Meanwhile, office vacancy was at 20.3 percent, down from 21.6 percent a year earlier, while retail vacancy dipped to 9.7 percent, compared with 10.4 percent a year ago.

The industrial sector has also yielded some of the biggest development news for the city in the last year, including major new projects and tenants along the 215 Beltway and in North Las Vegas and Henderson. Developers have nearly 4 million square feet of industrial projects under construction or planned in the next year, Peck said. Two million square feet are already under way, compared with less than 350,000 square feet of office space and 530,000 square feet of retail space.

In the scramble for that growing business, both sides saw mutual benefits.

CBRE will boost its market share, Newman said, and the Higgins and Toft team can offer clients more assistance. CBRE has 169 offices in six countries, while Voit has 11 offices in Nevada, California and Arizona.

“In thinking about the future for the next five to 10 years, where did we want to position our team? With the CBRE culture, the CBRE network and the capabilities of its platform, we just thought it would be a good fit for us,” Higgins said.

Added Toft: “Coming away from assignments we didn’t win, we felt one of the reasons was the (brokerage) name on the door not having an institutional platform we could cross-sell, including asset services, and facilities and property management. We believe, with our capabilities teamed up with this new platform, we’ll be able to secure a lot of institutional business and build on some of our recent successes.”

One of those successes included advising Prologis on its new, 464,000-square-foot spec building at Pecos and Gowan roads. The building was the largest local spec industrial project in nearly a decade, and it kicked off today’s industrial boom.

“(Prologis) believed in what we thought was going to happen, and the market came to life after that building was built,” Higgins said.

It’s not Higgins’ first go-round with CBRE. He worked for the firm from 1984 to 2002, when he left to launch the local office of California-based Voit. He has more than 30 years of local commercial real estate experience, and was Voit’s top broker companywide in 11 of his 13 years with the firm, which has around 125 brokers.

Toft has more than 10 years of experience brokering commercial deals in the Las Vegas Valley.

A California-based Voit representative did not respond by press time to a request for comment.

Contact Jennifer Robison at jrobison@reviewjournal.com. Find @J_Robison1 on Twitter.