Top Commercial Real Estate Brokerage Firms of 2023
CPE unveils the 25 leading firms overall—plus the top performers for investment and leasing—in our latest annual ranking.
You can also read our other Top Brokerage Firms rankings.
Note: The following noteworthy firms did not submit responses: JLL, NAI Global and Eastdil Secured.
Key: O=Office, I=Industrial, R=Retail, M=Multifamily, HC=Health Care, Ho=Hospitality, X=Other
To be included in upcoming surveys, email Agota Felhazi at [email protected].
Dealmakers Forge Ahead Despite Hesitancy
Image by PeopleImages/iStockphoto.com
Post-pandemic, the commercial real estate industry has encountered new challenges due to higher interest rates and a gloomier economic outlook.
Fundamentals were dampened for all property types, but especially office. The national office vacancy rate increased 90 basis points in 2022, ending the year at 16.5 percent, according to CommercialEdge data. In addition, transaction volume for the office sector dropped more than 20 percent from 2021 to 2022.
The industrial sector also cooled from its red-hot expansion in recent years. Rising interest rates and an overheating of prices led to a more than 20 percent decrease in transactions in 2022 compared to 2021, according to the same source. In addition, the national industrial vacancy rate saw a slight uptick in December, ending the year at 3.9 percent and marking a 10-basis-point increase month-over-month.
Despite the challenges the commercial real estate industry faced, the firms in our 2023 Top Brokerage Firms ranking adapted to meet their clients’ changing needs and reported relatively strong performance in 2022.
Eighty percent of the companies on our list reported transaction and/or leasing volumes across five or more asset types. Offering brokerage services across a diversified array of sectors likely helped mitigate weaknesses in some property types and helped firms maintain strong brokerage activity.
In addition to topping our leasing and sales volume rankings, CBRE held its longstanding position at the top of this year’s list. The firm reported an impressive $290 billion in total investment sales volume in 2022. While this was a slight drop from 2021, it was more than double the volume reported by any of the other firms. CBRE saw a slight drop in leasing activity year-over-year, reporting 1.3 billion square feet leased in 2022.
Cushman & Wakefield and Marcus & Millichap rounded out the top three in the investment sales ranking, as their respective $135.7 billion and $89.7 billion in transaction volume in 2022 helped boost them to the top. Cushman & Wakefield also ranked second based on square feet leased over the 2020-2022 period, followed by Colliers.
—Claire Spadoni, Senior Research Analyst, Yardi Matrix
Methodology
Commercial Property Executive’s ranking of the 25 Top Commercial Real Estate Brokerage Firms is based on self-reported data from all firms. We considered various factors including a firm’s performance in 2022 and previous years, and reviewed data that reflects investment sales and leasing activity. The ranking represents what we feel is a logical balance between firm growth and market share. Ranking factors are not limited to the data that appear on this page.
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