Cresa Acquires NYC Brokerage

Peter Sabesan, Managing Principal, Cresa. Image courtesy of Cresa

Commercial real estate advisory firm Cresa has acquired New York-based brokerage Vicus Partners. Both firms exclusively represent tenants.

Led by founders Bert Rosenblatt and Andrew Stein, alongside former COO Gabi Koshgarian, the nine-person team of Vicus Partners will join Cresa’s New York office, which is headed by Managing Principals Peter Sabesan and Richard Selig.

Vicus Partners, founded in 2007, is a boutique-type firm that has a portfolio of tenants ranging from startups to Fortune 500 companies in various fields, including advertising and media, finance, nonprofit, law, tech and education, among others.

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Founded in 1993, Cresa came to life as an alliance of five commercial real estate firms that exclusively served tenants. By 2008, the company already expanded to 50 offices. Tod Lickerman, former Cushman & Wakefield Americas CEO, came on board in 2021 as CEO of Cresa.

The firm has also been expanding its presence in Texas with the acquisition of two companies last year. In May 2022, Cresa acquired Frisco-based ESRP. The deal included 24 brokers set to make the transition to their new company. Near the end of 2022, Cresa also purchased Austin-based Elevate Growth Partners, another tenant representation firm, with a focus on companies in the tech space.

Cresa’s recent brokerage activity

Cresa negotiated several headline-grabbing deals on behalf of office and industrial tenants in the past few months. In February, the firm represented Careismatic Brands in signing a long-term lease for a 1 million-square-foot facility in Dallas.

Another deal in the same market saw Cresa represent coworking provider Lucid Private Offices in signing a 31,000-square-foot lease at Billingsley Co.’s International Business Park in Plano, Texas.