Cassidy Turley Takes Ownership of 4 Former Affiliates, $7.3B in Transaction Volume

By Barbra Murray, Contributing Editor

Michael Kamm, of Cassidy Turley

Talk about productive end-of-summer activities. Cassidy Turley recently gained full ownership of four of its former affiliates in Arizona, Colorado, Northern California and San Diego. With the move, Cassidy Turley has not only enlarged its presence in the western markets, the commercial real estate services firm has effectively expanded its immediate family by 490 brokers and increased its total transaction volume by a whopping $7.3 billion.

The affiliates, which span more than 20 office locations, had been under Cassidy Turley’s umbrella since the firm’s formation in 2010.

“It was the original intent of the firms to merge at some point,” Michael Kamm, president with Cassidy Turley, told Commercial Property Executive. “With the improvement in the markets, I think everybody felt comfortable that now is a good time from a variety of perspectives. It also was driven in part by the fact that over the prior three-and-a-half years we’ve become very closely aligned.”

The decision to bring the firm’s affiliates in these four major markets into a common ownership structure at this time had the unequivocal backing of the shareholders in each market. Undoubtedly, any efforts to get them onboard were bolstered by the fact that the mergers are accretive to the firm’s margin and its overall business performance.

With the unification of the ownership structure, Cassidy Turley now encompasses the leading commercial real estate brokerages in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, and it’s also top dog in Fort Collins, Colo.  Additionally, the mergers propel the firm to second place among real estate brokerage concerns in San Diego, Phoenix and Denver.

Completion of the mergers, however, does not mean Cassidy Turley is taking a break from its growth plans; the firm is positioned to begin another chapter in its expansion efforts.

“We’ve made investments in markets in which our business needs further growth, so we’re turning back to markets that we’re currently operating in and building out a full-service platform in those markets,” said Kamm. “In some markets, we’re a very good tenant-representation shop, in other markets we’re a very good investor services business, so we need to round out many of the markets that we’re currently in to create that full-service platform across the board.”

Those markets include Chicago, where Cassidy Turley has a presence but it’s one that is predominantly on the management side of the real estate services business.

‘Tis the season. More than a few commercial real estate services firms have decided that the current climate is right for bringing additional offices under its wing. “This is a point in the cycle when you do see M&A activity; we’ve seen it typically in every expansion cycle,” Kamm added.

However, while now may be a prime time for mergers in the business, for some, current activity amounts more to talk than action. “Often the rumors around M&A exceed the reality of what’s really going to happen,” he concluded. “There are a lot of rumors about companies and some potential companies and clearly there are probably conversations happening that substantiate those rumors, but at the end of the day it doesn’t always amount to as much M&A as we think it will. People do look at these periods as times when they can make strategic upgrades to their platforms but actually pulling them off is very difficult.”