Business card printers could be working overtime this spring as personnel changes continue to roil Boston’s commercial real estate brokerages. 

In the wake of the mass exodus of 48 former Transwestern brokers to CBRE/New England in February, rivals are lining up to recruit top producers and bolster leasing and sales teams. 

Many are keeping an eye on CBRE/New England, where the influx of Transwestern brokers could prompt the next wave of departures to competitors. 

“CBRE and Transwestern both had a big team of professionals and for some people, that will work well,” said Michael Smith, managing director at Avison Young in Boston. “For others, it may feel a bit crowded.” 

Two CBRE/New England partners, Cambridge specialist Curtis Cole and downtown Boston leasing veteran Chris Cuddy, joined Colliers International’s Boston office as executive vice presidents in late March. 

Cole and Cuddy, along with former Cushman & Wakefield managing director Peter Conlin, who recently joined the downtown Boston leasing team as senior vice president, “bubbled to the top” in Colliers’ discussions with a large group of potential hires, said Jim Elcock, president of Colliers International Boston. The firm continues to look at additions in its urban and suburban leasing teams, capital markets and retail divisions, each of which could add “a couple of brokers” in the short term, Elcock said. Colliers currently has 48 licensed brokers. 

“We’ve been talking to a lot of people, and there are some terrific people out there,” Elcock said. 

Steve Adams

Cushman & Wakefield, for its part, scooped up former Transwestern partners Michael Joyce, Robert Richards, Thomas Ashe and Robert Byrne. Cushman has been rebuilding its team following a 2015 merger with DTZ that saw the departure of former New England region President Robert Griffin Jr. and nearly 50 brokers for Newmark Knight Frank. Cushman & Wakefield now has 187 employees based in Boston, including approximately 65 brokers. 

Cushman & Wakefield’s managing principal of New England operations, Carolyn Sidor, said the firm will continue to selectively hire in areas where it can complement its existing workforce. 

“It’s clear there are shifts in the marketplace right now in terms of talent acquisition,” Sidor said. “As opportunities arise, we’ll look at individuals but in no way, shape or form are we looking to add 20 or 30 or 40.” 

Industry-Wide Pressures Mount 

Industry mergers and the transition from locally owned private brokerages to publicly traded companies have transformed the local industry in recent years. Cushman & Wakefield is the latest to consider that route, with preliminary talks with advisers on an IPO as reported by Bloomberg in late March. 

That points to opportunities for some of Boston’s smaller brokerages to poach talent from the competition, Avison Young’s Smith said. Smith left JLL in 2012 after 29 years with the company, most of them in its locally owned days as Spaulding & Slye before its 2005 acquisition by Chicago-based JLL. 

Avison Young currently has 65 employees in its New England region, and is looking to expand across all business lines, Smith said. 

“You don’t get that many opportunities to have a sizeable growth wave, and we see this as one of those opportunities,” he said. 

Boston-based NAI Hunneman in January rewrote its partnership model, which it will use as a recruitment tool as it looks to expand its investment sales, capital markets, leasing and property management business, Co-Managing Principal Peter Evans said. The firm has 17 existing partners but is open to adding more if they’re a good cultural fit, Evans said. 

“It’s a good opportunity for us,” Evans said of the industry’s personnel churn. “We don’t have to worry about our stock prices or making sure that Wall Street is happy with our production. There are brokers who are going to get tired of that system and go back to the privately owned market, where they can share in the upside success of the firm.” 

Transwestern’s potential strategy for rebuilding its Greater Boston presence remains a question mark. The company declined to comment beyond an initial statement last month that it will “continue to add producers from coast to coast.”