Local real estate firm loses brokers

Half have left in recent months for other firms or startups

Email | Print By Richard Lawson

08-21-2006 1:19 PM — Maybe now was just Grubb & Ellis/Centennial's time to experience the cycle of shifting real estate brokers.

While the firm was spared for the most part from the last major shift in 2001 and 2002, it has been taking the hit over the past few months. The firm has lost several brokers who left for other firms or to start their own firms.

David Koziak and Hilton "Buck" Forcum are the latest to leave. They have formed their own firm and David McRae, a leasing agent with Crescent Resources, is joining them. Forcum has been with Centennial for 18 years and Koziak nine. They have set up in the Cavalier Building at 95 White Bridge Road.

Investment sales broker David Huddleston left about a month and a half ago for Vision Real Estate. Retail brokers Jim Leberes and R. David McDowell followed Huddleston to that firm. Vision specializes in retail real estate, likely giving all three more opportunities to sell and lease retail space. Earlier this summer, Henry Menge left for XMi Commercial Real Estate.

In all, the firm has lost nine agents. Of the nine remaining agents, Arthur Perlen, Vickie Saito and Jeff Thomas are the veterans, with others being fairly new to the business.

Darwin Pankey, Centennial's president and chief executive officer, said he hated to see the brokers leaving, but such is the nature of the business sometimes. "We just have to do with what we have," Pankey said.

When a firm loses people, it creates opportunities for other brokers in the market to make a move if they see opportunity. Maybe Centennial will be a beneficiary of that phenomenon. The last major shift came during the recession in 2001 and 2002 when some two dozen agents changed firms or started their own.

Dallas-based Trammell Crow Co. lost most of its agents here and eventually pulled its name from the market and sold its local business to ProVenture Commercial Real Estate. Allen McDonald, Carl Storey III and David Baker were among those to leave Trammell Crow and started their own firm. Jeff Haynes and Phil Fawcett also left to open a Nashville office for Memphis-based Boyle Investment Co.

In November 2001, Michael Taylor and Philip Ehrlich left Mission Property Co., which was bought by Colliers Turley Martin Tucker in 2002, to start Vision Real Estate. Terry Smith, a formerly a principal in Mission, and Art McWilliams, also formerly with Mission, decided to form Nashville Commercial/Cushman & Wakefield instead of going with Colliers.