REAL ESTATE FORUM PRESENTS
Last year was a good one for commercial real estate dealmaking despite some clear headwinds. Overall, global investment volume totaled $733 billion last year, up 4% from 2017 and marking the best annual performance in a
decade, according to data from JLL. Meanwhile in the US, commercial property sales
volume was 11% higher during the first three quarters of 2018 than during the same
period in 2017, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. Sales of individual
properties rose 8% and the volume of portfolios changing hands increased 3%. Entity-level transactions, though, are what really drove that bus, rising 86% in volume.
Fueling all this, of course, were the robust debt and equity markets—and the people
who know just how to tap them despite the rising interest rates that hampered the
CMBS and bank lending markets last year. MBA reported that although borrowing and
lending for commercial and multifamily properties decreased 3% during the third quarter, and was 7% lower than a year ago, financing of multifamily properties, and from the
GSEs in particular, continued to grow.
Not that these varying conditions stopped CRE rainmakers from doing their jobs. For
our annual feature on the industry’s mortgage originators, REAL ESTATE FORUM once
again received several dozen entries. Between the 30 finalists that made this year’s list,
individuals and teams completed some 2,030 originations during the reporting period*,
accounting for nearly $40 billion in debt and equity financing volume.
On the following pages you’ll find the top players in the CRE capital markets. The
selected originators are listed by overall rank; we have also indicated where they
respectively ranked in terms of the number and volume of deals closed.
METHODOLOGY: In order to even the playing field between nominees in varying markets, each submission received a score for two fields—the total number of transactions
and the total volume of all transactions. The final score was based on the sum of the two
fields, with the total dollar volume serving as the tiebreaker.
The data that determined the final rankings represented originations completed during
the 12-month period between October 1, 2017 and September 30, 2018. Full-year 2018
figures are also listed, although many of those figures are estimates since the data have
not been fully tabulated across all participating firms. FORUM has verified the authenticity
of the submitted deal information.
THE RAINMAKERS
