Some professionals prefer to stay with simple, straightforward, local one-off transactions, while others seek a more challenging environment working with global clients who use the Internet increasingly more to create and cement deals.

"Brokers are making their choices and placing their bets" on which companies are best for them, Coley says. "And there is nothing really wrong with that at all." Boutique firms "do well," the longtime Trammell Crow executive in Florida says.

But linking up with major brokerages such as Crow, Jones Lang LaSalle, Insignia, CB Richard Ellis Inc., Grubb & Ellis Co. and Cushman & Wakefield, for example, offers brokers an opportunity to deal with clients "at a new level of sophistication," Coley says.