For Gilley, it's an opportunity to build and manage his own investment sales team after being the No. 2 guy at C&W for several years, having 14 years in the business compared to Congdon's 35 years. "I was with Congdon for five years and we had a tremendous business," Gilley tells GlobeSt.com. "Now it's time to recreate that somewhere else."

For Insignia, it's the best opportunity to gain dominant market share in a region heretofore covered by the Capital Advisors group office in Los Angeles, because that's where its Western Region director Dave Doupé is located. "Dave has done a number of high-profile deals in San Francisco, but we came to the realization that in order for us to penetrate the market and gain the kind of dominant market share we were looking for, we needed a senior broker in that discipline in that region," Insignia's executive vice president of the western region, Robert Shibuya, tells GlobeSt.com. "So we hired one of the top investment brokers in San Francisco."

Indeed. This past year was a mediocre one for investment sales, by all accounts, but in 2000, Congdon and Gilley sold nearly $1 billion of institutional quality real estate. The duo sold such trophy properties as 303 2nd Street, 650 California Street, 160 Spear Street, and China Basin Landing, each of which sold for between $100 million and $200 million.