"Our personal experience is entering anew market is not easy and I expect they will find that out," says Hering. "They can't necessarily transport their culture into this market as easily as they might think; in our experience it was more ego than reality."

Norris Beggs & Simpson has been trying to build a presence in the Seattle market since the late 1980s. After a decade of little success, the firm made another big push in the late 1990s, but Hering says they ultimately had to give up after spilling "$2 million in blood" on the ground. The firm still keeps a small office in Bellevue, WA, but never achieved the kind of market share it sought.

"We went into Seattle and L.A. and thought 'NBS has wonderful name and reputation so it should work' and it just doesn't happen like that; you still look like an outsider to the locals," says Hering. "I wish (Kidder Mathews) luck, but I think (Lyons) is a little naïve if he thinks it will happen overnight."

Other corner-office guys says Kidder, which has been making offers to people they want to lead the new office, will come to town and try to lure a group of performers away from an existing house to kick start their Portland operations. "The problem is nobody wants to be first and everybody will want to know who else is going before making a commitment," says one senior director in town. "If they don't get that bang, they'll have to limp into the market, which doesn't look good."

Kidder plays the game a little differently than the national brokerages do. Instead of lower splits and more support, Kidder gives higher splits and less support, local brokers tell GlobeSt.com. Local managers tell GlobeSt.com that Kidder's easiest entry being to take a group from Insignia, which is being merged into CB Richard Ellis. Instead of coming in below their CBRE counterparts, they may decide to jump ship and join Kidder and other competing firms, they say.

Brad Fletcher, an executive vice president and managing director with Grubb & Ellis in Portland, says Kidder is "a strong group with a solid model and years of successful experience" in the Seattle market. "I expect they will be successful in the Portland market as well," he adds.