"Basically right now we are all multifamily from a property management standpoint, but with this we will be expanding into commercial," he said. "We've got the property management infrastructure already in place, including the software, and commercial property management is frankly a whole lot more straight forward than residential. As part of that, we will add more leasing talent to our SVN offices."

Rand Sperry and Mark Van Ness established Sperry Van Ness in 1987. The SVN brand has grown rapidly in recent years – it now boats 1,000 brokers in 150 markets nationwide -- by luring high-producing brokers with higher splits that can be achieved more quickly than at some of the other, larger brokerage houses.

"The SVN system tends to attract good seasoned veterans," Brenneke said. "SVN's target property market is B quality in terms of price range, which keeps us from going head-to-head with the likes of CB Richard Ellis. With the average transaction size at SVN between $4 million and $5 million we're one notch below that -- and it's a really good niche."

When the assets came to market earlier this year, CEO Mark Van Ness told GlobeSt.com that the company had been planning to "go completely to the franchise model" as a more efficient way to expand and operate its business. "Our long-term intent always was to convert the company completely to a franchise model," he said. "We have come to realize that it is inefficient for us to try to run two different businesses with the same staff," Van Ness tells GlobeSt.com. "We realized that it's time to make a full commitment to the franchise business."

Brenneke started at Guardian Management 25 years ago and bought it in 2001. It was at that point that the company began acquiring properties in addition to managing them for third parties. It also began partnering with wealthy individuals and institutions, playing the part of the expertise partner by taking a minority stake and acting as the fee manager of the fee manager of the property. The 400-person company now invests on behalf of it and 100 high-net-worth individuals, as well as five institutional investors, and has a portfolio of nearly 12,000 apartments units valued at $600 million, of which it owns about 50%.

Osbrink's position at G&E is not being filled, a company spokesperson told GlobeSt.com in June. Osbrink joined that company in 1988 and held numerous local and regional management roles during his 20 years at Grubb & Ellis. He was named EVP and president of transaction services in 2004. In May 2008, Osbrink was named chairman of transaction services and the title of president was transferred to company COO Jack Van Berkel. Also that month, Greg Coxon was named president of transaction services for the Western region.

The deal between Osbrink and Guardian Management took about three weeks to hammer out. "When it seems to work for all parties then it doesn't take a long time," Osbrink says.