ORLANDO-In a move to expand its brokerage platform, CNL Commercial Real Estate, an affiliate of CNL Financial Group, is offering 1031 exchange investment acquisitions and dispositions. The opportunities will focus on a variety of property types, including office, retail and medical.
“We have had tremendous success with the 1031 platform at CNL and are excited to broaden this offering across multiple sectors,” says CNL Financial Group vice chairman Robert Bourne. In this vein, CNL is hiring PJ Behr, who rejoins CNL from Trinity Real Estate Group, a company he founded 18 months ago. He will serve as vice president of Investment Property Sales at CNL Commercial Real Estate, and lead the new platform. “Behr has extensive depth of knowledge in this industry and we look forward to leveraging his expertise to secure quality opportunities for our clients,” says Bourne.
Behr sees the current market as the perfect time to launch the 1031 exchange product. “Everyone is getting more confident that the economy is going in the right direction,” he tells GlobeSt.com. “We are seeing more confidence in buyers. The lending is slowly thawing out and investors are getting more and more access to debt. We are keeping a close eye on where the opportunities are.”
CNL Commercial Real Estate’s expansion into the 1031 market will primarily target affluent individuals and organizations interested in investing in net-lease properties, which have been gaining in popularity as investment vehicles, especially among baby boomers. Behr sees more investors shifting from management-intensive real estate investments to more passive income investment opportunities.
Although there is still plenty of distressed properties on the market, Behr feels commercial real estate is entering into its next definitive growth cycle. “A lot of people expect the growth to be fairly slow for some time,” Behr says. “Different segments that are going to grow faster than others.”
Behr originally joined CNL in 2000, working with CNL Restaurant Properties, a nontraded REIT. Behr stayed with that REIT for nearly a decade, even as it went public on the New York Stock Exchange as Trustreet Properties in 2005 and was later purchased by GE Capital. Prior to leaving GE Capital in 2009, Behr and his team averaged over $250 million in transactions per year.
“Behr is another example of top talent in our industry being attracted to the CNL platform,” says Paul Ellis, president of CNL Commercial Real Estate. “Many aspects of our space have remained stagnant for more than a decade; we are building an innovative company that provides highly talented people the opportunity to flourish and fully exercise their gifts.”
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