Avison Young Homes In on Institutional Multifamily

Peter Sherman: “People are disavowing the buying of homes at the moment and preferring the flexibility and the walkability of a slew of neighborhoods.”

LOS ANGELES— Avison Young is bolstering its institutional multifamily practice in response to massive growth in the sector, which leadership says isn’t going to slow down any time soon. Earlier this week, GlobeSt.com reported that the firm made three new key hires to its multifamily platform, including hiring Peter Sherman , formerly of CBRE, as a principal to lead the multifamily practice in Southern California. The move was both market and strategy driven, according to Sherman and Avison Young managing director and principal Chris Cooper . “We have to be in the multifamily arena. Our global strategy is the two by five by four, and that is that Avison Young’s strategy throughout the world in each major region needs to be able to deliver services to the two types of clients, owners and occupiers, in the five primary types of service lines in the four food groups, being multifamily, retail, industrial and office,” Cooper tells GlobeSt.com. “Peter really completes that strategy for multifamily in Southern California. We will continue to grow it, and we have a few more gaps to fill in, but this has been a huge monumental achievement having Peter able to come over and grow this very important business line for us.” Specifically, Avison Young is focusing on institutional multifamily and institutional capital markets, and Peter is a great fit for both. “We also feel that it is extremely important to expand our institutional capital markets practice,” says Cooper. “Peter deals with multifamily at the institutional sales level with large institutions, both in sales and debt equity, and that dovetails very nicely into our existing capital markets practice.” The firm’s business strategy also reflects the momentum in the multifamily sector. There is an industry-wide consensus that there has been a fundamental shift in the multifamily market that is fueling demand and development, and Sherman agrees. “Ever since the recession we have seen a paradigm shift toward apartments, and you are seeing a lot of developers meet those new preferences with apartment properties that are almost like hotels,” he says. “This is really a cross-generational shift; you are seeing it with millennials; you are seeing it with baby boomers; you are seeing it with demographics in between. People are disavowing the buying of homes at the moment and preferring the flexibility and the walkability of a slew of neighborhoods—and I am not just talking about Southern California. This is a national phenomenon. Both Sherman and Cooper agree that this is the new normal, not a passing trend or fad. “This shift is really making the multifamily market not just strong today, but by all appearances, it looks to continue to be very strong,” adds Sherman. “There is great interest from the development side and great interest from the renters side. I don’t think there has been a time in our history where this is this much money nationally and globally that is focused on meeting those demands.”