Brokering Billions: Following the Money with the Harmon Team

NEW YORK CITY—New York City is ranked the top global market for CRE according to a November 2018 RCA Global Capital Trends report. But looking at brokers, who’s on top of the world/? With GlobeSt.com’s review of Real Capital Analytics data, Doug Harmon, chairman of capital markets at Cushman & Wakefield, and his busy team have reason to smile.

GlobeSt.com focused its search on the billion dollar barrier (or close to it at $900 million or more) for sales prices in New York City using the RCA database that dates back to September 2002. GlobeSt.com factored out data for when RCA did not list a brokerage firm. Harmon confirmed he and his team worked on the deals where the brokerages were listed in the database and are referenced in this article.

(Note: The database does not yet include the May $907 million sale of the Coca-Cola Building at 711 Fifth Ave. or Brookfield and Urban American’s July 31 sale of a $1.2 billion multifamily portfolio to L+M Development and Invesco, where closings are pending. Harmon’s group also brokered those deals. But adhering to information in RCA’s database, GlobeSt.com did not factor in these deals into this report.)

Since 2002 to the present day, transactions exceeding $900 million (with listed brokerages) in RCA’s New York City database total 63 deals. The volume totals $105.8 billion. In this comprehensive set, there are 33 Eastdil transactions with two shared with CBRE, 18 CBRE deals including two shared with Eastdil, 11 Cushman & Wakefield transactions, and one deal each for Salomon Smith Barney, Morgan Stanley and HFF.

Of the total 63 deals, while working at Eastdil and then Cushman, the Harmon group handled 38 deals, with volume of $63.2 billion. That was 60.3% of the deals and 59.7% of the dollar volume.

Following the Harmon group shows you the money with the New York City billion dollar brokers club.

Harmon and his group left Eastdil and came to Cushman & Wakefield in October 2016. So, GlobeSt.com traced their activity to track the numbers behind their reputation.

With 48 deals that are $900 million and greater from September 2002 up to October 2016: 30 are Eastdil’s, with one of the deals shared with CBRE; 14 are CBRE’s, three are Cushman & Wakefield’s; and there is one each for Morgan Stanley’s and for Salomon Smith Barney. That amounted to 63% of the number of deals credited to Eastdil; 29% going to CBRE; and 6% attributed to Cushman & Wakefield’s.

With these deals leading up to October 2016, before Harmon and his colleagues joined Cushman & Wakefield, Eastdil tasked Harmon with building their New York market. While Eastdil traditionally has had a strong California presence, Harmon confirms that he and his group handled the listed Eastdil deals up through their departure.

From October 2016 to the present, the RCA database records a total of 15 of the $900 million plus deals. Coming to Cushman, Harmon’s team bumped up the numbers, racking up eight of the 15 deals, achieving 53% of the market share. During this time period after October 2016, CBRE worked on four of the deals, 27% of the total. Eastdil is in the database for three, one for which CBRE is also listed, dropping to a 20% share.

With the total of deal volume from this timeframe at $21.8 billion, the Harmon group percentage volume amounts to 61%. CBRE at $6.3 billion, is at 26% and Eastdil dropped down to $4.0 billion, down to a 16% share.

Similarly, Real Estate Alert came out with a July 24, 2019 ranking of “Top Office Brokers” for H1 2019, looking at deals from $25 million and higher in New York City. Cushman ranked in the top spot taking a 67.1% market share, with CBRE second at 23.6%. JLL was third with 1.9% and Eastdil had a 1.8% market share.

But Eastdil landed the top spot in the H1 2019 Real Estate Alert chart, looking nationwide at brokerages representing sellers in deals of at least $25 million. Eastdil achieved a 28.5% market share, followed by Cushman & Wakefield at 18.2%, then CBRE at a close 16.1%