Newmark Group said its earnings and revenue jumped in the fourth quarter as the New York-based brokerage completed some of the nation's biggest lease and capital markets deals of 2023.

Revenue increased 23% to $747.4 million in the quarter from $607.3 million in the year-earlier period as the company posted double-digit gains across all of its business categories. The brokerage’s fourth-quarter profit jumped to $36.5 million from $6.4 million.

Newmark posted strong year-over-year gains in leasing, property sales and capital markets revenue. In doing so, it bucked industrywide declines in sales and mortgage loan originations that resulted as commercial real estate owners struggled with higher interest rates and sluggish deal activity, executives said in an earnings call with analysts.

Rival brokerages CBRE, Cushman & Wakefield and Colliers have posted quarterly revenue declines ranging from 16% to 32% as buyers and sellers have stayed on the sidelines due to higher borrowing costs. Newmark executives said large deals in the quarter helped.

Newmark ended a year where it "closed the largest industrial occupier lease, the largest office tenant lease, and the largest office building sale in the United States” of the fourth quarter, CEO Barry Gosin said.

The firm's revenue for the full year of 2023 declined 8.7% to $2.47 billion from 2022, showing the company was not immune to real estate headwinds over the past year. The company posted net income of $42.58 million for all of 2023, a 49% decrease from the prior year.

The company's brokers also completed the record sale of a more than $50 billion multifamily loan portfolio retained in receivership following last year’s failure of New York-based Signature Bank, Gosin told investors.

Its brokers also represented Shorenstein in its $148 million sale of the Aon Center office tower in downtown Los Angeles to private investors led by Los Angeles-based Carolwood.

Newmark reported a 20.7% quarterly increase in investment sales revenue to $137 million from the prior-year period and a 46% jump in revenue from arranging commercial mortgage loans to $106.9 million.

Newmark’s revenue from leasing and other commissions rose 19.6% to $239.4 million from the fourth quarter of 2022. Management, loan servicing and other fee revenue increased nearly 20% to $264.2 million in the quarter from the prior-year period.

Newmark joined CBRE, Colliers, Cushman and Marcus & Millichap in projecting that deal activity will pick up later this year amid expectations across the industry that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates and credit conditions will improve.

"We anticipate industry volumes accelerating throughout the second half of 2024,” Gosin told analysts. “Due to our strong incremental margins and our investments in talent, we expect significant earnings outperformance towards the end of the year, and into 2025."

JLL, the second-biggest brokerage by revenue, is slated to be the last major real estate services firm to report earnings, on Feb. 27.