CBRE in Houston has hired a team of four industrial brokers from rival Savills as the world's largest brokerage expands across the Gulf region as strong demand clashes with record new supply.
The brokerage said the team of Grant Hortenstine, Thomas Berry, Pearce Martens and Jeff Wood joined its industrial and logistics group. Hortenstine, who spent more than four years at Savills, will serve as a senior vice president and Berry, Martens and Wood as vice presidents, CBRE said.
Over the past four years, the team completed transactions with an aggregate value of more than $240 million, CBRE said.
The addition of Hortenstine, Berry, Martens and Wood "expands our reach across the" region, and their experience combined with CBRE's existing operation "will be a successful formula to winning new business and expanding our market share" in the area, Peter Mainguy, senior managing director of CBRE’s Houston office, said in a statement.
CBRE said it is adding the team as "Houston’s industrial market has remained robust into the new year" with 4.4 million square feet more move-ins than move-outs in the first quarter, according to the brokerage's first quarter 2024 Houston Industrial MarketView.
However, in 2023 Houston got a record amount of new speculative warehouse and logistics space, and as a result "continues to navigate a supply/demand imbalance," according to a CoStar analytics report. As a result, the market's industrial vacancy rate has increased to 7.2% from 5.1% at the end of 2022, CoStar said.
"The supply wave is not quite over, with 16.5 million square feet still under construction, nearly 70% of which is available for lease," according to CoStar, and "demand for industrial space has cooled from the record pace witnessed in 2021 and 2022."
CBRE's new industrial team is led by Hortenstine. He has 10 years of experience in commercial real estate. Last year, he was responsible for transactions involving a total of 1.2 million square feet with an aggregate value of $50 million. At Savills industrial, he most recently served as an executive managing director.
Berry has more than five years of commercial real estate experience. He started his career at Avison Young in 2019 and most recently was a managing director at Savills. Martens got into commercial real estate in 2021 after working at Marathon Oil as an advanced land professional. In that role, he managed onshore assets across North America.
Wood began his real estate career in 2020 after working as a senior analyst for a corporate tax consulting firm. He most recently was an associate director at Savills.
CBRE leads other brokerages with 2023 revenue of nearly $32 billion.