Howard Smith, who started his real estate career at Walker & Dunlop in 1980, plans to end it there after 43 years. The Bethesda, Maryland-based commercial real estate finance shop said Smith plans to retire on Jan. 1. He will not stand for reelection to the firm's board next year. His primary responsibilities will be picked up by Donald King, an executive vice president in the Boston area, and Atlanta-based Kris Mikkelsen, executive vice president of investment sales, who will co-lead the Walker & Dunlop's capital markets group.

Chairman and CEO Willy Walker said in a LinkedIn post that Smith will leave "a remarkable legacy of leadership and innovation not only for our company, but for our industry as a whole."

Smith's work helped the firm become the sixth largest lender to commercial real estate in the U.S. last year, Walker added: "Howard has been an integral part of W&D’s success and has made innumerable contributions to the company over the years. Most notably, he helped me grow W&D from a small, family-owned business with one office to the scaled, industry-leading enterprise we are today with more than 1,300 employees in 45 offices."

Smith joined Walker & Dunlop's management team in 1988 and was promoted to executive vice president and chief operating officer in 2004, the same year he joined the board. He was promoted to president of the brokerage in 2015.

In April, Walker & Dunlop laid off 110 employees because of the business uncertainty caused by a string of interest rate increases and recent bank failures. The firm said it expected to reduce its annualized personnel expenses by $25 million because of the layoffs. The next month, CEO Walker said that as banks tightened the spigot on multifamily project lending, it could create an opportunity for his firm to help investors and developers source as much as $450 billion in capital.

JLL has fortified its industrial and logistics services team in Denver with the addition of Jason Addlesperger and David Lee as senior managing directors and Lee's son, Philip Lee, as a vice president. The trio, who have a combined 60 years in the industry, joined JLL from Newmark, where Addlesperger and David Lee had decades-long careers. The team is experienced in agency leasing, investment sales, land sales and tenant representation.

"The addition of Jason, David, and Philip to our Denver team is not only a significant step in our growth strategy, but more importantly continues our focus on growing" with people JLL believes are good fit for its culture and values, Dan McGowan, JLL's brokerage lead in Denver, said in a statement. The team's track record and expertise will benefit their new teammates and the brokerage as a whole, McGowan said.

At JLL, "Our goal is to grow our focus and coverage to a broader part of the market," David Lee said in a statement. For his part, Addlesperger said, “After spending nearly three decades at our previous brokerage firms, we felt it was necessary to pursue this opportunity to expand our capabilities" locally and nationally.

Colliers is expanding its office brokerage team in Oakland, California, with the addition Charlie Allen, Anthony Shell, Amber Merrigan and David Goldberg. The quartet, which has a collective 60 years of commercial real estate experience, moved to Colliers from Avison Young.

In their new roles, the four brokers continue to focus on landlord representation in the East Bay and tenant representation across the region and country. The addition of Allen, Shell, Merrigan and Goldberg leaves the brokerage "better equipped to provide" services and results for its clients, Tony Burnett, executive managing director of Colliers Oakland, said in a statement.

Allen specializes in corporate space consulting and leasing services for tenants at the national and international levels and landlord representation in the East Bay market. Anthony focuses on tenant representation for occupiers of office and life science spaces and represents institutional owners.

Merrigan specializes in consulting clients on workplace strategies for office, research-and-development and flex space users. Goldberg works in tenant in landlord representation involving several property types. The team looks forward to leverage Colliers global reach to "continue to expand our business and help our clients navigate the ever-changing commercial real estate environment," Allen said in a statement.

Lee & Associates has named Dwight Hotchkiss as its new executive managing director and chief operations officer of its business in eastern and western Pennsylvania. A 33-year industry veteran, Hotchkiss spent the past five years serving as president of Lee & Associates operations in Riverside and Temecula, California. But he won't have to relocate, because he filled the past two years of the California job from the Philadelphia region, where he moved in support of his wife Laura Hotchkiss, who had been appointed as head of school at the Academy of Notre Dame De Namur in the Pennsylvania township of Villanova.

In his new position, Hotchkiss will manage the activities of the more than 40 employees, including nearly 30 brokerages who work in Lee & Associates' offices in suburban Philadelphia, greater Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, where the firm recently launched its outpost.

He will be responsible for growing revenue by adding brokers and accelerating the professional development of younger brokers through training and mentoring. “I am particularly motivated by the prospect of molding the new Pittsburgh office and building market share in that emerging market," he said in a statement. He helped the operation in Riverside and Temecula grow its revenue by more than 200% during his tenure overseeing those offices, the firm said.

He also has held leadership positions at and Cushman & Wakefield. John Van Buskirk, managing principal of Lee & Associates of Eastern Pennsylvania said his group has worked with Hotchkiss and is confident he will be successful in the East, too. “Dwight’s leadership, track record of success, ability to cultivate talent and oversee the operations of significant commercial real estate brokerage firms is undeniable," VanBuskirk said in a statement.

When Lawrence "LG" Gellerstedt sold Southsource to Foundry Commercial and took over as the brokerage's Atlanta market lead last month, he hinted that he had a couple of new hires coming soon. Last week, Foundry confirmed that it's added Scotty DeMyer and Grace Thompson to its growing Atlanta office. DeMyer and Thompson will work with Foundry's John Neal Scott to further expand its office leasing team. “When Grace and Scotty joined us, our team’s collective experience increased by 30+ years and diversified into almost every submarket and building class," Gellerstedt said in a statement.

DeMyer, who is a senior vice president at Foundry, DeMyer, brings more than 20 years of commercial real estate experience. He most recent led asset management and leasing efforts for office assets across the Southeast for Los Angeles-based CIM Group. DeMyer also has worked as a broker at Colliers, CBRE, and JLL. Thompson, a vice president at Foundry, spent the past decade as in-house leasing associate at Atlanta Property Group.

Newmark has expanded its debt, equity and structured finance team in Southern California with the addition of veteran Bill Fishel, who previously served as a senior managing director at JLL and co-head of its Los Angeles capital markets office. Fishel, who specializes in raising debt and equity capital for institutional-grade properties across North America and has a specific focus on structured finance, joined Newmark as an executive vice chairman.

During Fishel's 14-year career, Fishel has executed more than $15 billion in financing for several property classes, including retail, office, multi-family, industrial, hospitality and data center properties.

He is based in the firm's Century City office in Los Angeles reports to Chad Lavender, Newmark's president of capital markets for North America. Fishel will work with fellow West Coast debt professionals Ramsey Daya and David Milestone and Kevin Shannon, Newmark's co-head of U.S. capital markets, to grow of the firm's debt, equity and structured finance group and services. In a note he posted on LinkedIn, Fishel said he decided to move to Newmark about 30 days after speaking with Lavender and meeting in New York with brokerage executives Rob Griffin, Barry Gosin, Luis Alvarado and Zack Schnoll.

"For almost fourteen years, I’ve been a member of HFF/JLL and I will remain forever grateful for the opportunity Mark Gibson gave me in August 2009 when I was trying to break into real estate during a similarly scary economic time," Fishel said in his article. "I moved with the firm from Dallas to Los Angeles in 2014 to help grow and scale our business on the West Coast and up until just over a month ago, I’d never taken a phone call, had a cup of coffee, or went to a single meeting with a recruiter."

Growing Sun Belt office owner CP Group has tapped Tommy Spinosa to lead its Dallas market. Spinosa, who joined CP Group when he helped the firm open its Washington, D.C., regional office in 2021, will relocate to Dallas. In new his role as head of Southwest operations, he'll lead the company's acquisition and asset management efforts in Dallas and its growth in the West.

CP said Spinosa also will continue to oversee CP Group's operation in the Washington area. "Tommy has played a pivotal role in overseeing our D.C. metro group and we look forward to his continued success throughout the Southwest," Angelo Bianco, managing partner of CP Group, said in a statement.

Since he joined CP, Spinosa has built the firm’s presence in the mid-Atlantic, where he led the acquisition and planned repositioning of more than 1 million square feet of space. He also oversees asset management for Granite Tower in Denver.

Spinosa said in a statement he looks forward to helping the firm grow "by finding and taking on overlooked assets in the Dallas area, which we can transform to attract more world-class office space to this in-demand market and create new, long-term value.” Before he joined CP Group, Spinosa spent six years at Bridge Investment Group, where he focused on acquiring office buildings in the Southeast and mid-Atlantic.