Multifamily sales broker Mark Thomson, who spent the past 18 years selling more than 100,000 apartments, has left JLL to launch a firm to buy rental properties in Pennsylvania and across the mid-Atlantic. Thomson left global brokerage JLL last month after serving as co-office head of its capital markets group in Philadelphia and ranking as the firm's No. 1 multifamily broker last year, he said. Thomson also served as the East Coast representative on JLL’s national multifamily leadership council before he departed last month. He launched his real estate investment and development firm called Love Communities with a portfolio of 1,400 units in 12 apartment complexes in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Delaware. He started his career in 2005 at Marcus & Millichap then joined HFF in 2013. Thomson moved to JLL when it bought HFF in 2019. "I spent 18 years in brokerage being driven/motivated by fees and 15 of those years as an investor who was motivated by long term wealth creation," he said in an email. "It’s no comparison…I don’t plan to be motivated by fees ever again.”

In addition to Thomson, Love launched with Heather Pushinsky as founding president. Pushinsky, who has 17 years of commercial real estate experience across the East and West Coasts of the U.S., will head daily operations and several key business segments in addition to Love's business development efforts. She partnered with Thomson for the past 11 years at HFF and JLL. Thomson's brother Jay Thomson, who spent 12 years as an executive with Solomon Organization where he oversaw capital projects for a 15,000-unit multifamily portfolio across eight states and worked at Toll Bros., Five Below and Korman Residential, joined Love as an executive overseeing capital markets. And Rachel Culling, who has more than 20 years of industry experience, will lead property management at Love Communities.

Mark Thomson said he got serious about building Love Communities in 2017 after his wife battled breast cancer while pregnant with their second son. "That kind of kicked me in the pants," he said in an interview. "I decided that I needed to get serious about this and really scale it." As for the company name, it's a coincidental that Philadelphia is the City of Brotherly Love, Thomson said. “Love was the driver behind my whole career," he said. "I worked as hard as I did for as long as I did because I wanted to have the ability to spend time with my family and I started buying properties that would afford me that time and, ultimately, assets to leave them."

CBRE has appointed Laura Barr, who joined the world's largest brokerage in 2010, as leader of its retail advisory and transaction services business in the Americas. For the past decade, Barr has been a retail group leader in CBRE’s San Francisco office, where she built a team that includes occupier leasing, institutional agency leasing and consulting. She also serves as an adviser to investor and occupier clients. In her now role, Barr is responsible for the firm's retail leasing growth strategy and client delivery. Last year CBRE's retail leasing pros handled a total of more than $11.1 billion in transactions.

Manish Kashyap, global president of CBRE advisory and transaction services, said Barr's leadership will help the brokerage expand its market position and deliver growth opportunities for its clients. Barr was the first winner of CBRE’s Darla Longo Award that recognizes the firm's best producers.

EQ Office, an office portfolio company owned by Blackstone's real estate funds, has hired Merredith Treaster as senior vice president to lead EQ in Northern California. She is based in San Francisco. Treaster joined EQ from Nuveen, where she oversaw investment opportunities and performance nationally for its venture focused on life science properties. Before that, she served as Nuveen's Northwest regional head of office and directed transaction activity and asset management in the Bay Area, Seattle, Denver and Salt Lake City. In her new role at EQ, Treaster is responsible for day-to-day oversight of the firm's Northern California portfolio that contains 1.4 million square feet of space across San Francisco, Silicon Valley and San Jose. She also will help direct company strategy in the region. Treaster also has worked at Hines, Tishman Speyer and the John Buck Co.

Avison Young hired 14-year veteran industry Michael Albanese to lead its Sauter Multifamily Group’s expansion in Riverside and San Bernardino counties in Southern California's Inland Empire. Albanese is based in Las Vegas, but will spend time working in Avison Young's office in Ontario, California. He joined the brokerage from NAI Excel. The other members of the multifamily team are principals Patrick Sauter, Art Carll-Tangora and Steve Nosrat, also based in the firm’s Las Vegas office. The Sauter group has completed more than $5 billion in multifamily investment sales, including deals totaling more than $600 million in apartment sales last year.

The Inland Empire offers ample opportunity for Avison Young, the firm said, largely because of the trend of renters relocating to the Inland Empire from Los Angeles and Orange counties. "With 170,000 units, close to 8,000 units under construction, proximity to our Las Vegas office, and the majority of our clients owning assets in both Vegas and the Inland Empire, the IE was a clear choice for our expansion," Nosrat said in a statement.

Edgewater Ventures, a commercial real estate investment firm focused on the acquisition and development of properties in the Carolinas, added Tim Skender as a principal. A 15-year industry veteran who's worked with Rubenstein Partners, Starwood Capital and Harvard Management Co. that's now part of Bain Capital, Skender will work closely with Edgewater co-founder Scot Humphrey to focus on growing the firm’s innovation portfolio that focuses on office, life science, advanced manufacturing and flex properties. “Despite current turbulence in the commercial lending market and broader negative headlines related to workplace real estate, we are firm believers in the resilience of the demand for buildings which further enable the innovation economy here in the Carolinas,” Skender said in an email.

Chris Norvell, Justin Good and Humphrey formed Edgewater Ventures, based in Raleigh, North Carolina, in 2020. The firm has built a portfolio of more than $850 million of real estate under management across the Carolinas. It recently opened an office in Charlotte, North Carolina, and has added eight new team members over the past year.

Commercial property services firm Farbman Group has added five employees to work across its portfolio in the Midwest. Jonah Gutman has been hired as a property manager in Chicago. Jim Hyer and Long Trinh have been added as staff accountants at Farbman's headquarters in Southfield, Michigan. Hyer previously worked as a property accountant for a company where he financially managed 15 commercial properties. Trinh has more than seven years of accounting experience in various industries. The firm hired industry veteran Nina Aloisi as its senior property manager at Sheffield Office Park in Troy, Michigan. And Artist Montgomery joined the property management team as community manager at Walnut Ridge Apartments in Indiana. Founded in 1976 by the late Burt Farbman, the firm is led by his two sons, CEO Andrew Farbman and partner David Farbman, and President Andy Gutman.