One of Houston's top office landlord teams known for its work nationally has decided to join a growing real estate services firm aimed at deepening its bench of talent.
The seven-broker team led by Chip Colvill has left Cushman & Wakefield to join Houston-based Partners' office agency leasing practice, Partners announced this week. Colvill and his team were not immediately available to CoStar News for an interview. The team is known for leasing most properties in Houston owned by real estate developer Hines such as Texas Tower and 609 Main in downtown Houston.
The addition of Colvill and his team offers Partners a way to boost its office agency leasing business in a "significant way" across its growing platform, Partners CEO Jon Silberman told CoStar News, adding he's worked with Colvill and his team over the past 30 years through Partners' office tenant representation business.
"This puts us in a line of business we have historically not been a significant player in and supports our business model," Silberman said. "The agency business is a national business with the same clients, but with products in lots of different markets. This creates new opportunities in future markets."
Colvill, as well as Michael Anderson, Win Haggard and Damon Thames are joining Partners as equity partners. Other team additions, including Brad Beasley, Diana Bridger and Connor Saxe, join the firm as senior vice presidents. They are previously worked at Cushman & Wakefield. The team members have earned various industry awards, from rising star to landlord representative of the year, from the Houston Office Leasing Brokers Association.
The team previously worked at Colvill Office Properties, which was bought by Cushman & Wakefield in February 2020.
Last June, Partners opened an Atlanta office that now has 24 employees with more in the pipeline, Silberman told CoStar News. Partners also has offices in Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth and San Antonio. This is the tip of what will be a bigger Southeastern U.S. expansion, in which Partners plans to add a Nashville office this year, with other high-growth markets, including Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Orlando, Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham, all being on the wish list for the firm's expansion.
"We're starting to come up for air from our Atlanta efforts," Silberman added. "We don't have much else going on other than Nashville right now, but in the middle of the year, we'll start looking at what's next."
Silberman couldn't comment on the reasons for Colvill's team to join Partners, but said the real estate services firm offers an equity stake in the firm and the ability to invest alongside Partners in its development and investment efforts — not something large public companies can offer or even most private firms, he said. Partners typically recruits from a mix of public and private brokerages.
"We want to find the best talent we can find, and we provide these real estate executives a broader range of making money and building wealth," Silberman said, adding in the last 18 months Partners has added roughly 30 new partner-level executives to the company that now has 59 partners.
Colvill's team
Colvill's commercial real estate career spans more than 40 years, with him having worked on leases totaling 25 million square feet in some of Houston's most iconic office properties. Prior to his time at Cushman & Wakefield, Colvill was president and CEO of Colvill Office Properties, which he founded in 2001.
When Cushman & Wakefield bought Colvill Office Properties five years ago, the move brought the top Houston landlord team to the brokerage seeking to bolster its business in one of the nation's biggest cities. Partners said it has been "laser-focused on adding the industry's top talent" throughout geographies and business lines.
Anderson has completed over 15 million square feet of lease deals in his more than 23 years of experience in Houston's office market.
Haggard has more than two decades of experience in Houston's real estate market, having completed more than 8.6 million square feet of deals in his career. He has worked on 18 properties in Houston totaling about 9.7 million square feet of Class A office space for private and institutional owners.
Meanwhile, Thames has worked on over 3.3 million square feet of leasing deals in his career. Beyond Cushman & Wakefield and Colvill Office Properties, he has also worked at Savills and CBRE as a tenant representative broker.
Beasley has more than a decade of experience and has completed more than 4.3 million square feet of lease deals during his career.
Bridger has negotiated hundreds of deals totaling more than 4 million square feet during her 17-year career with a specialty in Houston's central business district. Saxe has over a decade of experience and has been involved in over 4 million square feet of leasing deals.