Commercial and Multifamily People in the News March 30, 2023
(l-r.: Jeff Lavine, Matt Zisler, Mike Casavant, Ryan Carlin, JP Chisholm.)
Greystone hired Mike Casavant as a Managing Director, Ryan Carlin as a Director and JP Chisholm as a Director on its New York-based Greystone Commercial Capital team.
GCC originates institutional structured commercial mortgage loans and subordinate debt for all property types.
Mike Casavant joined as a Managing Director and Head of Credit and Underwriting. Prior to Greystone, he was Head of Underwriting for Real Estate Structured Finance at Bank of America Securities, Inc., where he oversaw closing and securitization, with a volume of $40 billion of commercial mortgages. His previous experience includes serving as co-head of Underwriting at Ladder Capital Finance, LLC and Senior Vice President at Lehman Brothers Inc.
Ryan Carlin joined as Director of Capital Markets & Syndications. He has recently served as Vice President of originations at Amherst Capital Management and earlier served as Vice President for Cantor Fitzgerald’s CMBS platform.
JP Chisholm joined as a Director of Originations, with a focus on Agency Production, FHA, CMBS, and balance sheet production. Previously, he served as Chief Operating Officer of Subsea Environmental Services. He also served as Investment Officer for the Philips Academy (Andover) Endowment and was a Research Fellow at the Library of Congress.
Gantry Hires James Ruiz as Senior Director with Firm’s Orange County Production Office
Ruiz Joins Firm with More Than $2 Billion of Career Transactions and 23-Years of Experience to Focus on Loan Production and Client Service at Independent Commercial Mortgage Banking FirmIrvine, Calif. Gantry, the largest independent commercial mortgage banking firm in the U.S., has hired James Ruiz as a Senior Director with the firm’s commercial mortgage production team. Ruiz will be directly responsible for developing a loan production pipeline and client roster to align with Gantry’s more than 100 correspondent and affiliated lenders, working nationally from the firm’s production office in Irvine, Calif.
Prior to joining Gantry, Ruiz most recently served as Vice President with Keystone Mortgage Corporation where he was responsible for commercial mortgage origination and client service. He has closed more than $2 billion of transactions during a 23-year career in commercial mortgage finance, working on a significant volume of unique financings for acquisitions, refinances, and construction of all property types. In addition to permanent debt, he has closed multiple construction-to-permanent, portfolio and credit tenant loans.
Newmark Lands U.S. Capital Markets Team
Newmark Group announced Douglas Harmon and Adam Spies and members of their team joined the company.
Harmon and Spies will serve as Co-Heads of U.S. Capital Markets for Newmark’s Capital Markets group. As partners for over 20 years, Harmon and Spies are known nationally as the top capital markets leaders, executing some of the most prominent office and residential sales across the country.
The hiring of this sales team underscores the success of Newmark’s growing foothold in capital markets through organic productivity growth, acquisitions, and hires across our increasingly global footprint. Since Newmark’s IPO in 2017, the company has continued to gain market share in capital markets. We generated $155 billion of overall investment sales and debt transactions over the trailing twelve months ended September 30, 2022, which was up 194% compared with 2017. Comparatively and over the same time period, RCA U.S. investment sales and the MBA Commercial/Multifamily Origination Index were up by 94% and 54%, respectively.
Harmon and Spies will serve alongside Newmark’s current Co-Heads of U.S. Capital Markets, Kevin Shannon and Robert Griffin.
Harmon, Spies and their team have been involved in most of the world’s largest, highest-profile and record-setting transactions over the last three decades. Harmon and Spies led a team that ranked #1 in capital markets in New York for 2022, closing nearly $5.7 billion[ii] notable transactions for the year, including the $487.5 million sale of multifamily asset 19 Dutch Street and the $850 million sale of the American Copper Buildings. Harmon and Spies advised the sale of the largest office, multifamily and industrial transactions in New York City in the last five years—1 Manhattan West at $2.85 billion, Spring Creek Towers at $1.84 billion and 640 Columbia Street at $330 million, respectively—as well as the $2.4 billion sale of Chelsea Market, one of the largest multi-use building sales in New York City history.
With a career trajectory spanning almost four decades, Harmon is widely recognized as one of the most creative, influential and respected dealmakers in the real estate industry, having completed transactions totaling over $250 billion in value since 1997. Harmon is also the current record holder for several of the highest dollar-per-square-foot sales ever achieved across multiple asset classes. Spies, also a prolific dealmaker, joined Eastdil Secured in 1999, where he became a leading player in the New York investment sales market alongside Harmon. Spies and Harmon grew into the firm’s top rainmakers before moving to Cushman & Wakefield, where they served for the last six years as Chairmen of Capital Markets.
