The regional real estate firm NAI Norris, Beggs & Simpson has sold its brokerage division and will be transferring many property management accounts to Colliers International, a move that affects the company’s seven-person Vancouver office.
Effective this week, Colliers International operates what had been the NAI Norris, Beggs & Simpson office at Vancouvercenter in downtown Vancouver. Charlie Kleier, who had been a partner at NAI Norris, Beggs, & Simpson, is now principal and director of Colliers’ Vancouver office.
“For the most part, everything will remain the same,” Kleier said. Clients will be shifted to the new company and will have the benefit of a much greater national exposure for sales opportunities, he said.
NAI Norris Beggs & Simpson said in a news release that it will focus on the capital markets divisions of the company, Norris, Beggs & Simpson Financial Services and Morrison Street Capital, which will operate under a new holding company called Norris, Beggs & Simpson Companies.
The transition of the company’s entire brokerage division to Colliers International, a global commercial real estate services firm that is already well-established in the Portland market, should be fully completed within six months, it said. Financial deals of the transaction were not disclosed.
The new holding company’s leadership will include Rance Gregory as chief executive officer and Jan Robertson as chief operating officer of Norris, Beggs & Simpson Companies and Morrison Street Capital. Ken J. Griggs will continue as president of NBS Financial Services and Marcus Parker has been promoted to president of Morrison Street Capital.
NBS Financial Services, a mortgage lending and servicing division, closed more than $560 million in loans in 2014 and could close as much as $700 million in 2015, the company said. The Morrison Street Capital division was founded by Gregory in 2002 as an investor of private equity funds in small commercial real estate transactions.
Kleier said the sale of the brokerage division to Colliers fits a pattern of larger national and global firms acquiring local and regional commercial brokerages. A larger organization can provide more resources for brokers and more opportunities for brokers to attract and work on major transactions than a smaller regional company like NAI Norris, Beggs, & Simpson, which had about 40 brokers, he said.
