Eastdil Secured this month opened an office in Miami, aiming to expand its reach in the Sun Belt region.
The firm last month hired former Oaktree Capital Management senior vice president Matt DeAtley as a director. He’s focused on financing, joint-venture and structured debt and equity assignments across asset classes. DeAtley works alongside investment-sales specialist Ken Glomb, a managing director who in recent weeks relocated from Eastdil’s Chicago office to work on Florida properties.
The office, in Miami’s Brickell submarket, is overseen by Jeff Scott, a managing director and member of the executive committee. He said the location will play an important role as clients increasingly look to properties in the Sun Belt, and that investor demand drove the choice to further expand in the Southeast.
“Our clients and relationships take us to different geographies,” Scott said. “That really focused our attention in a way that made us question whether we needed to have a physical footprint there. Over the next few years, Miami will be scaled similarly to our Charlotte, Atlanta and Dallas offices.”
Properties in Sun Belt cities are benefiting from a wave of immigration by people and companies, a trend accelerated by the pandemic. Eastdil closed some $8 billion of financings, investment- sales and joint-venture equity deals in Florida alone last year, according to the firm.
The firm plans to build out a Miami team that will take assignments up and down the capital stack and across asset types. In the interim, managing directors from other offices who’ve previously handled assignments in Florida will fill the gaps. They include: Phil Brosseau, Brian Budnick, Chris Campbell, Stephen Livaditis, Ryan Reid, Miles Theodore, Stephen Van Dusen and Ken Ziebelman.
Over the past decade, Eastdil’s share of the investment-sales market in South Florida has fluctuated in some asset classes, according to Real Estate Alert’s Deal Database. Its most consistent showing has been in the office sector, where in 2019 it achieved a market share of 10.7%.
This is the company’s third push into a Sun Belt location in the last two years. Eastdil expanded its team in Dallas in 2020, adding new staffers and relocating others to amass a staff of some 35 market pros. In the first half of 2021, Eastdil captured a 12.1% market share of large office sales in the Dallas area, according to the Deal Database. Eastdil made a similar play in Charlotte, opening an office about two years ago that now boasts a staff of around 30.
The Miami office will complement Eastdil’s long-established presence in the Sun Belt markets of Atlanta and Los Angeles as well as its core presence in urban centers including Boston, Chicago, New York and San Francisco.
