"We are a consortium of commercial real estate professionals and every one of us has an extensive background in some type of commercial real estate service, whether it be asset management, property management, commercial brokerage or construction," Steve Hussey, managing director of Hyperion and principal with S&D, tells GlobeSt.com. "With the changing landscape of our industry, we realized it was time to innovate and take advantage of opportunities in the current economic environment in order to survive and thrive. We've all been thinking about doing this at different points in our careers, but the existing economic climate accelerated the move to form Hyperion."

The three firms are finalizing their official operating agreement for the alliance. "Hyperion is positioned to take advantage of our growing geographic footprint and compete with much larger firms," he says. "Our goal is to provide comprehensive asset and property services for distressed and non-distressed/stabilized real estate. The way we'll differentiate ourselves is through our ability to provide one-stop institutional quality service and reporting with competitive pricing based on our ability to streamline our overhead costs."

Hyperion will contract with a financial institution or other group to provide their services, and then mobilize the specific personnel within the platform who can best fulfill the particular needs for each project. He says given recent economic turmoil, the comprehensive services offered by Hyperion are needed now more than ever and that current market conditions have called for this type of alliance. Hussey believes the venture is a solid one given the amount of pending commercial loan refinancing activity and debt coming due.

"Right now banks are in what's called a pretend and extend work model, where they are attempting to work out loans rather than take these assets back and service them in-house," Hussey says. "In the many conversations I've had with banks and real estate attorneys, water is building behind the dams and banks are going to be forced to make decisions about these properties before the dams break. Once banks assume ownership, they'll need to service these properties professionally and now is the right time to take advantage of the need for this expertise in our industry."