OAKBROOK TERRACE, IL-Mid-America Real Estate Corp. is forming a four-person team for the production of single tenant net leased investment and 1031 Exchange business. The company has hired Bill Wright from InSite Real Estate, and he will join current executives Mark Goldberg and Tom Fritz, with another new hire planned.

 Wright spent three years at InSite as a director overseeing single tenant, build-to-suit retail properties, and before that was at CB Richard Ellis for nine years where he was a VP for investment sales. Goldberg has been with Mid-America for nine years, and Fritz came to the company from Grubb & Ellis in 2007.

 Rick Drogosz, investment principal, tells GlobeSt.com that though the company was performing single-tenant deals, the company has been more involved in the multitenant side. “”We were busy with $800 million on the multitenant deals, we have seven people I in that area, we hadn’t made a concerted effort to push single tenant. Now there’s been a lull, this is the ideal time to staff single-tenant up. Plus, we’ve seen other competitors doing it,” he says.

 Wright says that the retail investment market has seen a rebound in sales during the past several months. “Investors are back in the game, lenders are loosening up, and buyer and seller expectations are coming together,” he says.

 The team will focus on expanding the firm’s reach beyond Chicago and into the secondary Midwest markets, Drogosz says. “With the stock market underperforming, investors continue to invest in single tenant properties. We have offices in Wisconsin and Minneapolis, plus our affiliation with ChainLinks Retail Advisors in a few other states. Single tenant is a very time intensive prospect, but we have the database; it’s a matter of growing that database and being a clearinghouse for that information. We really see this as a growth avenue for the company,” he says.