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SAN DIEGO—With small and large assets in the market, both private and institutional investors tend to play in the San Diego multifamily investment market, Berkadia's president of investment sales Brent Long tells GlobeSt.com. As we recently reported, the firm's San Diego office added five new professionals to its investment-sales team, led by new managing directors Ed Rosen and John Chu—formerly of Cushman & Wakefield. We spoke with Long, Rosen and Chu about the new team, the multifamily market and how San Diego's multifamily market compares to others in Southern California.

GlobeSt.com: What was the impetus behind adding the new San Diego sales team?

Long: We are an investment-sales and mortgage-banking company with a strong presence in Southern California and San Diego. In fact, the San Diego office was one of the early offices we opened in the late '90s. Our goal was to build on the strength we have here on the private-capital side and by adding what is clearly the best institutional and asset-sales team in San Diego and the Western US. We wanted to take what's been a good office for us and make it a leading regional office that covers both the private-capital and institutional-sales arenas and an integrated mortgage-banking team. It's integrated for San Diego and Southern California. This team has been a dominant player in San Diego for more than 25 years and is also very strong in Southern California overall. We are super excited to have them as part of the team, and they're really going to lead our efforts here in the mid to large institutional space for apartment sales.

GlobeSt.com: What does the addition of the new team say about the multifamily market here?

Long: The market is really changing, and you need to have a fully integrated platform to service the needs of the market.

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Rosen: Southern California is a core market, and what we're seeing is that those markets are shrinking in size. Southern California will always be one, but because institutional capital wants to be in those core markets, we will leverage off Berkadia's platform with its expertise in equity and debt and use it in combination with what we bring to the table to provide extra services to our clients.

Long: It's not just the San Diego market—it's really the Southern California marketplace. There's tremendous activity across all those markets and they need to be serviced in unison. We will work with the rest of the team throughout the US—we have five offices in Southern California and 75 offices nationwide. This builds on the legacy of our office in San Diego. This is actually an expanded office, a new regional office for us, since we moved out of our existing space into expanded space and consolidated the team into one location in La Jolla.

GlobeSt.com: How does the multifamily investment market in San Diego compare to other Southern California markets?

Rosen: There are a lot of similarities. They are all supply-constrained markets with limited development opportunities. More assets than in the past are owned by institutional groups that are less included to have more volatility in their portfolio. They're looking for more long-term holds.

Long: There are two primary parts to the market. San Diego has a large number of small to mid-size assets owned by small sponsors or private investors, and on the large side a lot of larger institutional-grade assets. It's a tale of two cities, and they do work together in some respects.

Rosen: Most of the investors with assets in California would like to diversify so that they have properties in L.A., San Diego and San Francisco. It's good to have offices in all of those areas with which to share info.

Chu: The supply-constrained nature of our market keeps returns and prices at an aggressive level. It keeps people coming in from other markets where there is more supply, and everyone wants to be in the Golden State right now. It's a great place to be with the Berkadia platform and collaborating with all of our offices in California and in other states.

GlobeSt.com: What else should our readers know about this move?

Long: Ed and John and their team have some very significant stats behind them and a history that is unequalled in most parts of the country. Over their careers they've traded more than 80,000 units and in excess of $12 billion in Southern California. It's dramatic in terms of what they've been able to accomplish, and they can continue to accomplish more by building on what we have and adding on the capital markets element.

Our firm is in a very strong growth mode. It has grown dramatically in terms of platform and presence and debt-and-investment sales. We are dramatically expanding our mortgage-banking and investment-sales platform.

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Carrie Rossenfeld

Carrie Rossenfeld is a reporter for the San Diego and Orange County markets on GlobeSt.com and a contributor to Real Estate Forum. She was a trade-magazine and newsletter editor in New York City before moving to Southern California to become a freelance writer and editor for magazines, books and websites. Rossenfeld has written extensively on topics including commercial real estate, running a medical practice, intellectual-property licensing and giftware. She has edited books about profiting from real estate and has ghostwritten a book about starting a home-based business.