HOUSTON—A trio of former Situs Group employees recently rejoined the firm after about a year at Cushman & Wakefield, and Steven Bean, executive managing director, US advisory & business development, has an explanation at the ready: Ultimately, he tells GlobeSt.com, what motivated the three to come back was “our growth and the diversification of our client base. We're not one-trick ponies, and they saw that.”

The three returnees all are based at Situs' global headquarters in Houston. They're VPs of CRE diligence and advisory Sonia Horton, a 15-year company veteran and Linda Le, who worked for a decade at Situs before joining Cushman & Wakefield; and Lisa Brunner, who reports to Horton. All three rejoined Situs in October.

Surveying the commercial real estate environment from the standpoint of Situs—a global advisory firm with roots extending back to the Great Depression—Bean observes, “It's interesting what we see out there, with some of it being driven by the low-yield environment. Some of these companies that haven't traditionally been outsourcers—think more of the balance sheet firms—especially those that have been in the CMBS space, where maybe their transactional volume has been down this year, have been looking at their platforms and trying to rationalize some of their costs, their overhead.

“This is a pretty human capital intensive business,” he continues. “Situs has always been in a position of becoming strategic partners with firms and helping them maximize their efficiency by being their overflow provider, and in some cases handling all of the back office functions.”

Of Horton, Le and Brunner, Bean says, I think they came back for the opportunity and for our culture.” Hde adds that within Situs' advisory group, “we have created a lot of specializations. Our advisory group is about 225 people. When you get to be that big, you have to be specialized. We have 17 different practice areas inside of our team.”

Instant Insights /

They Came Back For the Opportunity

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