Newmark Knight Frank Expands NY Capital Markets Division

NEW YORK – Newmark Knight Frank (NKF) has appointed three new capital market experts to its New York Capital Markets Investment Sales division. Evan Layne, Brett Siegel and Jean Celestin will join the firm as vice chairmen and co-heads of the division.

Previously, Layne, Siegel and Celestin worked at Eastdil Secured, where they successfully transacted more than $125 billion in combined investment sales throughout their collective 50 years of experience.

At Eastdil Secured, the sales team conducted recent New York transactions including the more than $2 billion recapitalization of the 245 Park Avenue skyscraper, the $1.2 billion sale of Disney’s NYC headquarters and the $300 million sale of the Upper West Side Stonehenge Village Apartments.

Layne, Siegel and Celestin will work in partnership with Capital Markets Debt & Structured Finance vice chairmen and co-heads, Jordan Roeschlaub and Dustin Stolly, who led NKF to generate $14 billion in debt replacement transactions in 2018. Kevin Shannon and Rob Griffin will continue to lead and oversee Capital Markets at a national level, as co-heads of US Capital Markets for the firm.

NKF’s Capital Markets growth has increased substantially in the past few years. The firm is now ranked fourth in overall investment sales transaction volume within the New York City metro area, effectively climbing seven spots since 2017, based on Real Capital Analytics (RCA) data. The firm’s regional RCA market share in investment sales has also quadrupled to 8% since 2017.

NKF continues to build out its investment sales division by creating a collaborative team to gain insight through its fully-integrated platform.

In an effort to strengthen its full-service Capital Markets platform this past year, NKF additionally hired industry veterans and former Eastdil Secured professionals, Adam Etra, Mark Schoenholtz, Miles Spencer and Lawrence Wolfe as vice chairmen and co-heads of lodging. Ryan Maconachy and Chad Lavender were also brought on earlier this year as vice chairmen, to lead to firm’s Healthcare & Alternative Real Estate Assets platform.

NKF has decided to focus its efforts on New York City, where more than a third of the US’s largest institutional real estate owners are based. Within the city, the firm has built a top debt and structured finance practice, which is based in the same office as the investment sales division; allowing for integration and collaboration opportunities between service lines to successfully capitalize on the industry.

Newmark Knight Frank is a global commercial real estate advisory firm, operated by Newmark Group Inc. The firm offers services and products to owners and occupiers from 430 offices throughout six continents.