Transwestern Adds Rising Industrial Star to South Florida Team

MIAMI—When brokerages start adding specialized staff around a commercial real estate sector, you know the market is heating up. Transwestern is responding to the rising demand for industrial brokerage by adding Carlos Gaviria to the firm.

Gaviria will serve as an associate on Transwestern’s South Florida industrial team. The team also includes managing directors Walter Byrd and Ben Eisenberg and senior vice president Thomas Kresse. Gaviria comes to Transwestern from Metro1 Properties, were he was a commercial sales associate. Metro1 could not immediately be reached for comment.

“The industrial market, specifically in Miami, is very healthy and Broward is getting healthier,” Byrd tells GlobeSt.com. “We continue to see consistent, albeit slightly slowing, growth from Latin American and in particular Brazil that has helped fuel our economies during domestic stagnation.”

With continued growth in Latin America and a recovering U.S. economy, Byrd says Transwestern added Gaviria to the team to enhance service to existing institutional clients. Gaviria will help Transwestern bolster prospecting for product and tenants, especially larger users of space in Airport West, Medley and throughout southern Broward County.

Transwestern’s current South Florida industrial portfolio spans more than 8 million square feet and includes a mix of institutional and large-scale owners such as Cabot Properties, RREEF, Seagis Property Group, Clarion and DCT Industrial. During his young career, Gaviria inked more than 400,000 square feet of leases and sales transactions and raised occupancy on a 50,000-square-foot business park from 50% to 95%.

The Transwestern team inked 1.2 million square feet of industrial deals in 2011. Byrd says the Miami-Dade and Broward markets are projecting slightly lower volume since the activity over the past year was very robust due to pent up demand, with a number of large deals being locked in yearend. “With that said,” Byrd predicts, “even with slowing growth in Latin America, it is growth and coupled with the domestic recovery points to demand for more space another solid year for our team as well as the market.”