COMMERCIAL
Santa Ana-based Grubb & Ellis Co.’s local operations are likely to see a boost from the company’s growing healthcare brokerage operations.
The company recently hired Garth Hogan as executive managing director of Grubb’s national healthcare and medical office brokerage group.
Hogan was the founder and chief executive of Newport Beach’s Medical Realty Advisors, a boutique brokerage whose leasing portfolio had grown to more than 80 medical buildings and 3 million square feet of space.
Medical Realty Advisor’s operations are being rolled into Grubb’s healthcare brokerage business with Hogan’s appointment.
The combined operations largely will be run out of Grubb’s Newport Beach brokerage office. Hogan also will be working out of the company’s Westwood office.
Scott Johnstone, a senior vice president and office broker in Newport Beach, will be working with Hogan to build up the practice, which already has added a number of workers and large assignments.
Grubb has doubled the number of brokers working in its healthcare and medical office practice to about 15 people this year. The company expects to have as many as 30 people working in the group by the end of the summer, Hogan said.
Throughout his career, Hogan has worked on more than $1 billion of sales and leases, primarily in Southern California. Operating under the Grubb name gives him the chance to grab some larger national clients, he said.
“Most large developers would prefer to use a brokerage the size of Grubb,” Hogan said. “It was hard to build a national platform when I was (at Medical Realty).”
There have been signs of improving leasing and sales for commercial brokerages in early 2010. That’s especially true in the healthcare sector, following the federal government’s passage of the healthcare reform bill earlier this year, according to Hogan.
The bill’s passage “really started to shake up a lot of business. Hospitals are starting to mobilize” on their own space needs, Hogan said.
“I’ve already signed a dozen leases since the beginning of the year. The phones have really started ringing the past 30 to 45 days,” he said.
Among local deals the practice is involved in, Hogan said he’s working on the sale of land owned by the family of Carl’s Jr. founder Carl Karcher, near Harbor Boulevard and the Riverside (91) Freeway, where development of a 50,000-square-foot medical office building is planned.
Auction Update
Last month, I wrote about the impending auction of a distressed loan tied to a 44,850-square-foot Irvine office building next to the former Washington Mutual Inc. campus.
Irvine-based property auctioneer Real Estate Disposition LLC (better known as REDC) and Chicago-based brokerage Jones Lang LaSalle Inc. were handling the sale of the loan for 17861 Von Karman Ave.
The loan, set to mature in late 2017 and carrying an interest rate of 6.28%, had an original balance of $9.8 million and now is at $7.3 million.
According to Jones Lang LaSalle officials, the loan ended up selling this month for $5.1 million, well above the starting bid of $2.5 million. The buyer wasn’t disclosed. It was said to be a regional institutional buyer.
REDC’s next big local auction is for 300 foreclosed Southern California homes on Saturday and Sunday through a live and online auction.
The Saturday live auction is at the Ontario Convention Center. The following day, it shifts to the Sheraton Los Angeles Downtown Hotel.
RESIDENTIAL
Irvine’s John Burns Real Estate Consulting Inc. has brought on the employees of a San Diego-based real estate consulting firm.
Burns said this month he had “joined forces” with Sullivan Group Real Estate Advisors, an eight-person consulting group headed up by Tim Sullivan, who had previously worked with Burns at two other consultancies.
John Burns Real Estate Consulting counted about 20 workers prior to the deal, and handles research and consulting for builders, land owners, lenders and developers.
Terms of the transaction weren’t disclosed. The combined companies are operating under the John Burns Real Estate Consulting name.
Sullivan Group’s existing staff “will continue to have an office in San Diego and rack up frequent flier miles advising executives all over the country,” Burns said in a June 1 letter to clients.
