A significant programme of investment into strategic growth is placing CBRE’s nationwide business on a strong footing as the commercial property market outlook improves in 2025.
Over the past three years, the global real estate company has taken steps to bolster its range of services and geographical market coverage with business acquisitions, recruitment and new premises making up three key areas of investment.
Andrew Stringer, senior managing director of CBRE New Zealand, said that despite reduced commercial property transaction volumes in the last couple of years, the company has made a commitment to its clients and team to continue growing the business, with a view to capturing the eventual improvement in market conditions.
“CBRE is investing into New Zealand’s more positive market outlook and we have deliberately kept sight of our long term strategic growth plan through the downturn.
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"In the past six months we have invested into new premises and created additional senior roles, which will enable us to be well-resourced, agile and with the geographic coverage required to meet demand and provide superior service to our clients as the market recovers.”
The company, which is the largest wholly-owned, single-entity commercial real estate business in New Zealand, has recently moved its Whangarei and Napier teams into new offices.
2025 will also see the opening of CBRE’s new Christchurch headquarters, in a newly-constructed building in the heart of the CBD office and retail precinct.
The new office will bring together the entire Christchurch team including the agency and valuation & advisory businesses, which are currently located in two separate buildings. CBRE has also taken naming rights to the new building.
CBRE’s nationwide network of offices covers almost the entire country, providing property sales, leasing, property management and urban & rural valuation and consultancy services.
Its nationwide network was significantly expanded in 2022 when CBRE acquired the entire Telfer Young business of 20 offices. This almost doubled the number of CBRE’s New Zealand staff and tripled the size of its valuation and advisory team.
Along with broadening CBRE’s geographic footprint, the acquisition also added residential valuation to the company’s existing commercial valuation and advisory business, along with strong capability in valuing rural & agribusiness, lifestyle property, tourism assets and alternative property types.
Campbell Stewart, managing director of valuation and advisory services at CBRE, said one of the next growth areas is Auckland residential valuation.
“We’re targeting strategic growth in our Auckland metropolitan residential valuation team, where we have identified significant opportunity to broaden our market coverage.
"This will include recruitment and we are looking to make some key hires into new positions this year."
The company has already welcomed several new high-calibre people into the valuation and advisory services team nationally in recent months.
These include Claire McLellan, who has joined CBRE as associate director & quality risk manager, based in Dunedin.
Jason Uden has rejoined the Hamilton office as a registered valuer, while Ashton Gibbard has joined the company as an associate director in Northland.
“Alongside the Telfer Young acquisition, which is among the biggest single investments ever by a commercial real estate firm in New Zealand, we have continued to welcome more skilled valuation professionals into the business in order to keep providing better service to our clients as demand increases,” said Stewart.
In the property management division, Zahid Al Abayechi has returned to CBRE as director of property management, heading the Auckland business.
Further appointments in property management and other business lines are also expected, said Stringer.
“We are pleased to have attracted some excellent people into the business in the past six months and part of our growth strategy is to continue hiring in anticipation of demand increasing across all our lines of business as higher levels of transactional activity return to the market.”
The company’s agency business has also celebrated some key successes in the past year, having brokered some of the country’s largest commercial property transactions amid a challenging time for the market.
The capital markets team were involved in negotiating four of the 10 biggest deals in the second half of 2024, including development land, industrial and mixed use assets.
Among these transactions was a large development site at Belmont, Auckland, sold to Summerset for a confidential sum. CBRE also negotiated the $64m sale of 32 iPort Drive, Rolleston, Christchurch, to Booster KiwiSaver Scheme; and the Orams Marine precinct in Auckland for $55m to a capital partnership between Orams and Precinct Properties.
- Supplied by CBRE
