Avison Young has promoted one of its own to be its new Atlanta leader as the market faces increased vacancies and decreased sales, especially in office properties.
The Toronto-based brokerage said it appointed Brad Sinclair as managing director of Avison Young's Atlanta office. Sinclair joined Avison Young in 2017 when it acquired Hotel Assets Group, where he started his commercial real estate career as a founding partner.
He has nearly 20 years of experience in the industry and has completed more than $6 billion of hotel property transactions nationwide.
Sinclair succeeds Steve Dils, the longtime Atlanta broker who got into commercial real estate after playing quarterback for the Minnesota Vikings, Los Angeles Rams and Atlanta Falcons. Dils launched Avison Young's Atlanta office in 2010 and recently retired after spending 13 years as market leader.
Sinclair's market knowledge and experience "make him a natural for this leadership role.,” Harry Klaff, Avison Young's new U.S. president, said in a statement. “With the energy and passion to grow our brokerage business and consulting services in Atlanta, Brad will continue to broaden and strengthen our multi-market services," Klaff said.
Sinclair takes the reins in Atlanta, where Avison Young has 54 licensed brokers, during a time of change at the firm and challenges in the industry.
Other Staff Changes
Over the past six weeks, Juan Bueno, who had served as the firm's Atlanta-based U.S. president, departed for a job as president of operations at apartment giant Cortland. The firm named Klaff, who had served as Avison Young's president of clients for more than two years, to replace Bueno as U.S. president.
Last week, veteran tenant representative Doug Eidson, who sold his boutique brokerage to Avison Young in 2014, left to be a senior managing director at Scotland Wright Associates. His departure followed that of Tim Wright, a broker who has positioned himself as a booster of the downtown Atlanta market, joined Cushman & Wakefield.
As for the Atlanta office market, it slowed during the first half of 2023, according to CoStar data. "Space consolidations and sublet givebacks pushed the share of space sitting empty from 13.9% to 14.7%, where vacancy rates had hovered since the end of 2021," Chuck McShane, a director of CoStar Market Analytics, said in a recent report.
Decisions by large corporations including Truist Bank and AT&T to vacate large spaces hampered the market while "sublet availabilities also surged," McShane said in his report.
"The second quarter saw the deepest negative absorption in more than two years," he said. "Coming after a relatively stable 2022, when move-ins from major tech companies and corporate headquarters such as Google, Cisco and Hapag-Lloyd led to positive absorption, the rising vacancies this year represent a second wave of challenges for Atlanta’s office market."
In his new role at Avison Young, Sinclair plans to work to grow Avison Young’s client base and manage broker operations. He'll also concentrate on "recruiting top talent to expand market share across multiple service lines in the greater Atlanta market," the firm said.