Cushman & Wakefield has added a trio of real estate veterans to its Northern California capital markets brokerage team as the firm looks to boost services for multifamily investors.
Keith Manson leads a team moving over from CBRE that also includes Zachary Greenwood and Mac Watson, said Cushman & Wakefield in a press release. The three specialize in Bay Area apartment sales with a focus on mixed-use assets and land to develop apartment buildings and condominium conversions. They will be based at the company’s San Francisco and East Bay offices.
Manson, who has 20 years of experience as a broker in the San Francisco Bay Area, said the current climate offers “tremendous potential for multifamily investors and developers” in the region. As the market in the Bay Area begins to turn a corner, investors are taking advantage of relative bargain deals on apartment complexes.
The growth in demand has come about as a result of the confluence of several positive factors: the pandemic-era bleeding of Bay Area residents to cheaper places has slowed, inflation is starting to come down and the region has seen “a healthy supply of new and vacant apartments,” according to CoStar.
“Ample renter demand continues to drive the need for existing apartment units alongside a heavily under-supplied development pipeline," Manson said in a statement to CoStar News. He added that the team’s mission was “uncovering and capitalizing on the opportunities that arise from Bay Area's unique set of market drivers.”
Manson, Greenwood and Watson were a “top producing multifamily team” at CBRE, according to the Cushman & Wakefield release.
Manson has won multiple CoStar Power Broker awards and consistently ranked as one of the top 10 brokers for CBRE’s East Bay offices. Prior to CBRE, he worked at Wheelhouse Investment Real Estate Brokerage and Arroyo & Coates.
The San Francisco multifamily market continues to see growing demand at the beginning of 2025, after several years of depressed investment in the wake of concerns about crime and uncertainty as tech companies announced additional job cuts in 2024, according to CoStar. But there's growing excitement around the artificial intelligence sector, which has attracted large capital investments and injected new life into the city’s office and residential real estate markets.