Northmarq has brought on one of the West Coast’s most active retail brokers to co-lead its newly launched shopping center group from Los Angeles, where demand has picked up.
Bryan Ley, who has closed more than $14.7 billion in retail and mixed-use transactions over a two-decade career, joins the firm as a managing director in its commercial investment sales division.
He’ll focus on multi-tenant retail properties and mixed-use assets, working with institutional and private clients across the country.
Ley’s move comes as retail property investment activity has increased in the nation's second-largest market, with transaction volume reaching $3 billion over the past 12 months, a 9% increase year over year, according to CoStar data.
Ley spent the past 17 years at JLL and its predecessor HFF, where he helped steer the West Coast Retail Team and led deals such as REIT Site Centers’ $65 million sale of a grocery-anchored shopping center in Fontana, California, in October.
Earlier in his career, he held a senior brokerage role at Sperry Van Ness.
In a statement, Ley called the new role "an incredible opportunity,” at a "pivotal time" in retail real estate.
He will co-lead the National Shopping Center Group alongside Kevin Adatto, Margaret Caldwell, Greg Laughton, Ryan Roedersheimer, and Sean Tufts as part of Northmarq’s effort to build a geographically distributed team of experts focused on retail investment sales.