Chicago Real Estate Brokerage Acquires Royal Oak Firm

An out-of-state brokerage house has added another Southeast Michigan firm to its roster.

Chicago-based Cresa has purchased Vogel Advisors, a small tenant representation brokerage firm in Royal Oak, for an undisclosed amount of cash and stock in a deal that closed in the middle of March, said Bill Vogel, founder of Vogel Advisors. 

The purchase comes less than two years after Cresa bought the eight-person Axiom Advisory Group, which had brokers in Detroit, Chicago and Dallas at the time of its purchase. 

Vogel said the former Axiom team in Michigan pulled in more than $5 million in revenue for Cresa last year, with 66 deals in 58 cities across 12 countries totaling some 3.1 million square feet. However, less than 15 of those deals were in Michigan, Vogel said, and Cresa wanted to beef up its presence around southeast Michigan with his company’s purchase.

“They are a powerhouse at global corporate portfolio real estate work,” Vogel said. “When I was approached in October of last year by the CEO of Cresa, he said, ‘Look, we have a blessing and a curse. We've got a really great office (in Southeast Michigan) with great people doing a ton of work and a ton of deal making, but we need somebody who's focused on the market.' And that's just, frankly speaking, where my specialty is.”

Vogel said his company, founded two decades ago, did roughly 25 to 30 tenant representation deals a year ranging from small storefronts to large corporate work for companies like Penske.

Read the full article on Crain's Detroit Business.