Massey’s B6 Real Estate Advisors hires familiar face to lead first Brooklyn team

Paul Massey’s B6 Real Estate Advisors hired a veteran of Massey Knakal Realty Services and Cushman & Wakefield to lead the new brokerage’s first team in Brooklyn.

DJ Johnston is joining the company as a partner and senior managing director overseeing the neighborhoods of Bedford Stuyvesant, Bushwick, Crown Heights and Prospect Lefferts-Gardens, the firm told The Real Deal.

Over the course of his career, Johnston brokered more than 200 deals valued at roughly $1 billion, according to B6 Real Estate.

Johnston last year, along with his Cushman colleague Stephen Palmese, represented the partnership of Oak Tree Residential and California-based Avanath Capital Management in their $75 million buy of an 18-building Brooklyn multifamily portfolio from ZT Realty.

And he worked alongside Bob Knakal to broker the sale of a development site in Crown Heights owned by the Golombeck family for $75 million to Lincoln Equities Group, which is planning to develop a $500 million, 1 million-square-foot residential project with Ian Bruce Eichner’s Continuum Company.

Johnston is bringing along two of his team members from Cushman, and plans to hire one or two more associates in the next few weeks.

Massey launched B6 earlier this year and leased 12,000 square feet for the company’s Manhattan offices at 1040 Sixth Avenue near Bryant Park. The new brokerage will focus on investment sales and debt brokerage, and will implement a territory system similar to the one made famous by Massey Knakal.

The company’s already hired a dozen teams in Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and the Bronx.