Former JLL brokers launch boutique sales firm

Two former JLL sales brokers who left the company amid its acquisition of HFF are launching their own boutique firm.

Glenn Tolchin and Yoav Oelsner have teamed up to start their new shop, Upland Property Advisors, the brokers told The Real Deal.

“We are a different type of firm, much more aligned with our clients’ entrepreneurial spirit than our corporate competitors,” Tolchin said.

The brokers are starting out with a handful of listings, including an assignment to sell a 45,000-square-foot development site at 167 Bowery, and plan to market a property with a roughly $50 million ask in the near future. Their office is in the Plaza District.

Tolchin and Oelsner were part of JLL’s institutional investment sales team alongside top brokers Richard Baxter, Yoron Cohen and Scott Latham, who left the company for competitor Colliers International in 2016.

They helped lead the brokerage’s sales efforts, but were among a handful of dealmakers who departed as JLL merged the sales and debt teams it acquired through its $2 billion purchase of HFF.

Mo Beler, who was managing director of JLL’s New York capital markets team, left last year and founded his own brokerage, Beler Advisory Group. Sales broker Anthony Ledemsa left around the same time and landed at Hodges Ward Elliott.

JLL’s top debt team of Aaron Appel, Keith Kurland and brothers Jonathan Schwartz and Adam Schwartz left last summer to found their own company, AKS, which was just acquired by Walker & Dunlop.

Contact Rich Bockmann at rb@therealdeal.com or 212-673-5081