One of Chicago’s biggest development firms filled a recent opening for a top financial position, a leading CBRE broker in the area earned a promotion and Cresa made a three-person addition in its local expansion as the latest chapter in the eternal battle for broker talent.
Read on for more on recent Chicago real estate career changes.
➤Mike Beringer is Sterling Bay’s new CFO, according to LinkedIn posts. The Chicago-based developer of Google’s Fulton Market offices and Lincoln Yards brought on Beringer after he’d spent more than five years at the Blackstone-owned company Revantage, which has its offices in Willis Tower.
Beringer was most recently the senior vice president of finance at Revantage. He fills a role at Sterling Bay recently left by Michael Keesey, who had been with the development firm since 2014 as its CFO until jumping in August to the CFO position at Chicago-based Partners Enterprise Capital, which manages real estate investment firms, according to Keesey’s LinkedIn profile.
➤Bruce Westwood-Booth earned a promotion in CBRE’s Chicago office.
His new title is vice chairman, though he will also continue his broker duties from his most recent role as Executive Vice President of CBRE’s Corporate Capital Markets team, the Chicago Business Journal reported.
With Westwood-Booth’s promotion, there are now 16 brokers to have earned the title of vice chairman, which is awarded based on production, in the Chicago CBRE office, a spokesman for the brokerage told the outlet.
➤Chicago-based tenant-serving brokerage Cresa snagged three new advisers to keep fueling what its local leader Tad Laws is calling “an aggressive growth path.”
Ben Bruckshaw, Evan Hill and Jake Wright were the hires.
Bruckshaw jumped from Chicago-based real estate consulting and advisory service Accretive Portco Solutions and will work alongside Rick Morris and Mark Kolar focusing on the suburbs with Cresa.
Hill entered the brokerage world after working as a construction management associate at Kairos Living.
Wright was most recently an associate with Stream Realty’s tenant representation group and will work with Michael Marrion and Al Rogoway prospecting for new clients and developing real estate plans.
Cresa has added 10 advisors in the last 18 months in the area.
➤Veteran senior housing real estate lender Christopher Honn jumped from a position with the Chicago office of Regions Bank to a new job with NewPoint Real Estate Capital as managing director of seniors housing and healthcare.
Honn has 35 years of senior housing and healthcare loan origination experience, having held positions with Berkadia from 2015 to 2017 and, before that, Fannie Mae for nearly 13 years.
NewPoint expanded its seniors housing and healthcare lending platform in May, securing licenses as a senior housing lender with both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
“Few in our space have the programmatic aptitude that Chris has developed over the course of his career,” said NewPoint’s Katherine Stewart, who leads the firm’s seniors housing agency platform.