ViVO acquires Jacog Advisors amid South Florida brokerage shake-ups 

Rene Vivo’s ViVO Real Estate Group acquired a small Doral-based commercial brokerage. 

Jacog Advisors, founded and owned by Francisco Giron, merged into ViVO, the firms announced. Others on the Jacog team who moved to ViVO are Martijn Rentema, Pierre Martinez, Raquel Riano, Marlene Ruano and Rachelle Fernandez. 

The deal marks the second recent expansion for Hialeah-based ViVO, amid continued shake-ups of South Florida brokerages. This month, a former State Street Realty industrial team led by Frank Trelles, including Jason Gonzalez and Brandon Careaga, also jumped to ViVO. 

Giron, who founded Jacog in 2016 following a career in banking focused on commercial real estate financing, cited a reason for the move as the ability to “penetrate more of a wider and larger scale institutional” market, such as real estate investment trusts. 

Jacog, which now operates under the ViVO brand, brokers investment sales and leasing deals, as well as capital markets services for owner-occupied properties and investments, Giron said. Since its founding, the firm has closed more than $500 million in deals in South Florida and elsewhere in the state, including Jacksonville, Orlando and Tampa, as well as in California, Colorado, New York and Texas, according to Giron. 

Jacog closed its Doral headquarters, but kept its office at 1200 East Las Olas Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale, meaning ViVO now has an office on Las Olas Boulevard. 

Trelles, who was at State Street for the past eight years, started out in industrial sales, but switched to tenant leasing representation following the pandemic-induced demand for warehouses. As a whole, he has closed about $1 billion in deals throughout his career, he said. 

Jacog, as well as Trelles and the rest of the ex-State Street team that jumped to ViVO now have an opportunity to start building their own real estate portfolios. ViVO opens an opportunity to its employees and brokers to co-invest in the company’s development and property purchases.

ViVO’s investment portfolio represents about 20 percent of its business. 

“We normally buy industrial [or other] commercial properties with value-add opportunities,” Rene Vivo said. “We hardly ever buy a property that doesn’t require a lot of retrofitting and rehabbing. We end up tucking those into our portfolio.”

ViVO, which Rene Vivo founded in 2002, has closed more than $2.5 billion in sales and leases, mainly for retail, industrial, offices and land, according to its website and a news release that announced the Jacog purchase. The firm also offers planning and development services, working with landowners to determine the best development potential for a site and managing projects on behalf of clients. 

Amid elevated interest rates, ViVO expects more work, including as office and retail loans come due, necessitating sales or creating investment opportunities, Vivo said. 

Giron and Vivo declined to provide the value of the Jacog acquisition. 
Among other commercial brokerage shake-ups, in January, Fort Lauderdale-based Native Realty acquired 18-employee No Limit Real Estate. Jaime Sturgis leads Native. Kyle Sorel and Jordan Cohen lead No Limit. This was followed by ex-CBRE broker David Bateman joining Orlando-based Foundry Commercial, where he will lead the recently launched South Florida brokerage division. Foundry also allows its employees to build their own real estate portfolios by co-investing in the company’s development and site purchase deals.