Long-time property broker Eric Anton, who was most recently with the New York office of capital markets firm Brookfield Financial, is starting today with the local office of the national brokerage HFF, Anton told The Real Deal.
Anton, 45, is joining HFF as a senior managing director after three years at Brookfield. Anton spent most of his brokerage career at one of New York City’s largest local brokerage firms, Eastern Consolidated, where he started in 1998.
At Eastern Consolidated, he began a 14-year partnership with fellow broker Ron Solarz, in which they closed billions of dollars in deals.
Following the recession, the team left in 2011 for Brookfield Financial, a division of the giant global real estate firm Brookfield Asset Management.
They had moderate success in closing deals in New York City, with Brookfield ranking 13th in TRD’s survey of New York City investment sales brokerage firms for 2013, closing $366 million in sales. But their total deal volume over the three years was higher, Anton said, at more than $1 billion in various types of transactions during their tenure.
Nonetheless, the pair decided to end their partnership and each headed to a different firm. Solarz announced in April that he was returning to Eastern Consolidated.
Since the split, Anton remained active at Brookfield. In June he brought Tavros Capital Partners as a buyer to pay $105 million for a Meatpacking District portfolio at 14th Street and Ninth Avenue, as TRD reported at the time.
Anton said HFF’s New York office, led by Senior Managing Directors and co-heads Andrew Scandalios and Mike Tepedino, sits well with current capital markets trends in which a greater number of brokers are bringing both debt and equity to a deal.
“More and more investments sales are intertwined with raising capital to get deals done,” Anton added.
Asked why he was moving now, Anton said, “I am moving because the opportunity presented itself, and it feels like the right fit with this group.”
The firm plans to expand its local office, which TRD ranked seventh last year with $1.3 billion in city sales transactions.
“The addition of Eric Anton will help us significantly towards our goal of growing market share in New York,” Scandalios said in a statement.
