Top I-sales broker Eric Anton jumps to Marcus & Millichap from HFF

Eric Anton is joining Marcus & Millichap’s New York office, sources told The Real Deal, in one of the year’s few big-ticket investment-sales broker shuffles after a flurry of defections in late 2016.

Sources said Anton [TRDataCustom] resigned earlier this month from HFF, where he had been a senior managing director in the capital markets division since 2014. At HFF, Anton and his colleague Andrew Scandalios brokered several large, hairy deals, including Shorenstein Properties’ $330 million acquisition of the ground lease at 1407 Broadway, the $175 million sale of the Clock Tower site in Long Island City to the Durst Organization,
and Nightingale Properties and Friedland Properties’ $76 million acquisition of an operating lease for 645 Madison Avenue.

“We’re getting into the next weight class, if you will,” J.D. Parker, division manager for Marcus & Millichap’s northeast division, said of Anton’s hire. Parker said his firm had seen an increasing number of private investors interested in deals in the $50 million to $200 million range, and hopes that Anton will help the firm dominate that space.

Marcus & Millichap did just under $1.5 billion in closed New York City investment sales in 2016, according to TRD’s most recent investment-sales ranking, coming in Ninth Place based on dollar volume. Based on volume of transactions, however, they were second only to Cushman & Wakefield, with 213 deals.

Anton joined HFF from Brookfield Financial, and prior to that spent 14 years at Eastern Consolidated. He will start at Marcus & Millichap in mid-July and build out his own team, primarily working on investment sales but also on debt and equity placements.

“My background has been in putting creative, New York-type deals together,” Anton said. “This is going to be a good entrepreneurial platform” to focus on such deals, he added, describing the $50 million-$200 million range as the “core of the New York market,” with the highest deal volume and velocity.

Representatives for HFF declined to comment.

Anton’s hire breaks a lull in the investment-sales talent poaching game after a wave of broker moves in late 2016. Though this year did see the likes of CBRE’s Paul Leibowitz and David Krantz hopping to Savills Studley, it was nothing compared to the marquee moves seen last year, such as Doug Harmon and Adam Spies’ jump to Cushman from Eastdil Secured and Richard Baxter, Yoron Cohen and Scott Latham’s move to Colliers International from JLL.