To look at the buildings neighboring it, 567 Vanderbilt Avenue is a typical four-story, mixed-use apartment building in Brooklyn. From the bricks it was built with to the upwardly mobile professionals and strollers it presumably houses, the structure is nearly identical to the other assets in that corner of Prospect Heights.
With a recent shift on the ground—characterized by relatively new restaurants like James, Cornelius and, inevitably, the Vanderbilt—sales prices in the neighborhood are rising.
But over on Vanderbilt Avenue in particular, where trendy bars and cafés pop up each week, prices are absolutely surging, in part because of Nostradamus-like predictions of basketball fans flooding the zone once the Nets start playing inside the proposed Atlantic Yards arena and, ultimately, exiting en masse from doors leading directly to the street.
It was with those paradigm shifts in mind that, two weeks ago, 567 Vanderbilt Avenue changed hands for $1.3 million, a notable $50,000 above the initial asking price. Working behind the scenes was Shaun Riney, a 25-year-old Marcus & Millichap (MMI) commercial real estate broker who has emerged out of nowhere as the face of multifamily housing deals in one of New York City’s most rapidly changing neighborhoods.
“It’s kind of, in a sense, ‘A rising tide will lift all boats,’” Mr. Riney said last week of the cruise ship-size arena that’s expected to be completed and ready for the 2013 National Basketball Association season.
The old-fashioned way for greenhorns to break into New York’s commercial real estate scene is a simple yet competitive process: reach out to the big firms—CB Richard Ellis, Cushman & Wakefield, Jones Lang LaSalle, for example—and pray for a break, get in, and spend the first year watching veterans ink deals.
Or they can go to the Brooklyn office of Marcus & Millichap, which for the past four years has offered brokers the chance to cut teeth in a borough brimming with profitable commercial real estate possibilities.
Launched in 2007 by J.D. Parker, now the Northeast regional director of Marcus & Millichap, the firm brought more than 25 young brokers into its offices in downtown Brooklyn to negotiate a combination of multifamily, retail and office deals. In four years, the firm has seen its sales numbers explode, rising from $28 million in 2007 to nearly $40 million in 2010.
“We’re on track to have our best year ever in Brooklyn,” said Mr. Parker. “And a lot of that is due to Shaun.”
Mr. Riney, a Detroit native with a physical resemblance to Boiler Room and Hawaii Five-0 actor Scott Caan and the track record of a much older and experienced broker, has closed 330,685 square feet in property deals and has handled $85.2 million worth of listings. During his first year at Marcus & Millichap’s Boston office in 2008—while working alongside then-colleague Zach Felson—he closed more than $35 million in sales, a feat that earned him the firm’s in-house “Rookie of the Year” honors.
Mr. Riney was given his own team in 2010, closing $18.1 million in property sales that same year. He received his second accolade, the “Marcus & Millichap Rising Star Award,” in January 2011.
Sitting in his bare Brooklyn office—adorned with little more than detailed maps of Brooklyn—Mr. Riney said he spends his weekends not at sports bars watching football with friends but scouring Property Shark listings, looking for his next big running pattern.
“This is the environment I love to be in,” said Mr. Riney, now an associate at the firm’s national multihousing group. “[It’s] fast-paced, intense, competitive, where every day can be a $50,000 day or a dud, depending on how much you want to work at it.”
Mr. Riney sells a variety of multifamily housing and mixed-use properties in Clinton Hill, Bedford-Stuyvesant and Fort Greene. And with the unveiling of Atlantic Yards just a year away, he thinks now is the perfect time for prospective buyers to invest near the massive—and controversial—new development in Prospect Heights.
