CBRE Names New Managing Director in South Florida
By Julia Echikson May 30, 2022 9:30 am
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CBRE (CBRE) has hired Marcus & Millichap alum Susan Bands to be its managing director in South Florida.
Bands, who started earlier this month, will focus on driving growth for the brokerage’s two main service lines, leasing and sales, across the brokerage’s four offices in the region.
Bands reports to Josh Bank, a South Florida senior managing director who’s based in Miami, though he stressed the egalitarian culture of the top team, which also includes Fort Lauderdale’s managing director David Bateman.
“We are flat in our team leadership approach,” Bank told Commercial Observer.
Prior to joining CBRE, Bands spent 18 years at Marcus & Millichap, most recently serving as the brokerage’s regional manager for its offices in Manhattan, Westchester, N.Y., and New Haven, Conn.
“My experience at Marcus was nothing but great,” Bands said, but she was ready for a change. “If you spend your whole career working with the same people in the same type of role, you don’t really grow and develop. And I’m just not that kind of person.”
The executive came down to Florida on a whim during the pandemic, first buying a condo in West Palm Beach two years ago as an investment. Soon enough, like many newly minted Florida residents, Bands took to the lifestyle in the Sunshine State.
“Every time I’ve come down [to Florida], I was monumentally happier,” she said. “You can call that a COVID thing — the outdoor living, not having to be confined by the mask, so on and so forth.”
Bank hopes that others with Bands’ experience follow suit. “I think she’s a great case study of that talent that has bought into the story that is South Florida and sees the potential of this market,” he said.
Julia Echikson can be reached at jechikson@commercialobserver.com.
