Partner ESI Launches Tech-Focused CRE Valuation Arm
By Andrew Coen August 31, 2022 8:45 am
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Partner Engineering and Science (Partner ESI) has formed a valuation firm with a major technology focus spearheaded by two longtime commercial real estate industry leaders from JLL, Commercial Observer can first report.
The Los Angeles-based company’s newly launched Partner Valuation Advisors will be led by Brandon Nunnink and Eric Enloe, who have more than 40 years of combined experience valuing more than $2 trillion of CRE assets. The duo, who specialize in the impact of environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) matters on property values, co-founded JLL’s valuation & advisory services business in the brokerage’s Chicago office.
“We thought that starting from scratch in an evaluation business, but in a very established due diligence business like partner, was a tremendous fit,” Enloe said. “We think the valuation business has some modernization that really needs to be done in the space and we’ve seen a little bit of that, especially in the multifamily area, but there is a lot more that can be done to really tech-forward in how this business is run.”
Joseph Derhake, founder and CEO of Partner ESI, noted that the business will be well positioned, given that the company already plays an advisory role in roughly 70,000 projects annually — equating to roughly one-sixth of all yearly CRE transactions — which generates a “massive underlying database” from which to execute. Derhake said this will mark the first time a valuation firm is being paired with a team that delivers ESG expertise.
The addition of valuation services adds to Partners ESI’s recent expansion beyond its core products of phase one environmental site assessments and property condition assessments. The firm has added ALTA surveys and zoning reports within the past seven years.
“For a long time we have been thinking that appraisal would make sense as the next thing to add in the professional service realm,” Derhake said. “But we were not interested unless we could be good at it, and we were fortunate enough to find two people who are really great at it and highly respected on a national level.”
Derhake noted that expedited asset valuations are taking on a greater importance for CRE investors and lenders amid record levels of capital for increasingly complex transactions in volatile market conditions. Their offering will be very tech-focused with data aggregation and dashboard features as opposed to lengthy PDFs.
Enloe was one of the founders of JLL’s Valuation & Advisory team nationally and the head of commercial valuation. He has experience valuing all asset types including office, retail, multifamily and industrial as well as special purpose asset types such as regional malls, self-storage, manufactured housing, hotels and educational facilities.
A University of Notre Dame graduate, Enloe is a member of the Counselors of Real Estate and is a fellow in the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors.
Nunnink arrives at Partners ESI after serving as chief operating office of JLL Valuation & Advisory Services in the Americas. He specializes in real estate information systems, business valuations, partial interest valuations, and manufactured housing data and valuation.
“I think the exciting thing from our perspective is, having been at a big firm, we saw how challenging it was to try and force a big firm to adapt versus building the right technology from scratch,” Nunnink said. “We’re really excited to be part of somebody with scale at the national level, but that has a little bit more of a startup mentality and is already delivering on some of our vision.”
Prior to entering the valuation space, Nunnink was a commercial mortgage-backed securities lender with LaSalle Bank/ABN AMRO in Chicago and London, where he led over $2 billion in U.S.-based real estate transactions and over €500M in European deals. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Notre Dame and is a chartered financial analyst.
Partner Valuation Advisors plans to aggressively pursue CRE clients with road shows already lined up in Los Angeles, Atlanta, Dallas, San Francisco and Chicago. The valuation arm of Partner ESI will also be ramping up the hiring process, with Derhake aiming to become a top 10 national provider in the next two years.
Andrew Coen can be reached at acoen@commercialobserver.com.
