Morris Betesh Points Arrow Real Estate Advisors on an Upward Path

When Morris Betesh founded Arrow Real Estate Advisors in late 2024, it was the culmination of more than a decade of forging relationships at other leading commercial real estate brokerage firms.

Betesh, 38, launched Arrow in October 2024 with 12 other brokers, some of whom he has been teammates with since beginning his career in 2011 at the old investment sales firm Massey Knakal.

“I saw an opportunity to be able to grow a larger platform and use my team as a great foundation for that,” said Betesh, who also worked at Cushman & Wakefield when it acquired Massey Knakal in 2015, before joining Meridian Capital Group in 2017. 

Since forming Arrow with 12 Meridian colleagues 16 months ago, the capital markets advisory firm has been on an upward trajectory, arranging $7 billion of lending volume through 165 deals in 2025 alone. The Arrow team has also grown to 34 from a combination of former Meridian colleagues and fresh additions. It also now has five offices with its New York City headquarters along with New Jersey, Philadelphia, South Florida and Southern California.

Betesh’s journey to running a growing brokerage practice as managing partner nearly took a far different path two decades ago. He entered Brooklyn College on a pre-med track before the real estate bug began to bite. Betesh, who grew up in Brooklyn, started working for his family’s real estate business in property management and then decided to shift his focus to the finance side of the business.

After graduating from Brooklyn College in 2008 with a bachelor’s degree in business management and finance, Betesh faced headwinds getting a real estate job due to a challenging credit environment on the heels of the Global Financial Crisis. He stayed in property management before he found an ideal opportunity for his interests in the mortgage brokerage division of Massey Knakal.

“I thought that was a great opportunity to get into a business where there was a lot of white space since it was kind of a startup, but at the same time leveraging an existing brand that at the time was best in class,” Betesh said. “I thought that was a great opportunity to marry some of my finance interests along with an opportunity to grow in a new platform and leverage a foundation that they built over a few decades with great brand awareness in the marketplace.”

In his six years at Massey Knakal, including after the Cushman & Wakefield acquisition, Betesh was part of the firm’s top-producing New York City financing team. It closed more than 400 transactions, and the Real Estate Board of New York named Betesh the most promising rookie commercial sales-
person of the year in 2015. 

Some of the signature financings Betesh facilitated at Massey Knakal and Cushman & Wakefield included a 100,000-square-foot warehouse-to-office conversion at 215 Moore Street in Bushwick, Brooklyn, and an acquisition and pre-development loan for the repurposing of St. Luke’s hospital in Manhattan’s Morningside Heights.

Bob Knakal, the chairman and CEO of investment sales brokerage BK Real Estate Advisors who co-founded Massey Knakal, said he could tell from the moment Betesh was hired at his old firm that a bright future lay ahead. It didn’t take long for Betesh to start leading its debt platform. 

“He was smart, understood the objectives of the business and was very personable,” Knakal said. “It is no surprise to me that he has done as well as he has. Arrow has unlimited potential with Morris running the ship.” 

Betesh, along with his current Arrow teammate Justin Boruchov, left Cushman & Wakefield for Meridian in 2017, where he closed a number of high-profile debt deals across multiple property sectors. During his final days at Meridian in September 2024, Betesh negotiated a $117.5 million construction loan from Maxim Capital Group for ZD Jasper Realty to develop a condo tower at 430 West 37th Street in Manhattan’s Hudson Yards. 

From his prior stops before forming Arrow, Betesh forged strong working relationships that have laid the foundation for Arrow’s early success, with a number of former colleagues joining since the brokerage’s launch. One of Arrow’s early big hires was Michael Wlody as chief operating officer. Wlody had been a senior managing director at Massey Knakal/Cushman & Wakefield — and sat in the cubicle next to Betesh as he was finding his footing in the brokerage world. 

“Having the opportunity to hire people that you know well really takes a lot of risk out of hiring since you know their work ethic, you know their character, and you know their capabilities,” Betesh said. “I’ve been lucky enough to build a great team of people around me, which I’ve curated.”

In addition to filling his full-time staff with former colleagues, Betesh also added former longtime Meridian brokers Ronnie Levine and Seth Grossman, founding partners of commercial real estate private equity firm Green Pine Real Estate, as senior advisers in late 2025 to map out expansion plans.

Levine, who spent nearly 20 years at Meridian, said he saw early signs while working with Betesh that he had the mindset to one day steer his own brokerage platform with his deep knowledge of the development business. 

“Even before launching Arrow, he was effectively operating as an entrepreneur within a larger organization,” Levine said. “He built and ran a vertically integrated team, controlled his own relationships, and approached the business like an owner.”

The inaugural calendar year for Arrow was a banner one in terms of the scope of the deals, and the brokerage firm took the lead on a number of office-to-residential conversion projects.

In July 2025, Arrow arranged a $320 million construction loan from Bridge City Capital and Deutsche Bank for Bushburg Properties to partially convert its 1.2 million-square-foot office building at 80 Pine Street in Lower Manhattan into rental apartments.

Arrow also brokered a complex transaction last July involving a $61 million acquisition loan to a joint venture between David Werner Real Estate Investments and Sam Fisch Development for 5 Hanover Square, a 25-story office building slated for a potential residential conversion. The unique deal consisted of investment firm 99c supplying a $41 million acquisition and pre-development loan for the upper floors. At the same time, Deutsche Bank provided a $21 million acquisition loan for a five-floor condominium unit below occupied by the Ideal School of Manhattan.

Looking ahead, Betesh said Arrow is on pace for another big year in 2026 with more liquidity in the market early this year compared to the same period in 2025. The brokerage is poised to benefit from an uptick in acquisitions across multiple asset classes, with Arrow representing many borrower clients looking to acquire distressed office properties nationwide both for residential conversions and basis reset plays, according to Betesh.

In New York City, Arrow is targeting a number of development transactions, including several multifamily properties that benefit from tax abatements under the state’s 2-year-old 485x program designed to produce more affordable housing. Arrow also has an active pipeline well beyond the Big Apple, closing deals in New Jersey, Westchester County, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Jacksonville and Adventura, Fla., in early 2026.  

Arrow, too, is experiencing tailwinds from the increased debt competition in the CRE marketplace, with a sharp rise in private lenders, life insurance companies and banks looking to deploy capital again after some stepped to the sidelines in recent years.

“Instead of talking to three people to get your deal done, you might have to talk to 30 people to find the right person for it, and that suits utilizing an intermediary broker much more than the old environment,” Betesh said. “Our team is set up to handle that kind of business as we’ve always been on the cutting edge of new lender relationships, so we think that we’re competing a lot better in the marketplace today.”

When Betesh is not executing multilayered financings, he keeps plenty busy with his wife and four children, who range in age from 3 to 11. He also has a passion for surfing, with the Jersey Shore his go-to spot in the summer and Costa Rica his favorite vacation place to ride the waves. 

Outside of the ocean, Betesh is fully focused on building up a brokerage that continues to display an upward trajectory. The first year and half of Arrow have seen signs of the young firm being a major force in the capital markets space, and Betesh said the company still has plenty more movement ahead.

“The market is so vast, and we capture a very small amount of market share,” Betesh said. “We’re barely scratching the surface.”

Andrew Coen can be reached at acoen@commercialobserver.com.