Ciminelli Real Estate Corp. has taken on a national partner for its brokerage services for the first time, affiliating with Newmark Group under the bigger firm’s global umbrella. The real estate brokerage group at Ciminelli, led by executive vice president Kyle Ciminelli, will operate as Newmark Ciminelli, offering services in the Buffalo and Rochester markets, and across Western New York generally. The alliance will also help Ciminelli with its efforts to expand its brokerage efforts into Southern Ontario markets, including Niagara Falls, Hamilton and Burlington. “Newmark has a wide variety of business lines and resources that now we’re able to tap into to service our existing clients, whether that be in Buffalo and Western New York, or utilizing Newmark’s other offices around the country and around the world,” Kyle Ciminelli said. “It opens up potential new revenue streams.”
The firm has been seeking to boost its market share in tenant representation locally, especially for companies that are based in Buffalo but have significant real estate needs elsewhere. “This alliance is designed to power new brokerage business for both parties – allowing Newmark to expand into growing markets across Western New York and Southern Ontario, Canada, while granting Ciminelli the unique ability to leverage the platform of our global brand as it continues its own expansion,” said Newmark Chief Revenue Officer Lou Alvarado.
Ciminelli – son of CEO Paul Ciminelli – joined his father’s family firm after 16 years at Newmark in New York City, most recently as executive managing director. That long relationship led to the new agreement, he said. Kyle Ciminelli will lead the firm’s brokerage strategy, while his father will continue to focus on Ciminelli’s bigger property and asset management, investments and real estate development business.
“I spent literally my entire career at Newmark, and upon me informing the CEO that I was leaving, I had brought up the idea of this arrangement, so we’ve been in discussions about it ever since,” Ciminelli said. It also fit with his father’s thinking, he added. “He’s had it in the back of his head about doing some kind of arrangement with a national for some time now, so the obvious choice was Newmark,” Ciminelli said.
Ciminelli had briefly joined TCN Worldwide, a global network of independent brokerage firms, in the late 1990s, but the Newmark partnership is more like a franchise affiliation, with a combination of revenue-sharing and a fee for using the global brand. Newmark, along with London-based partner Knight Frank and independently owned offices, has 18,800 real estate agents in 500 offices worldwide, generating $2.2 billion in revenues last year. Additionally, a specialized team of appraisal and valuation experts had left GAR Associates in April 2019 to join Newmark’s Valuation & Advisory practice. But that group – led by M. Scott Allen – focuses on conducting market studies and valuation analyses for multifamily apartment projects nationwide, and is separate from the brokerage business that Ciminelli has. Ciminelli has more than 680 properties with 18 million square feet of space in New York and six other states.