Cresa Brings Travers Realty into the Fold, Boosts Southern California Footprint

By Keith Loria, Contributing Editor

Travers Realty Corp. has merged with the Southern California offices of Boston-based Cresa to form a powerhouse tenant representation firm with nearly 150 local employees and more than 1,000 internationally.

Gerald Porter, Cresa

“This was not about industry consolidation. We are two friendly competitors who share a singular focus on tenant-only brokerage and prefer not to be consolidated,” Gerald Porter, a Cresa co-founder and managing principal based in Los Angeles, told Commercial Property Executive. “The timing was merely coincidental, since we have talked about doing this for a while.”

The merger will bring 32 brokerage professionals to Cresa’s operations in Los Angeles and Orange Counties with offices in West Los Angeles, Woodland Hills and Newport Beach. Cresa will maintain the current Travers Realty headquarters in downtown Los Angeles, which will be rebranded Travers Cresa.

“I think the immediate result will be better service for our clients—they are very successful with some industry groups that we don’t currently service and we offer additional service lines and geographic coverage that will help them to better support their present and future clients,” Porter said. “We think this merger will benefit everyone. We’re very excited.”

Travers Realty founder James Travers will become managing principal and a member of the Cresa Los Angeles board of directors.

“Our business is not overly complicated. Jim’s team will manage the downtown office and we will continue to manage the West L.A., Woodland Hills and Newport Beach offices, but we are all partners and will collaborate on every aspect of our business,” Porter said. “The obvious synergy created by combining the firms’ formidable talent and experience in tenant representation was a compelling driver to consummate this deal.”

Both Travers Realty and Cresa provide their clients services in commercial lease and purchase transactions, including project management, lease administration, capital markets advisory work, site selection, and corporate portfolio management. Collectively, the two firms have been involved in some of the largest lease transactions in Southern California history.

According to Porter, Cresa is the largest tenant representation and corporate services specialist in North America, and has grown by 10 to 20 percent each year for the past 21 years.