Former GVA Advantis brokers land new jobs

Seventeen former GVA Advantis brokers landed new jobs last week in the wake of the commercial real estate firm shuttering its brokerage units in Norfolk and Newport News.

More than half of those brokers joined Harvey Lindsay Commercial Real Estate, among them Deborah Stearns and Clark Baldwin, both of whom had served as managing directors of the local GVA Advantis offices.

Advantis Holdings, blaming a difficult environment for selling and leasing commercial real estate, said Monday that it shut six of its 16 GVA Advantis offices and sharply reduced its brokerage operation.

"Everyone in the industry is saddened by the unraveling of Advantis," said Michael W. McCabe, president and CEO of Harvey Lindsay. "This is the fourth real estate recession I've been through, but I've never really seen anything like it. It's global and affecting every single industry."

The addition of 11 GVA Advantis brokers brings Harvey Lindsay's total number to 43 brokers. Seven of them will join the firm's Newport News office and four will join its Norfolk office, McCabe said.

"It's a big group to bring in all at once, but we're excited about it," McCabe said. "We're obviously hopeful that many of the accounts they previously had will follow them."

Despite the addition of so many brokers, McCabe said Harvey Lindsay has no plans to expand its operations outside of Hampton Roads.

Four other GVA Advantis brokers joined S.L. Nusbaum Realty Co. and two were hired by CB Richard Ellis, those firms announced last week.

Several other local brokers left GVA Advantis in the weeks before the closing of its brokerage operations, which came a year after the private-equity group Monument Ventures acquired a controlling stake in the company in a bid to expand the real estate firm's operations and broaden its reach in the Southeast.

GVA Advantis traced its local roots to Goodman Segar Hogan, a Norfolk-based real estate development, management and brokerage firm acquired in 1998 by The St. Joe Co., a Florida land development company.

Josh Brown, (757) 446-2318, josh.brown@pilotonline.com