Raleigh real estate veterans form national hotel brokerage

One of the Triangle’s best-known commercial real estate businesses, Howard Perry and Walston Commercial and Hotel Group, has teamed up with a commercial real estate firm in Boston to create a specialty company that will broker hotel deals between buyers and sellers nationwide.

SVN Hotels will be based in Raleigh and steered by Raleigh real estate veterans Sanjay Mundra and Don Walston, who will be the new venture’s CEO and chairman, respectively. Mundra is also CEO of HPW Commercial and Hotel Group; Walston is founder and chairman of Coldwell Banker Howard Perry and Walston, the Triangle's largest residential real estate agency.

The new Raleigh company is taking its name, reputation and national broker network from its Boston business partner, Sperry Van Ness International Corp., but otherwise supplying nearly $1 million in start-up funding, its proprietary real estate listing technology, and staffing the operation, Mundra said.

Other terms of the deal, which took a year to negotiate, were not disclosed.

“It’s a big deal,” Mundra said. “We’re leveraging their brand and they’re taking a chance with us.”

The deal was announced Wednesday at HPW’s office on Wade Avenue, with Gov. Pat McCrory, local officials and real estate executives in attendance.

The new company will have more than a dozen offices nationwide, including the Raleigh headquarters; it will employ 20 people initially but could grow to more than 100, Mundra said.

SVN International has 190 offices across the United States and specializes in commercial transactions that have included hotel deals. By combining forces with SVN, the new business instantly has 43 hotel properties on the market valued at about $250 million, Mundra said.

The $40 billion annual hotel brokerage market is a niche industry with most of the business controlled by fewer than 10 large players, including CBRE Hotels, JLL Hotels, HWE, Hotel AG, HREC and Hunter Hotel Advisors.

SVN Hotels’ goal is to capture 5 to 7 percent of the national market, which would give the company a listings portfolio that could generate $3 billion in annual revenue.

This story was originally published September 16, 2015 at 7:23 PM with the headline "Raleigh real estate veterans form national hotel brokerage."