Perry Snags Encompass RE and Research Ace Brendan Carroll

BOSTON—In providing cutting-edge commercial real estate information for clients and internal use, Perry Brokerage Associates has upped its game dramatically via an acquisition of Encompass Real Estate Strategies, industry ace Brendan L. Carroll’s research firm anchored by its “Spectrum” reports covering metropolitan Boston through Interstate 495. Carroll is reprising his role as Director of Intelligence while PBA makes Encompass its research conduit to complement the five-year-old group’s growing brokerage and leadership team and other changes aimed at increasing market share assisting landlords and tenants alike in Boston and on the South Shore.

“We couldn’t be happier,” PBA President Richard P. Beal tells therealreporter.com in lauding Carroll for his prolific and unique delivery of data and trends working for several national firms prior to the launch of Encompass a year ago. “Brendan is not just an experienced research professional who produces an incredible amount of material, he can actually help us win business with his very thorough and (insightful) presentations . . . we see him as a key component to our growth going forward.”

Stops for Carroll prior to PBA’s home at 77 Franklin St. in downtown Boston were with Grubb & Ellis (now Newmark Grubb) and Transwestern RBJ plus brief stints at Avison Young and Colliers International. Encompass was offered customized reports for clients and delivered a subscriber base regular periodicals dissecting industrial and office metrics and trends. They will now deliver those services under the PBA brand while retaining Spectrum’s nomenclature. Existing reports include Slate, covering industrial CRE; Blue, the eagerly anticipated office market survey which will be issued next week under the PBA flag; and a new-millennium survey focused on transit-oriented real estate, Green, its topic considered a burgeoning aspect of the office market that relies on car-less millennials.

“It is with great excitement Encompass joins the A.W. Perry family of brands as the research and intelligence department of Perry Brokerage Associates,” Carroll offers regarding the move, calling the firm he is joining “an exciting, fresh and innovative company yet with a storied history spanning three centuries.” Anyone hanging around Boston CRE since 1884 will recognize A.W. Perry as among New England’s most established property managers and owners, a firm from which PBA was spun out of in 2011 to service third-party clients on top of its own book of business. “I’m really pumped,” Carroll says in explaining his decision to join forces with PBA was influenced by the company’s entrepreneurial nature and being open to fresh interpretations of time-worn metrics.

A slew of recent hirings to mark its fifth season in business was indicative of the company’s upward trajectory, observes Carroll, especially steeled in the arrival of one-time Grubb & Ellis colleague Michael S. Edward, who came over last year as Executive VP following a half-dozen years running the Grubb/Newmark office in Boston. “Mike is a big league guy capable of building a pretty formidable organization, and that did get my attention in a positive way,” recounts Carroll while further citing the group’s rapid ascension in a short period of time under the leadership of A.W. Perry alum Beal and downtown expert Jonathan H. Gifford, elevated last year to Executive VP after joining the firm in 2013 toting three decades of experience.

“It came down to a lot of things,” Carroll says in recounting as discussions evolved, “it just seemed to be a very strategic choice that made a lot of sense,” adding that, “a lot of people have come to recognize real estate is very local, and they want an advisor who knows the market and its different (nuances), and Perry Brokerage has made itself into a rather formidable mid-sized player I think can do well in this environment,” he says . . . “I really came to see this as an exciting opportunity to be part of something special, and now that I am here, I feel that even more confidently that it is.” PBA has heretofore relied on its seasoned professionals to keep clients apprised of market trade winds, and while he stresses that remains a major tool in the mix underscored in the recruitment of several brokerage professionals, Beal points to a transformational industry where knowledge and a broad menu are “key components” to providing best-in-class services, skills he says PBA is spending the necessary resources to deliver.

Regarding the Carroll arrival, “This is huge to us” in meeting those aims, says Beal who praises the researcher’s forward-thinking breakdown of market data and an ability to take complex ideas and mold them into both entertaining and informational formats, not always easy in the traditionally staid world of financial modeling. One reflection of Carroll’s efforts is in his frequent commentary in various media, at business forums and as a resource delivering the variant trend reports, and Beal says a side benefit will be promoting the Perry Brokerage Associates brand going forward. “We do think Brendan will help increase our exposure,” he says, with Encompass itself garnering substantial attention as an independent research vehicle. Being a novel survey at a time when it has become especially coveted, the transit-oriented development review was among Spectrum’s most popular creations, and Beal agrees a fresh perspective can often prove the most beneficial. “We are very impressed with what Brendan has done at Encompass, and we couldn’t be happier he has agreed to make it such a major part of our research platform,” says Beal. “It is a big piece of the puzzle for us.”

Brendan Carroll

Richard Beal

Michael Edward