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Darcy Stacom, one of the most powerful figures in New York City real estate, is leaving brokerage firm CBRE after 22 years in a further sign of the crisis upending commercial property.
Stacom, dubbed the Queen of the Skyscrapers for her record-breaking sales of Manhattan towers, is starting a boutique advisory firm, Stacom CRE, to guide clients through a real estate market that is now in turmoil after a generation of rising valuations.
“Commercial real estate in New York and globally is in transition, and that provides a great opportunity for a new, nimble boutique advisory firm in this space,” Stacom said, adding that many properties would need “restructuring, repositioning and rethinking”.
Stacom’s longtime partner, William Shanahan, will remain at CBRE, and focus on helping to connect property owners in difficult situations with fresh capital. Doug Middleton will continue to run the firm’s investment property unit.
Signs of distress and dislocation abound in the New York City office market, the world’s largest, where Stacom bagged many of her biggest deals, including the $2.8bn sale of the General Motors Building in 2008.
Remote working pushed vacancy rates to record levels. At the same time, the sharp rise in interest rates that began in 2022 has punished developers trying to roll over their debts. A total of $117bn in commercial mortgages tied to US offices will come due this year, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.
Many investors are hunting for distressed opportunities, with prices for older offices down as much as 50 per cent from their recent peaks, according to one broker. The $52bn in US office sales last year was a 56 per cent fall from 2022, according to MSCI, and CBRE’s stock is down 23 per cent since the start of that year.
The stress appears to be contributing to a personnel shake-up in the industry. In one of the biggest moves, Silverstein Properties, the developer of the World Trade Center, parted ways in October with its longtime chief executive, Marty Burger.
Stacom, whose father, Matthew, was a leading broker at Cushman & Wakefield, began her career in the firm’s mailroom when she was 15. After graduating from university in 1980 she went to work at Cushman full time and rose through the ranks.
By 2002, she decided she needed to step out of her father’s shadow and jumped to CBRE, where she chaired its New York City capital markets group. Since then, she and Shanahan have vied with their arch rivals, Newmark’s Douglas Harmon and Adam Spies, for supremacy of the Manhattan skyline.
Stacom led the $5.4bn sale of New York’s Peter Cooper Village and Stuyvesant Town in 2006, which included 110 separate buildings and 80 acres of property. Harmon sold it in 2015 for $5.45bn after the original deal soured.
Stacom, known for her marketing skills, has become an archetype of New York’s cut-throat — and occasionally mad — commercial real estate world.
In one early adventure, she and a colleague found themselves locked out while inspecting the roof of a building they were trying to sell in New York City. They waved frantically to guests at a hotel across the street. “We finally started making . . . the S-O-S sign,” she recalled.
She suspected that one of the partners who owned the building had locked them out because he did not want to sell. That experience, Stacom said, taught her the importance of understanding the dynamics of partnerships — and to “always prop the door open”.
In a statement, Matt van Buren, CBRE’s New York tri-state president, thanked Stacom, saying: “During her more than 20 years here, Darcy drove some of New York’s most iconic transactions and has been a champion of diversity and giving back to the community.”
James Whelan, president of the Real Estate Board of New York, the industry trade group, called her a trailblazer. “She’s handled transactions that shape New York City’s skyline and economy, driven initiatives to make our industry more diverse, and served as a mentor for the next generation of leaders.”
While being a woman in a male-dominated industry was not always easy, Stacom made the most of it. In a recent building auction she was running, she recalled, she kept a cast of mostly male billionaires and big developers cooling their heels. “There’s nothing a man hates more than when a woman won’t call them,” she said, explaining that some deals required intuition instead of aggression.
With her new firm, Stacom expects to have fewer internal conflicts when advising clients on everything from ground lease negotiations to asset dispositions and restructurings. She will also be freed of the need to vie with Harmon and others for market share in the all-important industry league tables.
“For years I did that dance,” she said. “And I did it well.”
