The head of research for the Tri-State area at Cassidy Turley is moving to Newmark Grubb Knight Frank to head the larger Midtown-based firm’s local research division.
Robert Sammons, a well-known analyst popular with the local real estate press, is leaving the mid-size commercial brokerage after more than 12 years on the job, several sources familiar with the move, said. His new title at NGKF, where he will start in several weeks, was not immediately known.
Sammons, who has a regular column with the Commercial Observer, worked for three years in the mid-1990s for Cushman & Wakefield, before taking a position with the city’s Economic Development Corporation for one year, and then starting at a predecessor of Cassidy Turley in 2000, according to information from his LinkedIn page.
He did not respond to requests for comment. Spokespersons for Cassidy Turley and NGKF declined to comment.
NGKF’s prior head of research for the Tri-State area, Paul Frischer, an executive managing director, departed in early 2012.
Data analysis is growing in importance for commercial real estate firms, even as more independent companies sprout up seeking to provide information.
“Companies are using more data,” Gordon Ogden, principal with Midtown-based brokerage Byrnam Wood, said.
One number cruncher at the commercial firm ABS Partners Real Estate, Ashkán Zandieh, said firms relied on data to get new business. “You need some sort of validation whether it is 15 pages or one page, because at the end of the day, numbers don’t lie,” Zandieh, said. He is a director of TechStarter, a marketing and leasing division of ABS focused on technology firms.
Not everyone saw the vast new mountains of data as essential — or even helpful. Ogden said that data, often, was used as a strategy to acquire new accounts, even if it was not actually useful to the clients once the business was secured. “The perception is that it is harder to compete and win [new business] with less data. It is a perceived advantage, but I would question the usefulness of more data,” he said.