Isle real estate firm joins with Chicago outfit

A longtime local commercial real estate firm has linked up with a global industry giant in an effort to grow larger.

The Honolulu-based company most recently known as NAI ChaneyBrooks is now affiliated with Chicago-based Cushman & Wakefield and is now known as Cushman & Wakefield ChaneyBrooks.

Under the arrangement, the Hawaii firm, which has an office on Guam, still will be locally owned but will receive support from Cushman. Additionally, Cushman gets a physical presence in Hawaii where it had not previously had one.

“This new partnership will benefit both our local and global clients in Hawaii and Guam with deep local knowledge and a network of global expertise,” Mike Smith, a western region president for Cushman, said in a statement.

Steve Sombrero, president of ChaneyBrooks, will continue in the same position. Joseph Haas, a former executive with rival commercial real estate firm CBRE in Hawaii, is managing director and principal broker for Cushman & Wakefield ChaneyBrooks.

Haas said the company with about 45 employees and other offices on Maui and Kauai intends to expand under its new affiliation, with initial plans to add an office on Hawaii island in the next few months.

“We’re going to grow,” he said.

Cushman & Wakefield, founded in 1917, has about 45,000 employees in more than 70 countries and around $6 billion in annual revenue.

The Chaney firm was established in 1981 as Chaney, Brooks & Co. by Aaron Chaney and Wendell Brooks Jr., who sold the business in 1988 to a subsidiary of Nihon Building Service Co. in Japan.

The late Chaney had been in the local residential property management industry since 1958, and at one time operated the largest property management business in the state. That segment of the business, however, was sold in 2002, and Sombrero bought the company a few years later. In 2007 the firm became part of the NAI Global network of independently owned commercial real estate companies and was rebranded NAI ChaneyBrooks.