Houston Brokerages Deal A New Hand Of Market Leaders For 2026

Peter Mainguy fielded requests from several brokerages interested in hiring him during his five-year tenure as CBRE’s Houston market leader. 

Yet he secured a new position managing the Texas region at Partners Real Estate by taking the initiative to call and introduce himself to Partners CEO Jon Silberman, even though he didn't know whether there would be a position for him. The private brokerage structure sparked his curiosity. 

“Brokerage can traditionally be very siloed when different professionals don't have a vested interest in each other's success,” Mainguy said. “But in the partnership structure, that's not the case.”

Mainguy’s move to Partners is one of a slew of new market heads or significant personnel changes at Houston commercial real estate brokerages in a short timeframe.

Along with CBRE, JLL, Transwestern and Cushman & Wakefield are starting the year with new market heads. Avison Young’s Houston office leader moved to Lee & Associates. 

Brokers and executives say regular market moves and a changing of the guard, which have created opportunities for the next generation of leaders, drove the significant shuffle. But some also cited the increasing draw of broker-owned firms, where they say they can focus on serving their clients and each other rather than shareholders. 

CBRE internally backfilled Mainguy’s position with Russell Hodges. JLL promoted Ronnie Deyo to replace Dan Bellow as president of its Houston office after Bellow stepped down to an advisory role. 

Transwestern’s Kevin Roberts transitioned to the role of executive vice president after 15 years, prompting Clint Bawcom to leave his Cushman & Wakefield market leader position to fill the role. Replacing Bawcom at Cushman & Wakefield is Travis Overall, previously of Brookfield Properties. 

“Brokers tend to move every five to 10 years. It's just kind of what they do,” said Chris Lewis, managing principal of Lee & Associates-Houston. “We tend to get the brokers that are super-experienced, that are looking to take care of their clients, and looking to work at their own pace but have all the resources.” 

Longtime Houston broker and manager Wade Bowlin shifted in December from Avison Young — where he led the Houston office through a partial merger with Madison Marquette — to Lee & Associates, which says it is the biggest broker-owned brokerage in North America.

Bowlin declined to comment on why he left Avison Young, another private firm. But when looking to make a move, he said he was lucky “to have offers from most of the groups” and the culture and structure of Lee & Associates enticed him.

Bowlin has seen more mergers and acquisitions activity among large firms nationally, sending the industry in a direction he did not want to follow. 

“What I've seen is them continuing to thin the roles, the support, the things that were important to me,” Bowlin said. “While Lee & Associates is a national firm, they’re run locally, and Chris and Mike [Spears] make all the decisions.”

When Bowlin asked how Lee & Associates handles staffing, Lewis simply asked what he would need.

“We're really about taking care of our clients, and that's just the way to do it, rather than taking care of the stockholders,” Lewis said.

Partners’ private structure really appealed to Mainguy. Running a commercial real estate professional services firm with an equity partnership structure, like an elite law or consulting firm, creates alignment and collaboration within the firm, Mainguy said. 

Mainguy also couldn’t help but notice the firm’s substantial growth in recent years, and he expects private brokerages to continue growing and capturing a larger market share in the CRE industry. 

“If I didn't think there was an opportunity to grow, it wouldn’t be an appealing offer, and I wouldn't have made the move,” Mainguy said. 

The brokerage called Mainguy’s hiring “another significant win” following its poaching of an agency office leasing team from Cushman & Wakefield in March.

But Cushman has had its own wins. CEO Michelle MacKay said in April the firm is following through on a growth strategy it began in late 2024, and within that strategy, talent is a “critical component.” 

Cushman’s new Houston market leader, Travis Overall, has 27 years of Houston CRE experience. He told Bisnow he hopes to grow the firm’s platform and further build its Houston business. 

The firm is always thinking about the client first, which he knows from having been the client at Brookfield and Hines. 

“Cushman & Wakefield has such a great legacy in the Houston market, such a strong brand going all the way back to the Cushman Realty days,” Overall said. “I just saw [my joining] as a great opportunity to bring the principal perspective to this side of the business.” 

Mike Pittman, a Cushman & Wakefield retail broker, said the new market head marks a change of regime that he’s meeting with excitement. But, ultimately, a market leader is a minimal factor for a broker when considering where to work.

“The bigger items are fundamentals of the business,” Pittman said. “How does the company operate? Are you giving the support necessary that you need as a broker? Those things are much more important.” 

Russell Hodges, the new market leader of CBRE, Houston’s largest CRE brokerage, accepts great responsibility for how people feel about coming to work every day, he said in a written statement to Bisnow. 

Lucian Bukowski, a top Houston broker, joined privately owned Stream Realty Partners last year after being fired from CBRE. Bukowski said he was recruited by several firms but had no desire to work for another public company. 

Bukowski said some, like himself, will continue to leave public companies in favor of private firms. But the timing of Houston’s personnel changes in late 2025 and early 2026 is largely coincidental, he said. 

Some leaders will retire just because it is the right time for them, while others consider timing as well as “making room for a younger generation of leaders,” Bukowski said.

“If you don't create opportunities to grow in an organization, they go somewhere else, or they don't come in the first place,” he said. 

Mainguy also thinks much of the timing is coincidental.

“I don't think there was anything in the universe saying that the end of 2025 was going to be the time period for the reshuffling of the deck in Houston,” he said.