Corcoran Horizon Realty has launched a dedicated commercial division in Hamilton, Ont., with plans to expand across other Ontario secondary markets.

Martinus Geleynse, managing partner of Corcoran Horizon Realty’s Hamilton branch, will oversee the commercial division in the city. He told RENX it will serve a “missing middle” in the commercial real estate brokerage landscape.

“On one hand you've got the big established institutional brokerages like Colliers, Cushman & Wakefield, CBRE and Avison Young that are large national or multi-national firms,” said Geleynse. 

“They move at the speed of huge institutional firms and, as a result, the type of buildings and real estate assets that they trade best are the ones that are larger and institutional.”

On the other end of the spectrum, secondary and tertiary markets are often served by residential-focused agents, or there are smaller commercial brokerages with localized expertise — but they lack scale.

Corcoran Horizon is local with international backing

“In the case of Corcoran, we're backed by Compass, which is the largest real estate company in the entire world,” Geleynse explained. “Corcoran itself is a medium-sized brand." 

Compass merged with its former rival Anywhere Real Estate Inc. in a US$1.6-billion deal which closed in January.

“In Canada, it's relatively new, but in the States it's quite large, and internationally it's growing very rapidly," Geleynse said. "So we have scale, distribution, a syndication of listings, an in-house marketing department and top-tier technology. 

“We have all the infrastructure of a major brokerage but we're smaller and — in the case of Canada especially, more specifically in the case of our markets, and in Hamilton in particular — we’re extremely locally connected.”

The Hamilton commercial division

The new division employs Geleynse, three agents who are 100 per cent committed to commercial real estate and another one who’s training to join it. 

They’ll serve Hamilton and surrounding communities within a one- to two-hour radius, including Niagara, Burlington, Waterloo Region and Muskoka.

The commercial division will operate with its own branding, signage and marketing resources, while tapping into Corcoran’s global network and established back-office infrastructure.

It’s anticipated that it will also create a stronger connection with Corcoran Horizon Realty’s residential business, particularly as residential clients may also own land, industrial properties, factories or other commercial assets.

“We built in a juicy referral engine so agents from the residential division who refer to the commercial division, and vice versa, are rewarded better than they would be if they were to refer to another brokerage outside of Corcoran,” said Geleynse.

The commercial division’s early listings

The commercial division just went firm on a deal that will see a former retirement home in Hamilton repurposed to provide shelter beds after being acquired by a not-for-profit organization. 

“We have a great warehouse property that we're leasing in Dundas that's about 93,000 square feet, and we have great interest in that one,” added Geleynse. 

“We've got a lot of mixed-use properties, and mixed-use is a pretty battered asset class right now, but we've got a number of equity firms that invested heavily in that space years ago and those funds are reaching maturity, so we're bringing those to market now.

“And then we've got some multifamily stuff. So we've got our fingers in all aspects of the commercial asset classes.”

Expansion plans

Corcoran was founded in New York City in 1973 and has grown significantly since then. The affiliated Corcoran Horizon Realty was established in 2024, under the leadership of chief executive officer Cliff Rego, to serve clients across the Greater Toronto Area and throughout Ontario. 

The Ontario operation has offices in Toronto, Kitchener-Waterloo, Cambridge, Port Severn, Hamilton and Oakville, which just opened under the leadership of branch managing partner Tom Karadza.

“We’re launching the commercial division in Hamilton to iron out the kinks and let it find its legs and get the machine up and running, and then, as it grows, we're going to use and leverage our existing Corcoran network,” said Geleynse.

“We're anticipating announcing additional offices and the plan is to build on that existing infrastructure that we have and to recruit commercial agents that will operate out of the residential brokerage office as well so they've got those resource centres — and then really scale with that.”