News
A Firm of Her Own
March 25, 2010
| Karin Kraai is branching out. Drawing on 25 years of experience, she's started Forest Partners, focusing on office leasing for niche landlords, supplementing in-house corporate real estate divisions, third-party consulting on large portfolio dispositions, and REOs. | |
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| Karin started the business in January and is very close to landing her first project in dispositions. Until last May, Karin was in charge of office leasing for a portfolio including The Mart Center, where she repositioned 3.2M-SF of office space. She brought the Chicago Sun-Times to the former Apparel Center when their space was bought by Trump in the early 2000s and landed the consolidated JWT/Ogilvy deal. Karin has worked for Lincoln Property Co, JLL, MMPI, and Compass. She has managed portfolios in excess of 7M-SF valued at over $2B and has closed 3.7M-SF of deals for over $1.6B. | |
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| Her experience with big companies led Karin to want to be more nimble. With SWAT-like precision, she tells us, Forest Partners helps small owners with one or two buildings downtown, often with unique needs, such as repositioning older space or subleasing. She says she's happy that although the industry is competitive, her old work friends still lend a hand by borrowing office space or helping out with with leads. | |
