SAN DIEGO – A Bankers Hill commercial real estate investment firm, CAST, is expanding its reach by joining forces with a similar firm in Las Vegas.
Operating under the CAST umbrella, the team is led by partners Bret Morriss, who was managing director of Stream Realty Partners in San Diego from 2017 to 2022, and Chris Clifford, a former senior vice president of Colliers International in Las Vegas.
Clifford lives in Encinitas, but has specialized in Las Vegas real estate deals, and Morriss has focused on San Diego. Clifford joined Morriss as a partner in CAST in December 2023.
The two have been personal friends and business acquaintances, Clifford said, adding that it just made sense to join forces to expand their reach.
“It’s two guys doing the same thing, coming together and realizing that we needed to go under one brand,” Clifford said. “We’re a very entrepreneurial brokerage.”
Aside from the geographical differences in their specialties, Clifford said that he and Morriss complement each other by focusing on different areas of commercial real estate – Morriss on multifamily projects and Clifford on retail.
Sales, Construction Projects
Among the San Diego deals brokered by CAST was the $6.8 million sale of Sycamore Retail Center in Vista and the $3.2 million sale of a Carlsbad office complex.
The company also plans to build a 114-unit, mixed-use project in Golden Hill and a Bankers Hill apartment building with 260 apartments.
In Nevada, CAST and Partners Capital are developing a 100,000-square-foot project in Henderson called The Cliff to replace an old office complex.
“It doesn’t need to be office anymore,” Clifford said. “We need more retail and we’re changing the use over to retail and turning it into an extremely special project.”
Longer term, Clifford said that CAST aims to expand “throughout the entire Southwest of the U.S.”
“I’d love to see it, over the next 10 years, expand into 10 cities, 10 growing cities that are interested in changing the view of both multifamily and the retail side of the business.”
For now, Clifford said that he expects the overall commercial real estate market to remain slow.
“With interest rates doing what they’re doing, I think it’s still going to be tough.
Eventually, we’re going to have a breaking point. You do have a lot of capital that’s sitting on the sidelines, that wants to get into some of these development deals, that wants to push it,” Clifford said. “But we need to get past the inflation, and we need to start seeing interest rates start going down.”
His concern is that anticipated interest rate cuts will be delayed and that the Federal Open Market Committee could actually raise interest rates because it’s taking longer than expected to tame inflation.
“My assumption is that you’re going to see another year delay until that changes,” Clifford said.
CAST
FOUNDED: 2022
MANAGING PARTNER: Bret Morriss
PARTNER CAST NEVADA: Chris Clifford
HEADQUARTERS: Bankers Hill and Las Vegas
BUSINESS: commercial real estate brokerage, investment management, development and property management
EMPLOYEES: 22
WEBSITE: www.cast-cap.com
CONTACT: 619-308-6680; 702-802-4660
NOTABLE: CAST has more than 500,000 square feet of commercial property under management
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