(L-R) Jim Tancredi, Chris Moore and Joe Latina have formed LMT Commercial Realty to serve the mid-Atlantic. | PHOTO COURTESY OF LMT COMMERCIAL

WILMINGTON – Three of the top commercial real estate brokers in northern Delaware recently left their respective firms to open a new competing brokerage.

Joe Latina and Chris Moore, formerly of Patterson-Woods & Associates, have combined with Jim Tancredi, formerly of DSM Commercial, to open LMT Commercial Realty. Latina also brought his team of Mary Ann Heesters and Tyler Foresta from Patterson-Woods, while Adam Cofield, a former client of the LMT brokers, joined as well. The firm is located at 62 Rockford Road in Wilmington, but will serve Delaware, Pennsylvania and Maryland.

LMT Commercial will serve real estate investors, property owners, tenants and restaurant owners and operators in investment sales, 1031 exchanges, land sales, industrial, office, retail and restaurant, multifamily, life sciences, medical offices, single-tenant, triple-net sales, and more.

Latina told Delaware Business Times that the departures from two of the largest commercial brokerages in northern Delaware didn’t come out of any animosity, but simply a desire to try something new and become their own bosses. Latina and Moore were poised to take over Patterson-Woods one day after founder Duncan Patterson retired, he said, and he began to reassess.

“Frankly, I just kind of took a step back … And I just felt that we needed a certain different approach to commercial real estate,” he explained.

Latina said he envisioned a firm that handled accounts jointly, allowing for a more collaborative environment, he said. Serendipitously, both Moore and Tancredi had approached Latina about striking out on their own, he recalled. He ended up bringing the halves together

“The three of us sat down, had lunch and talked about this, and from the day that we had that first meeting, we were all on the same page and moving forward,” Latina said.

Tancredi is a childhood friend of Latina who had grown a large book of business in retail and restaurants after a long career handling Wilmington Trust’s real estate needs.

Moore was previously managing partner at Fraser Property Management, a company that developed commercial offices, laboratories and manufacturing facilities. He also co-founded Optimer, a textile and material science research company that was sold in 2008, before joining Patterson-Woods and becoming a top broker.

Latina, who spent all 33 years of his career at Patterson-Woods and was well-known for his work in retail and restaurants after being born into a restaurateur family, recently served as president of CORFAC International, an international commercial real estate network.

“We all have a substantial amount of experience, so we bring a lot to the table,” Latina said. “With our experience in this market, we’ve become trusted advisors and we know the market well.”

While LMT would like to grow in the future, Latina said they weren’t seeking to poach their familiar competitor’s employees. With a small ecosystem for commercial real estate in Delaware, the new firm wasn’t trying to cause discord, he noted.

For now, the firm is aiming to grow out its listings relying upon the partners’ expertise and have already started getting interest. Latina said that he prefers to publicly list as many properties as possible.

“I’ve always been a big lister of product to control the product, to generate interest, to give me the ability to speak to a lot of different people and as they inquire, we reach out to them and expand our client base. So, I think that listings are crucial for that,” he said.