Cushman named top brokerage.

Real Estate Alert has ranked Cushman & Wakefield the top office sales broker in the nation last year, representing sellers on transactions totaling nearly $4.8 billion. The survey by a prominent industry newsletter put C&W at the top of the list in six of 20 regional markets, including the nation's largest -- New York City.

"This shows our continued market domination in the number one market of New York City and nationally," said Bruce E. Mosler, Cushman & Wakefield's President of U.S. Operations. "I am proud of the efforts of our Financial Services Group, branch managers and brokers in these regions and I will continue to work with them to spread our best practices throughout the firm."

Cushman & Wakefield, which netted 17.3% of sales nationally, led the way in New York, San Francisco, New Jersey, Atlanta, Philadelphia and Detroit.

"Our performance in the office sector was a significant part of our overall $10.2 billion in completed sales transactions in 2000," said Len Helbig, President of The Financial Services Group for Cushman & Wakefield. "Our dominance in industrial portfolio sales, retail properties and our emerging multi-family business all played an important part in our record performance."

California and the Boston-to-Washington corridor dominated the office-sales market last year, according to the Real Estate Alert survey, which tracked individual sales of $20 million or more. Nearly 49% of the $27.2 billion in national sales occurred in markets stretching from Boston to Washington, D.C.; about 36% of the transactions took place in California.

The Internet boom created strong demand for space in Silicon Valley/Suburban San Francisco, downtown San Francisco, Northern Virginia and suburban Boston. Property values spiked more than 50% in some areas during the last 18 months, the survey found.

The biggest boost occurred in New York City, where $5.9 billion in transactions were made.

Silicon Valley/Suburban San Francisco, including the East Bay and North Bay markets, followed New York with $4 billion in deals. The Silicon Valley/Suburban San Francisco market, however, had the largest number of transactions -- 71. The Boston area tallied $2.9 billion in sales, downtown San Francisco recorded $2.3 billion and the Los Angeles area racked up $2 billion.

The survey counted completed sales of office, office/flex, research-and-development and telecom properties and portfolios. Mixed-use properties were included if 50% or more of the property served as office space. When two brokers shared a listing, each was given half credit.