From left, Stan Stouder, Dan Smith, Christopher Spiro and Enn Luthringer. CRE Consultants has rebranded as CRE Commercial Group following Smith’s acquisition of the Southwest Florida commercial real estate brokerage in 2025.
Longtime Southwest Florida real estate brokerage company CRE Consultants has rebranded as CRE Commercial Group almost a year after being bought by a new owner.
CRE Commercial Group has a team of 10 brokers, two property managers and six other associates and assistants working to sell and lease commercial real estate properties across Southwest Florida — plus one enhancement: optimizing the brokerage of businesses.
The brokers include founding partner Stan Stouder and Enn Luthringer, who ran the company prior to selling it. They bought out fellow partner Randy Mercer in January 2025, then sold to Dan Smith, owner of Corporate Investment Business Brokers, in October 2025. Fred Kermani, a partner at the time of the sale, has since left the company.
CRE Commercial Group has boosted its ability to broker businesses, said Stouder, who founded CRE Consultants in 1998.
“We’re the only firm that I’m aware of that offers full-time business opportunity sales,” Stouder said of Southwest Florida. “There’s people who will dabble with both. But we have 3,500 square feet of dedicated business brokerage.”
Smith’s company had co-brokered various business deals over the years with Stouder. Smith handled the business transaction, while Stouder handled the real estate side.
“Stan and I were talking about if I would have an interest in bringing a commercial brokerage into our portfolio,” Smith said. “It was the right time for a formal partnership. That’s how it worked out. I saw the synergies between what CIBB could do with CRE. It just made sense to do a one-stop shop.”
CRE Commercial Group
Smith said he was averse to having the word “Consultants” in the brand name. He enlisted Chris Spiro to do the rebranding. The former owner of Spiro & Associates started a new company, Punch! Advisory, which works down the hall from CIBB and CRE Commercial Group and operates as a fractional chief marketing officer service to companies. It’s hired to do projects, campaigns, evaluations and marketing.
“I did the CIBB branding back in the day,” said Spiro, who also had worked with CRE’s Stouder and Ray Sandelli. “We all worked together when I had the marketing firm. Dan called me about helping him with the new brand. I did a complete brand evaluation.
“We paid homage to what they were doing well. I think we’re stronger than where we were before.”
Stouder said working with Smith made sense given their prior experience on deals.
“I listed the real estate,” Stouder said. “He listed the business. We got the owners a great result. We did that like five times over five years.
“Then we started to look at how to put that together. And we had proof of concept before we ever got to negotiations. The five deals that we did — we sold a pretty significant site development company and an electric company.”
There are confidentiality agreements as part of most of the business sales, so Smith and Stouder couldn’t be specific in naming past deals they brokered together.
In April, CIBB moved into the same building as CRE, positioning its offices across the hall at 12140 Carissa Commerce Court, off Six Mile Cypress Parkway in south Fort Myers, just north of Daniels Parkway. CRE Commercial Group also has an office at 1100 Fifth Ave. S. in downtown Naples.
“What Chris Spiro helped us achieve is letting the market know what we can do with a combined company,” Smith said. “The rebrand is really just telling the market that we offer more solutions. We’re calling it brand evolution. We’re not trying to completely rebrand CRE. CRE’s been in the market too long. The commercial component is just letting the market know we’re more than what it was in the past.
“At the end of the day, we’re brokers.”