{"id":315038,"date":"2026-08-06T08:10:41","date_gmt":"2026-08-06T08:10:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/315038\/"},"modified":"2026-08-06T08:10:41","modified_gmt":"2026-08-06T08:10:41","slug":"munish-viralam-of-newmark-5-questions-commercial-observer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/315038\/","title":{"rendered":"Munish Viralam of Newmark: 5 Questions \u2013 Commercial Observer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Munish Viralam arrived at Newmark<\/a> in June, fresh off an 18-year stint at CBRE<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As executive vice chairman at Newmark, Viralam has been tasked with leading the firm\u2019s newly centralized real estate strategy and consulting group, scaling up its strategic arm, and helping corporate tenants navigate the maze-like process of real estate strategy and negotiations.<\/p>\n

SEE ALSO: Brookfield Asset Management Raises Record $77B<\/a><\/p>\n

Viralam found his niche at Emory University, where degrees in finance and real estate placed him at an intriguing crossroads between the business world and entrepreneurship. He landed a job at CBRE after graduation, where he proceeded to spend nearly two decades honing his craft as a real estate strategist and problem solver.<\/p>\n

Viralam was serving as executive vice president in charge of CBRE\u2019s consulting group in Manhattan when Newmark came a-knocking.<\/p>\n

Commercial Observer sat down with Viralam in July, just a few weeks into his tenure at Newmark, to discuss his vision for the group, New York\u2019s office occupancy challenges and where real estate consulting slots into the dealmaking mix.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.<\/p>\n

Commercial Observer: Can you describe the nature of the real estate strategy and consulting group\u2019s work? Where does it fit into Newmark\u2019s broader deal-making?<\/p>\n

Munish Viralam: We called it the real estate strategy and consulting group because we want to emphasize both of those components of what the practice is. It is a transactional-based group and it\u2019s focused on advising large corporate entities within New York City on their real estate and occupancy strategies. It\u2019s a pretty analytical approach, if you will, but that doesn\u2019t just mean numbers. It means assessing all of the risks and the pros of strategies that we could pursue.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The idea is to become a strategic hub for the organization. What I mean by that is there\u2019s already so much talent and so much strength throughout Newmark \u2014 not only the corporate advisory side, but also research, workplace strategy, capital markets and all these other business lines that Newmark has.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The directive that I\u2019ve been given is to figure out how to meld all of these different strengths together and develop a method where the group can become a central idea hub for the organization\u2019s expertise, and develop that into a way for Newmark to deploy best practices on behalf of our clients.<\/p>\n

Designing office occupancy strategies is a big part of what you do. What does that process require, and how\u2019s that changing with today\u2019s office market?<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve seen a lot of firms coming out of COVID-19 reinvest in their occupancy and start centering their businesses around New York City, because it really is just a great place to attract talent and grow businesses at scale.\u00a0<\/p>\n

From a corporate real estate perspective, that means we\u2019ve seen incredible demand. Over the last few years, I think we\u2019ve seen more activity year to year than we\u2019ve ever seen, at least in my career, and I think that New York City\u2019s economic environment explains a lot of the real estate trends.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I see my role here as being able to see what\u2019s going on in a macroeconomic environment, and then figuring out how we develop real estate strategies on behalf of our clients to navigate these dynamics. For example, firms need to grow and plan for potential mergers, so how do we take a long-term view of this as real estate advisers? Not just from the occupancy advisory perspective, but also from a capital markets perspective, or even from the workplace strategies perspective.<\/p>\n

With all of these requirements, we gather input and craft an occupancy strategy that takes it all into account, from not only what we\u2019re seeing on the tenant side and in the demand cycle, but also what we\u2019re seeing from the capital markets, the debt markets, and what\u2019s going on with owners.\u00a0<\/p>\n

How does that impact what we\u2019re going to do from building to building? A client says, \u201cWe\u2019d love to expand in this building. What needs to happen for us to do that?\u201d Beyond availability, what needs to happen from the ownership perspective? How can they fund it and finance it? Or, is there a risk that we see in 2028 or 2030 that we have to be cognizant of, and how do we protect against that risk? That\u2019s been my directive.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When would a corporate office tenant typically intersect with your group? Are they approaching when lease expirations are near and decisions need to be made fast, or are they seeking long-term strategies?<\/p>\n

A lot of it is lease expiration driven, but it really depends on what\u2019s going on in the client\u2019s organization. I think a lot of what we do is trying to position the real estate practice to mirror what they are trying to accomplish from a business perspective.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If an organization is experiencing massive growth, then that\u2019s going to have real estate implications. We try to take the long-term view for all of our clients, so we generally say the earlier the better.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I wouldn\u2019t say there\u2019s a specific point in time that you want to engage, but part of the benefit of having a practice like the real estate strategy and consulting group is that it is planning forward. We are going to help you put together plans that won\u2019t just cover you when your lease expires, but what we hope will be for the next 10 to 20 years of your occupancy.<\/p>\n

Increasing demand for office space in New York City is good news for commercial real estate, but are there challenges this current office climate presents for your clients?\u00a0<\/p>\n

There\u2019s such a concentration of demand for a similar type of asset. For those types of high-quality assets, we\u2019re seeing a very tight market and low availability. We\u2019ve been advising companies on how to manage their occupancy, like whether they have to split amongst multiple buildings.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One thing that we\u2019ve certainly experienced is that, while there\u2019s this robust tenant demand for high-quality assets, the lender appetite to provide capital to high-quality assets is still more conservative than what we\u2019d like to see. So, while we\u2019ve seen this incredible response from the market from a demand perspective, we\u2019re seeing that it\u2019s still lagging a little bit from a financing perspective.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Considering all the disruption that occurred in the capital markets environment over the last few years, particularly as inflation picked up, that has also presented a fair amount of risks looking forward. I see an important part of what we do as understanding what\u2019s going on from the owner\u2019s perspective, as well as the other tenants\u2019 perspective, to help advise our clients.<\/p>\n

The group was recently centralized. What was the idea behind that, and how do you want to see it evolve?\u00a0<\/p>\n

There was a consulting practice that provided advisory services \u2013\u2013 it was kind of a partnership group that supported brokers within the organization. Then there was another practice that focused purely on financial analytics. The first directive I\u2019ve had is to bring those two together and turn it into a seamless, more comprehensive platform.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That\u2019s step No. 1, and then it\u2019s figuring out ways to continue serving the rest of the organization. I feel like I\u2019m swimming up multiple streams all at once, but that\u2019s what is meant when we said we\u2019re combining these two groups together.<\/p>\n

I want to ensure that there\u2019s a lot of collaboration going on across the organization that\u2019s culminating into this group. I want this group to really become experts in all the fields of Newmark, and to be consistently fed inputs from everybody within the ecosystem here.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I really think that\u2019s the best way for us to shine as a group, as well as the best way for us to help Newmark elevate the platform across the different business lines.<\/p>\n

Emily Davis can be reached at edavis@commercialobserver.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Munish Viralam arrived at Newmark in June, fresh off an 18-year stint at CBRE. As executive vice chairman…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":315039,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[75969,98,100,99,2361,1286,118876,9,24,63,2362,34512],"class_list":["post-315038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-5-questions","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-leases","tag-more","tag-munish-viralam-channel","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-office-leases","tag-research-analysis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=315038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315038\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/315039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}