BRC Advisors, a leading commercial real estate brokerage firm, is expanding to Encino. FOUNDER: BRC Advisors HEADQUARTERS: Downtown Los Angeles CORE OF BUSINESS: Provides real estate investment advisory and transaction services Offices: Encino, Beverly Hills, Downey, Manhattan Beach, Pasadena, Riverside, Houston and Scottsdale, AZ. Officers: Mark Groves, multi-residential properties, will lead the Encino office, along with Orbell Ovaness, vice president of investments (retail); Cory Stehr, senior associate (retail); and Art Sepanian, senior associate (retail). Headquartered in downtown Los Angeles, BRC Advisors provides investment sales, leasing, asset management and other services for all categories of commercial real estate. The Encino office, which opened at 16027 Ventura Blvd. this month, will house up to nine brokers by the end of the year, BRC officials said. Expanding to Encino gives clients in the San Fernando Valley an opportunity do business with BRC Advisors without having to drive to the downtown location or to the Beverly Hills location, said Founder James Huang. BRC opened the firm’s Beverly Hills office in December 2007. The company decided to expand to the Valley after it noticed there were more transactions in the area, Huang said. “We had enough people interested and it was a good market for us,” Huang said. Mark Groves will head up the Encino office. When Groves joined BRC in 2009, he said the next expansion for BRC had to be in the Valley. “Forget Los Angeles, the San Fernando Valley can stand on its own quite easily,” Groves said. Along with Groves, who is in charge of multi-residential properties, other executives in the Encino office include Orbell Ovaness, vice president of investments (retail); Cory Stehr, senior associate (retail); and Art Sepanian, senior associate (retail). Groves said the company is taking advantage of a “fairly flat” market with this expansion. Plans to open more offices in Irvine, Calabasas, South Bay and San Gabriel are in the works, Huang said. “People are coming to us asking us to open offices,” he said. “We want to do it methodically, and we want to do it right.”