People Move: Chandler Larsen Joins Stream Realty Partners, Los Angeles

Chandler Larsen joined USC as a walk-on, suiting up at fullback and tight end while wearing No. 44 for the Trojans. He spent most of his college football career on the practice field, doing the kind of work that never shows up in a highlight reel. Fifteen years later, that hard-working apprenticeship is the foundation under a career now playing out in Los Angeles commercial real estate. Larsen has just joined Stream Realty Partners as Managing Director. He is reuniting with his father, Jonathan Larsen, and stepping onto a bigger platform after more than a decade of building a name in Southern California.

Larsen now works out of Stream’s Downtown Los Angeles office at 601 S. Figueroa Street. He advises corporate occupiers on leasing strategy, site selection, and transaction execution across local and multi-market assignments. On paper, it reads like a straightforward lateral hire. Underneath it is a story about what happens when someone spends a career choosing the team over the stat sheet. It started on a football field, continued in a family business, and now plays out on one of the largest platforms in commercial real estate.

From Oak Park to the Coliseum: A Walk-On’s Education

Before any of the deal sheets, Larsen was a three-sport kid at Oak Park High School north of Los Angeles. As a senior in 2007, he caught 8 passes for 83 yards and a touchdown as a wide receiver and tight end. He added 7 tackles and a fumble recovery on the defensive line, and also helped Oak Park’s lacrosse program win a Division II state championship. He played baseball too. That kind of range built the toughness he’d need, and he walked on at USC anyway.

He joined the Trojans in the fall of 2011 as a junior reserve fullback, then took a season away from the program before returning in 2012 as a redshirt senior reserve fullback and tight end. Through it all, he kept practicing every day against a roster stacked with future NFL talent. Most of Larsen’s college snaps came in practice, and that’s exactly where he built the habits that carried him into commercial real estate.

The Discipline Nobody Sees

Walk-ons learn a specific kind of discipline that starters never have to. They show up to every practice, they absorb coaching, execute assignments, and protect the standard of the group. It is a daily exercise in subordinating ego to a collective outcome. That is exactly the muscle that gets used, years later, in a conference room instead of a huddle.

USC football during that stretch was not a program short on talent. Larsen was practicing next to future NFL draft picks every day, holding his own behind a depth chart stacked with five-star recruits. What set him apart was the willingness to keep showing up, week after week, season after season.

Larsen left USC with a Bachelor of Science in Real Estate Development and Planning. The degree turned a childhood spent around Southern California’s built environment into a professional direction. Commercial real estate rewards a specific temperament. It takes patience through long deal cycles, comfort with rejection, and the discipline to keep grinding on a pursuit that might not close for months. A walk-on locker room, it turns out, is decent training ground for exactly that kind of patience.

A Father-Son Playbook Built at Avison Young: Chandler Larsen and Jonathan

After USC, Larsen built more than a decade of experience in commercial real estate. He built most of it next to his father. At Avison Young, Jonathan and Chandler Larsen formed a team that became one of the top-producing office leasing groups in Southern California. Jonathan sat on Avison Young’s U.S. Executive Committee. Chandler worked as a Principal specializing in office leasing. His client roster included Aon, Clear Channel, Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith, USC, and Wells Fargo, along with BDO and Squire Patton Boggs.

The production numbers back up the reputation. Over a five-year stretch at Avison Young, the father-son team closed roughly $2.5 billion in transactions. They were recognized as a top producer for the firm’s Southern California platform. In one year alone, the run included more than 120 leasing and sales transactions worth in excess of $500 million. Their work spanned law firms, entertainment companies, and financial services occupiers. One notable assignment was the historic Million Dollar Theater in Downtown Los Angeles.

More Than Two Brokers Who Share a Last Name

What gets lost in the transaction totals is the structure underneath them. This was not two brokers who happened to share a last name. It was a father and son who built a business the way a coaching staff builds a program. That means division of labor, shared accountability, and a track record that only works if both people trust each other completely. Larsen learned to be a good business partner the same way he learned to be a good teammate. He did his role well enough that the person next to him could do theirs.

Fathers and sons who go into business together either build something durable, or they do not. There is very little middle ground once real money and real clients are involved. Jonathan and Chandler chose to specialize together rather than compete separately, pooling relationships instead of splitting them. That is the choice a good teammate makes over the choice a good individual performer makes.

Chandler Larsen’s Next Level: Landing at Stream Realty Partners

In June, Stream Realty Partners announced it was expanding its California presence with a new Los Angeles office. The team is led by Jonathan Larsen as Executive Vice Chairman and Chandler Larsen as Managing Director. They work alongside Marty Pupil, Executive Managing Director overseeing Stream’s California offices. The launch team also included Sally Zesut and Eric B. Moore as Senior Vice Presidents, Luke Eskigian as Vice President, and Sebastian Bernt as Associate. Hayden Eaves and Kristen Sullivan joined shortly after, with Jill Bartolome, Austin Cassidy, Arianna Nienow, and Yolanda Gerardo rounding out the group. Stream did not hire one star. It assembled a roster, the same way a program does.

Built to Be a Team From Day One

Stream’s leadership was direct about why it made the move. “This expansion is about putting the right team in place,” said Marty Pupil. “This group brings the relationships, experience, and execution to make an immediate impact.” Chris Jackson, Stream’s President and CEO, framed it as a deliberate platform decision: “We’re investing in the markets that matter most to our clients and aligning them with teams that can deliver at a high level. That combination is what drives long-term growth for us.”

Stream Realty Partners is headquartered in Dallas and was founded in 1996. It runs more than 1,550 professionals across offices that handle upward of $11.5 billion in transactions annually. For a broker who spent a decade building a regional practice, it is a materially bigger field to play on. At 35, Larsen sits at an inflection point that plenty of ambitious professionals recognize. He is established enough to have real production and real relationships behind him. He is still early enough to spend the next decade compounding them on a larger stage. Moving to Stream is not a retirement lap. It reads more like a player who has proven himself in one conference deciding it is time to test that game against a deeper bench.

Why Team Mentality Wins in Both Locker Rooms and Boardrooms

Larsen’s story is a useful one for anyone building a career in a results-obsessed industry, because it undercuts the myth that individual stardom is what gets rewarded. At USC, he thrived without needing to be the headline player. He was not a solo act at Avison Young either, just one half of a family team. At Stream, he is joining a roster, not stepping into a solo spotlight. He is reunited with a father he has partnered with for years. He also stands alongside colleagues like Hayden Eaves, who himself reunited with Jonathan Larsen after 35 years of working together across three firms.

What Recruiters Should Take From This

That pattern is not a coincidence. The traits that make someone valuable inside a team are reliability under pressure, willingness to do hard, unheralded work, comfort sharing credit, and trust built through repetition. Those are the same traits that make a client hand over a leasing assignment worth tens of millions of dollars. Recruiters and hiring managers spend enormous energy trying to assess exactly those qualities in an interview room. Larsen’s resume is a case study in how a locker room teaches them years before a resume ever needs to prove them.

There is a lesson here for talent at every level, not just executives. The player who never sees the field but keeps showing up and building it shows up later in every area of their lives. It is the discipline to execute a role without needing the spotlight to validate it. That is rare. It is exactly the kind of quiet consistency that turns into a top producer, a trusted partner, and eventually a Managing Director title at a national platform.

To Chandler Larsen: congratulations on the move to Stream Realty Partners. Recruiter Hustle will be watching this Los Angeles build with the rest of the market, and rooting for the whole team behind it.

Sources & Verification

Sources: Chandler Larsen’s Stream Realty Partners bio, Stream’s press release on the Los Angeles launch, his USC Athletics profile, Bisnow’s coverage of the Avison Young move, LA Business Journal’s production data, and his LinkedIn profile.

Cathy Trinh is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Recruiter Hustle, OC/LA’s no-filter media platform for talent, finance, and recruiting professionals.

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