For pair at CB Richard Ellis 2000 was a very good year.

How strong was the real estate market in 2000? Just ask Tom Reilly and Geoffrey Schubert, a team of brokers who work in CB Richard Ellis' Paramus, N.J. office.

Reilly and Schubert closed 3,137,000 square feet worth of leasing and sales transactions during the year, almost double the amount of leasing and sales transactions the pair closed during the previous two and one-half years.

"It was a banner year, that's for sure," Schubert said.

During 2000, the team completed 1,799,000 square feet of leasing activity and another 1,335,000 square feet in sales activity. By comparison, from August 1997 -- when the pair began working for GB Richard Ellis - through January 2000, the team completed 1,875,000 square feet of combined leasing and sales transactions for the period, Schubert said.

Most of their work was done in the New Jersey area, although the pair completed the sale of a 600,000-squarefoot building in Denver on behalf of Lucent Technologies. Also, some of the 300,000 square feet of leasing completed on behalf of Bisys Group, Inc. was done in parts of the country other than New Jersey.

Among the team's largest leases were 444,000 square feet for Exodus Communications, 308,000 square feet for Merrill Lynch, 285,000 square feet for GlobeSpan Technology and 232,000 square feet for Motorola.

"We had a lot of agency product to work with," Schubert said. "In controlling product, you control your destiny."

The pair said they were able to tap into virtually all of the market sectors that have thrived in New Jersey during the past few years, including financial services, telecommunications, and electronic commerce.

"The only sector we didn't get was pharmaceutical," Reilly said.

Reilly and Schubert concede that a measure of their success can be attributed to the market conditions that have caused New Jersey's office market -- especially on the waterfront across from Manhattan -- to thrive. Spots like Jersey City are just a short train or ferry ride across the Hudson River, and office rents are about half of those in midtown Manhattan.

"As these industries grow and consolidate, they don't necessarily need Class A space. They need Class B space for back office operations and other uses," Schubert said.

Unlike Manhattan, New Jersey saw the construction of several speculative office buildings, with the Lefrak Organization Inc. recently announcing plans for 1.1 million-square-foot speculative building on the waterfront.

Citing Lefrak's track record for speculative building, the team said they viewed the potential new building as an opportunity, not a threat to the New Jersey market.

"The timing has been good. (Lefrak) has the ability to produce a cost-effective product and typically it's leased before construction is finished," Reilly said.

Market conditions have also created opportunities for developers to buy vacant buildings and renovate them to be used for office space. This was the case with the sale of Gatehall II, a 428,000-square-foot building in Parsippany, N.J. A former Colgate manufacturing plant, the building was ideally located along the river, but required extensive infrastructure work.

"It was a building that was nothing more than a shell," Reilly said. "It was completely gutted, new mechanicals were put in. It was a difficult floor plate to work with, the developer had to be creative."

As far as 2001, the team said they expected market activity to slow down, but were "cautiously optimistic" that New Jersey would continue to be strong, particularly on the waterfront.

"It's not going to be 1989 all over," Schubert said. "Office building will not be as 'in yogue' as 'it's been so there will be less speculative office building."