The practice — The Hokuten Group

About Hokuten.

Human-led. Evidence-driven. Technology-enabled.

The Hokuten Group is a hotel brokerage and advisory practice at Keller Williams Commercial — capital markets and M&A, single-asset and portfolio. The work is human-led and supported by source-controlled underwriting, licensed comparable-sale research, structured buyer qualification, documented owner reporting, AI-assisted research, and controlled workflow automation.

Dino Monteverde’s career experience includes $200M+ in aggregate transaction volume across 12 hotel and hospitality transactions — hotel sales, a joint-venture refinance partnership, and the sale of a hotel management company involving 40+ hotel management contracts. All of it inside a hotel brokerage career that began in 2022 — under four years, including the CoStar Power Broker recognition that came with it.

Japan runs on current relationships and on time actually spent there. Dino’s degree carries an East Asian Studies focus, he taught in Joso City, Ibaraki through 2019 and 2020, and he owns a home in Mitsukaido — the town the group’s Japanese affiliate is named for. The work is placing Japanese capital into U.S. assets and U.S. capital into Japanese assets, with the expansion focus on resort hotels. Regulated brokerage work inside Japan is performed by appropriately licensed local professionals.

Attribution and scope. The $200M+ and 12-transaction figures span current and prior affiliations. They are not presented as 12 hotel sales personally closed by Dino Monteverde, or as Hokuten-only production. Nothing on this site implies that Hokuten or a U.S. licensee may perform regulated brokerage work in Japan without the required local authority.

CoStar Power Broker. 2025 Annual Top Firm is team recognition earned by the four-person prior team of Dino Monteverde, William Betancourt, Mohamed Razim Meeran and Donna Yangyang that now operates as The Hokuten Group, and is not presented as any individual’s award. CoStar’s published methodology says annual individual sales awards recognise high sales volume within each broker’s CoStar market using closed transactions in its COMPS database; Quarterly Deals ranks eligible arm’s-length sales within each market by sale price for that quarter. CoStar reports no fixed minimum threshold, and its methodology may change. Sources reviewed August 14, 2026: Annual methodology · Quarterly Deals methodology.

Where the method came from.

Sourcing without control. Then control, at volume. Then the harder road, on purpose.

2022 · San Francisco

Sourcing, without control

Starboard Commercial Real Estate — the largest independently owned commercial real estate firm in San Francisco, founded in 1991 by Hans Hansson, Doron Baruth and Stella Wong Florez, reported as the first Asian-American woman to own a commercial real estate firm in the United States.

No inherited pipeline, no network. Prospecting by hand, email and phone, every day — and where the mass-email discipline started. That produced 200+ off-market hotel properties — and the 200 owner relationships behind them, and opened institutional doors — 100+ meetings with private equity on joint ventures, ground-up development and whole-portfolio purchases, some north of $700M, and an exclusive buyer agreement with an affiliate of KSL Capital Partners.

What it taughtOrigination works. Origination without an exclusive does not. Sourcing for buy-side funds with no control of the deal becomes endless window shopping — the funds wanted to buy, not to sell, and on some opportunities the originating broker was cut out of the transaction.

Los Angeles

Control, at volume

Sarhan Hotel Group. Sarhan Mheni started selling hotels at Marcus & Millichap in Encino, was named one of the top three hotel brokers in the nation in his second year, then led the number one team in California and finished top three nationwide for thirteen years — more than a hundred hotels and, by his own account, over a billion dollars in career sales. Keller Williams Commercial recruited the team in mid-2020 to run its National Hospitality Division.

The database went from 200 properties to 1,500 nationwide, and became the start of the off-market experiment that is now a100 Arms. The outreach scaled with it — over 5 million emails sent across the campaigns run in that stretch. The deal size moved deliberately the other way — out of $700M+ portfolios and into $5M–$100M assets, where a signed listing agreement is actually available. 300+ written BOVs and 20+ listings in twelve months, with CoStar Power Broker recognition across the same stretch: the 2025 Annual Top Broker award and Quarterly Deals wins for Q3 2025, Q1 2026 and Q2 2026.

What it taughtControl. A signed listing is leverage that sourcing alone never produces — and a closing record that belongs to you rather than to someone else’s introduction. What was mastered there was winning the listing assignment. The buyer process was not, and that is the next challenge.

2026 · Japan

Both, and the harder road

The Hokuten Group. Both firms were pivotal. Starboard taught how to originate from nothing. Sarhan Hotel Group taught how to sign a listing and close it at volume, and gave the reps that made everything after it possible.

Going out alone means no senior name on the door and no inherited platform. It is the harder road by some distance, and that is the point — it is the next challenge, and the only road that builds into something of its own.

The prospecting that built the first 200 by hand now runs on the operating system: source-controlled underwriting, licensed comparable-sale research, structured buyer qualification and documented owner reporting, with AI-assisted research and controlled workflow automation carrying the reach. Judgment, verification, licensed decisions and client approval stay human.

What it isThe reach of the first chapter and the discipline of the second, carried by a team and a system rather than by an inherited book.

The motto, ten years runningStay in the struggle.

Ten years, because it predates the licence. Eight in the U.S. Marine Corps from 2006 to 2014, then Hiddensound Hostels — four locations in the Pacific Northwest, roughly 100 beds in total. Built, operated and sold. Hokuten sells hotels to owner-operators because it was run by one first.

Written by Dino in 2016, long before the licence:

One of my favorite mottos is “stay in the struggle”, which I came up with as a small reminder to myself that:

I feel most fulfilled when I am striving towards a goal, challenging myself and open to change.
I never forget where I come from and that other people stepped in to help me in my time of need. I hope to be given the opportunity to do the same for others.
I surround myself with people who strive to make a better change for themselves and the rest of the world.

Dino Monteverde

How we differ.

Four structural differences, and where an eight-person practice beats a firm ten times its size.

Request a written BOV

1stUseful before there is a deal

The order is reversed

Most brokerage waits to be called, and arrives after the owner has already decided — the point at which the most useful thing anyone could have said is a year late. With no book to inherit, being useful early was the only way in. Relationship first, work second, transaction last.

200+Sourced buy-side, then closed sell-side

Both sides of the table

200+ off-market properties sourced for institutional buyers on $700M+ mandates, then 20+ listings signed and mostly closed at $5M–$100M. Most brokers spend a career on one side and one deal size. Knowing how the buy side actually decides is what makes a sell-side campaign land.

DIRECTOwner and buyer sourcing built through direct prospecting

The buyer may come from direct sourcing

Across the career transactions on this page, many buyers were represented directly or sourced through the practice’s prospecting and property research. That history is not evidence that any current buyer has reviewed a listing, has capital, or will bid.

8People, doing platform-scale reach

The system carries the volume

The prospecting that built the first 200 properties was manual. It now runs on documented workflow, verified sources and AI-assisted research, so reach scales without the underwriting, the licensed judgment or the owner reporting being handed to a machine.

Why a smaller firm wins this assignment

The national platforms are exceptional at what they are built for: nine-figure, fully marketed processes. That machine is expensive, and it is priced and staffed accordingly. Below its threshold, the same structure that makes it formidable starts to work against the owner.

At a national platform

At The Hokuten Group

×A $5–30M hotel is below the line for senior attention.

→That range is the practice.

×The name on the pitch is not the name on the file.

→Whoever underwrote it, negotiates it.

×Committee sign-off sits between a decision and the market.

→One decision-maker. A written BOV in days.

×Buyer relationships belong to the platform.

→Owner and buyer sourcing is built through direct prospecting.

×A public, fully marketed process is the default.

→Controlled circulation is genuinely available.

×Coverage depends on how many analysts are staffed.

→Eight people, carrying platform-scale reach.

Scale is an advantage right up to the point where an asset is small enough to become someone’s side project. After that, it is the problem.