Chris DiBitetto, 39

Chris DiBitetto spent a lot of the first three years of his commercial real estate career in the car. Not necessarily driving to check out properties with clients, but, as an Uber driver, shuttling people around Washington, D.C.

DiBitetto was an entry-level brokerage assistant for Colliers, and the first three years or so, he says, were a major financial struggle. He would cold-call for clients by day, sometimes using a phone book. Around 5 p.m., off came the tie and into his Volkswagen CC sedan DiBitetto went, armed with his Uber app and ready to take passengers all over the nation’s capital. 

Photo by Mark Wemple

DiBitetto and his wife, Ashley DiBitetto, didn’t have kids, yet, and Ashley, he says, carried them financially. (He got about $1,000 a month from Colliers to cover expenses.) “It was three to five years of living with the tightest of belts imaginable,” he says, looking back at the 2013-2016 grind. “But it also showed people I was willing to do whatever it took to succeed.”

That goes for people at Colliers and clients. And in 2016 he closed his first big deal, leasing space to Northeastern University in Arlington, Virginia. “It was a monster amount of money,” he says. 

An avalanche of deals followed, as did new opportunities at new brokerages, including being named vice president and managing broker of the Sarasota office of ERES Companies in 2023. ERES, founded in 2014, has handled more than 5 million square feet of commercial real space and more than $1 billion in real estate value in the past decade. It has 10 offices, including locations in Denver, New York and Argentina, in addition to Sarasota. 

DiBitetto — he and Ashley, now with three kids under 6, moved to Sarasota in 2021, a Covid-fueled get-out-of-the-Northeast-move — works on a bit of everything with ERES, from sales to leases to development projects. It’s a throwback to his always-hustling D.C.-Uber days. 

DiBitetto credits his mentor, ERES President Tom Bradley, as a guiding force in the current phase of his career, which mixes leading a team with building a book of business in a competitive and fast-moving field. DiBitetto says he and Bradley clicked from their first meeting, over lunch at Shore on St. Armands Circle in Sarasota — and not only because they share a birthday, Aug. 11. 

“Tom has continuously asked me what I need to succeed in this new leadership role, and he has provided me with all of the tools and support necessary to achieve my goals,” DiBitetto says. “Tom is strategic in his approach to business/deals and always puts the client first, which is something I respect immensely.”