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THE MILLENNIAL MOVEMENT PHOTO: MICHAEL SAMPLES
HOW THE WORKFORCE’S YOUNGEST GENERATION WILL SHAPE THE WORLD OF COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE BY JEFF BOUNDS
The phone rings constantly at Joseph Cahoon’s office at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. The director of the Folsom Institute for Real Estate at SMU’s Cox School of Business says the calls come from commercial real estate executives nationwide who need mid-level analysts with several years of experience. “Those don’t exist,” Cahoon says. “If they did stay in the market, they’re highly valued, have risen in their own firms, and they aren’t trying to make lateral moves.” Welcome to the new recruiting wars in
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commercial real estate in Dallas-Fort Worth. A combination of factors, including the region’s roaring economic growth and robust corporate deal-making, are creating challenges for those charged with attracting and retaining industry professionals. “The demand from [corporate] mergers, acquisitions, and split-offs in North Texas continues to increase,” says Jeff Staubach, president of the South Central region at JLL. “They’re all putting new square footage on the market. With more square footage, the industry needs additional analysts, leasing agents, and capital markets professionals to buy or lease the spaces.” Part of today’s talent gap stems from economic downturns of days past. Take the most recent recession, the storm clouds for which began appearing in late 2007. “Young talent will always be attracted to the hot industry, and during that time, it wasn’t commercial real estate,” says Blair Oden, senior managing director, occupier services, at CBRE. “From 2008 to 2010, we weren’t hiring anyone out of college. In fact, we weren’t hiring many people at all.” The lack of jobs nationwide in CRE at the time meant that recent college graduates of that era largely went into other fields. The same phenomenon happened in North Texas after the technology bust that started in 2000, following regional economic issues that surfaced in the 1980s. These generational voids in commercial real estate manifest themselves when the field heats up, such as it did starting in DFW
SPRING 2016