Category: North Texas Deals & Announcements

Westmount Realty Capital Celebrates International Women’s Day by Highlighting Recent Promotions of Four Female Leaders to Senior Director Level Roles in its Dallas Office

Posted on by Sarah

DALLAS — March 8, 2022 — Westmount Realty Capital, a private national real estate investment firm with offices throughout the country, names three female leaders to senior-level director roles with the firm. These promotions are being highlighted on International Women’s Day, a day of recognition recognized across the globe to celebrate the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women as well as a call to action for accelerating women’s equality, including the workforce.

“Each one of these promotions is well-deserved – these female powerhouses have helped propel our firm’s rapid growth, and we are thrilled to have this core team of female leadership in place and to promote diversity in the male-dominated industry of commercial real estate,” said Brant Brown, president and COO at Westmount Realty. “Their exceptional performance, delivering solid returns for both our company and investor base have contributed to Westmount’s continued success over the past few years. They are each an instrumental part of our team.”

Julie Butticarlo was promoted to senior director, asset management. In 2018, Butticarlo joined the Dallas office as the director of asset management and has worked in various markets including Atlanta, Cincinnati, Columbus (Ohio), Dallas, and Minneapolis.

Butticarlo immediately became a top producer and has completed over 90 transactions totaling 3.4 million square feet. In addition, she spearheaded five major sales transactions that included Garland Logistics Park – named a Dallas Business Journal “Best Real Estate Deals of 2020” finalist – as well as the Gwinnett portfolio transaction, a 1.2-million-square-foot master-planned business park in Atlanta which provided significant returns to the original partnership.

She is a member of the Dallas chapter of Commercial Real Estate Women (CREW), is a designated Certified Commercial Investment Member (CCIM) through the North Texas CCIM and holds her Texas Real Estate Brokers License. She currently lives in Mansfield.

Ginny Goldsmith was promoted to senior director, property management. Goldsmith leads the Dallas commercial property management team and helped reorganize the firm’s property management teams in Chicago.

Throughout her past five years at Westmount, Goldsmith had implemented various best practices for commercial property management and other departments, helping improve and streamline company operations. She has implemented strategies that have yielded better rent collections, nearing 100%, even throughout the pandemic. She has improved the firm’s operational effectiveness and efficiency with the addition of a tenant portal and maintenance tracking system.

Before joining Westmount, Goldsmith worked in commercial property management for other Dallas-area companies. She currently resides in Las Colinas and is a member of the Dallas chapter of Commercial Real Estate Women (CREW), is a designated Certified Property Manager through the Institute of Real Estate Management (IREM) and received the IREM Rising Star Award in 2013.

Barbara Georgakis has been promoted to senior controller. In 2015, she joined the Dallas office as the corporate controller and proved to be a pioneering leader in the commercial accounting, tax, treasury and technology teams.

During her time with the company, Georgakis has successfully built out internal company platforms to improve efficiency while consistently receiving positive feedback from both her industry peers and vendor partners. Drawing on her previous experience as a controller for other Dallas-area companies, Georgakis’ hard work and tremendous efforts have been a key driver in Westmount’s growth since joining the company more than six years ago.

Georgakis resides in Flower Mound. She is a certified public accountant (CPA), has her Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) from Marshall University and has been involved with Financial Executives International (FEI).

The three female leaders are among the growing number of employees in Westmount’s Dallas, Chicago, Atlanta, Milwaukee, San Francisco and Orlando offices.

About Westmount Realty Capital

Westmount Realty Capital, LLC is a time-tested, privately held, Dallas-based commercial real estate company that has achieved exceptional performance, with a core team in place, for more than 35 years. Westmount is seen as an innovator and leading-edge company in the industry and is a relationship-driven trusted operating partner of numerous U.S. and foreign institutional and private capital sources. The company is active within the U.S., specializing in value add and opportunistic investments, and has navigated successfully through multiple market cycles. For additional information, contact www.westmountrc.com.

For more information, contact:
Westmount Realty Capital, LLC
info@westmountrc.com

JLL Annouces New Dallas Tenant Rep Co-Leads Torrey Littlejohn and Bret Hefton

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The Dallas office of JLL recently announced who would replace Brooke Armstrong, who left in September to become CBRE’s new president of advisory services. And it is a team: Torrey Littlejohn and Bret Hefton were named co-leads of the role in January. The duo has worked together on a number of office deals together and will oversee JLL’s Dallas office tenant representation division.

Hefton joined JLL in 2019 and has been a top-performing broker. in the region, being named to D CEO‘s Power Broker list seven times. Littlejohn, meanwhile, has been with JLL since 2005 and was part of some big-name office deals last year. She is a finalist for D CEO‘s 2022 Commercial Real Estate Awards Broker of the Year.

They spoke with D CEO about the outlook for DFW’s office market in 2022, how work-from-home is affecting leasing, and how the corporate relocation pipeline. is affecting office demand in DFW.

D CEO: To start, I just have to ask about the office market. I looked it up and about 40% of DFW employees are back in the office. How do you think work-from-home is affecting activity in the market?

Littlejohn: “To an extent, I think work-from-home is delaying some office activity. People are waiting on some decisions because they aren’t exactly sure how they’re going to use office space. I think a lot of people are evaluating how much office space they’ll be using and people are playing with the hybrid work-from-home models to try to understand if that is productive as a long-term solution or strategy…. A lot of what we’re doing right now is counseling clients so that they can be in a position to make really informed decisions about their real estate needs moving forward.

“But I do think, you know, when we’re talking about companies that are coming into Dallas, we are still seeing a lot activity. There are a number of companies that are touring Dallas and want to move here. So, the expansion and relocation conversations, I don’t think have been as delayed.”

D CEO: Speaking of relocations, ExxonMobil just announced it was leaving Las Colinas for Houston. Can you talk about that? Companies leaving here is not something that we get to discuss very often.

Littlejohn: “I do think that that will be a unique opportunity because it is such a large amount of land. It’ll be interesting to see how all that unfolds. But Las Colinas and Irving have definitely seen a resurgence recently. It’s on the radar of a lot of companies because of its location and access to a strong labor pool. There could be a silver lining to all of this and there’s certainly an opportunity for a large company to come in and plant their flag in Irving, Texas.”

D CEO: What are you seeing right now in the market in terms of new office development? When do you think we can expect spec office building to be back?

Hefton: “We’re already seeing some new office developments break ground. Granite VI is a good example. They decided to hold off and, you know, COVID postponed a lot of development about 18 months or so, but here in the last 90 days they’ve broken ground. The level of demand in the Legacy submarket has really driven them to go ahead and break ground and move forward. I think we’ll see a lot more projects like that this year because of demand from relocations. Exxon, for example, is an exception to the rule when they’re moving out of DFW. It’s largely due to, in my opinion, their consolidation and huge presence in The Woodlands down in Houston.

“In terms of other spec development, Hillwood’s space is leasing up. The Link at Uptown is signing leases. We’re seeing some momentum. And in our business, our clients are really looking to find quality spaces. There’s a flight to quality. So, some of these new buildings are really going to benefit from that. And fortunately for the new buildings, you know, many buildings didn’t get started during the pandemic. So, they are sitting there with a ripe opportunity to benefit.”

Institutional Property Advisors Announces Sale of Multifamily Property in Grand Prairie

Posted on by Sarah

Institutional Property Advisors (IPA), a division of Marcus & Millichap, announced the sale of Arioso, a 288-unit multifamily property in Grand Prairie, Texas.

IPA Senior Director Drew Kile, and IPA’s Joey Tumminello, Michael Ware, Taylor Hill, Asher Hall and Will Balthrope represented the seller, Hayman Company and Dome Equities, and procured the buyer, IMH Companies.

Located at the intersection of Interstate 20 and State Highway 360, the property is within commuting distance of major employers such as Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, American Airlines, DR Horton, Lockheed Martin, General Motors, and Bell Helicopter-Textron. The Great Southwest Industrial Park, with 83,000-plus employees is 1.25 miles away and retail and entertainment are close by at Great Southwest Crossing and the 172-acre EpicCentral park.

Built in 2007 on 13.5 acres, the three-story, garden-style property has limited-access gating, two resort-style pools, cold and hot spas and exterior storage units. Units have nine-foot ceilings, hardwood-style flooring and full-size washers and dryers. The average unit size is 976 square feet.