All it took was buying up all the competition.<\/p>\n
![\"Placeholder\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/1750589843_18_placeholder.png\")
<\/p>\n
\n Courtesy of JLL\n <\/p>\n
\n JLL’s Marty Hogan, Kevin McConn, Rick Goings and Jeff Hollinden\n <\/p>\n
The team \u2014 and city \u2014 is having a huge year for office investment sales.<\/p>\n
There has been more than $1.5B of year-to-date activity, if counting the ownership transfer of Houston Center<\/a>, and another $700M\u00a0is expected to hit the market by January. That\u2019s up from $650M for all of 2024,\u00a0according to JLL.\u00a0<\/p>\n The actual percentage of office investment sales brokered by\u00a0JLL Capital Markets<\/a>\u2019 Houston office investment sales team of Marty Hogan<\/a>, Kevin McConn<\/a>, Jeff Hollinden<\/a> and Rick Goings<\/a>\u00a0varies.<\/p>\n The team said\u00a0it handles 65% to 80% of institutional office sales by dollar volume in Houston annually, depending on the year, and the proportion can be swayed by huge outlier transactions. But it can be as high as 95%.<\/p>\n CoStar<\/a> data, which encompasses a broader pool of deals, shows a smaller cut, with JLL as the listing brokerage for 21% of the 53.4M SF of offices sold in Houston since 2023, about 11.3M SF as of October.<\/p>\n The next highest listing brokerage, with nearly 6M SF sold, was Eastdil Secured<\/a>, which has brokered big transactions like the sale of CityWestPlace<\/a>. Three more brokerages sold between 2M SF and 3M SF, and all others were below 750K SF, according to CoStar.\u00a0<\/p>\n Any way you shake it, JLL is leading by a long shot.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIf there’s 35 trades, we’ve done 30,\u201d Hogan said. \u201cEverybody else has done, collectively, five or 10.\u201d<\/p>\n Deals brokered by the team this year include a distressed building in Downtown Houston\u00a0that\u00a0sold for a bargain-basement price<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0a\u00a0vacant trophy building built in 2022<\/a>\u00a0that generated 15 all-cash offers. The\u00a0team has seen\u00a0sales indicating particular interest from owner-users<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0several\u00a0trades in West Houston<\/a>, one of the\u00a0most popular office submarkets in the country by square footage leased.\u00a0<\/p>\n The domination stems from JLL\u2019s 2019 acquisition of HFF<\/a>, a smaller firm that was\u00a0considered to have carried more influence<\/a> in the debt financing arena. HFF CEO Mark Gibson<\/a> became and remains CEO of JLL Capital Markets, Americas.<\/p>\n Prior to the merger, Hogan and Hollinden were at HFF. McConn and Goings were at JLL. Their respective teams were the leading investment sales teams in Houston, Hogan said.<\/p>\n \u201cTwo competitors that were the top two office investment sales teams in the city coming together,\u201d he said. \u201cThat’s kind of how it happened. And then we\u2019ve just been able to maintain it going forward.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The foundation was laid long before the merger. The men credit many of their former and current leaders, including Scott Galloway and the late Jim Savage, for the culture and relationships that contribute to their success today.<\/p>\n But in particular, McConn had a mentor in Ruby Hubbard at JLL, and Hogan had Danny Miller at HFF. Both elder men left JLL around the time of the merger.<\/p>\n \n Bisnow\/Catie Dixon\n <\/p>\n \n Kevin McConn and Rudy Hubbard in 2014\n <\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re the only game in town,\u201d Hubbard\u00a0said, adding that didn\u2019t\u00a0just become the case in 2019. \u201cWe were doing pretty well against HFF before the merger.\u201d<\/p>\n Hubbard said he left\u00a0JLL to branch out beyond the office sector\u00a0into things including land tract sales. Though he officially quit and established RH Interests in 2020, he said his decision was made at least a year before the merger.\u00a0<\/p>\n Miller remembers the old rivalry a bit differently.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we went up against JLL, we beat them, period,\u201d Miller said.\u00a0<\/p>\n HFF exclusively focused on debt and equity, with debt specialists for each sector. So there is no question that JLL\u2019s acquisition of HFF put it in the position it is in now, Miller said.<\/p>\n He said a lot of factors, including the pandemic, his age and not wanting to integrate into a giant global corporation, led to his decision to leave JLL. Now he is retired, living in South Carolina and a member of seven country clubs.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n