Veteran office broker Doug Mueller, who spent the past 13 years at JLL in Washington, D.C., said he made his big move to rival Newmark for the chance to grow the brokerage's agency leasing business in a market that is still contending with high vacancy rates.
“This gave me the opportunity to build something,” Mueller said in an interview with CoStar News. “That excites me and slicks my hair back.”
Newmark said this week that Mueller joined the firm's Washington office as a vice chairman, typically the highest position a broker, or producer, can attain at major real estate services firms.
Mueller has closed more than 1,000 deals over the course of his more than two-decade career. He has helped market more than 20 million square feet for lease and completed deals with a total volume of more than $5 billion.
He made the move to Newmark as office owners and landlords in Washington continue to contend with stubbornly high vacancy rates lingering from the pandemic. They're also bracing for the potential impact of the federal government's decision to save money by terminating office leases.
That is setting up the Washington area's office market for a challenging year ahead, according to a CoStar market analytics report.
"The metro's vacancy rate at 17.2% has reached an all-time high, and the overall availability rate stands at 19.8%," CoStar said in the report.
"Additional deterioration is on the horizon, with an unclear outlook for federal agency employment and office use, continued space consolidations, and slow office-using employment growth."
Interest rate concerns
As for Mueller, he said leaders at companies he represents are concerned about borrowing costs.
“The interest rate environment ... that’s first and foremost the biggest issue my clients are facing,” Mueller said.
He also said he is watching for any trickle-down effects of the recently created federal cost-slashing group the Department of Government Efficiency. Outside of the federal workforce, other tenant buckets of the market including associations and law firms are doing well, Mueller said.
Newmark said it is confident in Mueller's ability to drive the brokerage's growth in market share.
During his time at JLL, Mueller, who is from just north of Baltimore, grew JLL's leasing portfolio from 1 million square feet in 2012 to 20 million square feet of office buildings across product types and locations.
Before JLL, he served as a senior vice president at CBRE, where he started his career as an industrial broker. He eventually made the switch after being drawn to interfacing with clients on the agency side.