CBRE is expanding its capital markets team in Kansas City, Missouri, with a veteran broker from JLL as the rival firms step up competition for fewer commercial and multifamily investment deals in the Midwest market.
Adam Tilton, who has more than 14 years of commercial real estate experience, has joined the world's largest brokerage by revenue, CBRE said. He moved to CBRE from JLL, where he most recently served as an executive vice president and had transitioned his efforts toward investment sales and capital markets deals. Before joining JLL, he spent more than a decade at Colliers.
During his career, Tilton has completed more than 500 transactions involving commercial property in the Kansas City area and across the United States and Canada. He has marketed and sold apartment complexes, office buildings, medical centers and other types of commercial property. In his new role at CBRE, Tilton will help expand the office’s capital markets business and lead sales efforts for office, retail, healthcare and development properties, the firm said.
He joins CBRE at a time of lower sales volume because of higher interest rates, tighter capital markets and lingering uncertainty about the office market.
The sales volume of office buildings in Kansas City totaled $134 million in the past year, according to a CoStar Market Analytics report. That's "far below the market's 10-year average of $411 million as rising availability and the spread between buyers and sellers continues to hamper activity," the report said.
On the multifamily side, total sales volume in Kansas City totaled $109 million in the first quarter. "This is the lowest quarterly total in 10 years and a sharp decline from the $130 million traded during 22Q1," a separate CoStar report said.
At CBRE, Tilton's experience selling properties in several commercial property sectors will help the brokerage expand its business in the market, Leah Fitzgerald, managing director of CBRE’s Kansas City office, said. “Adam has proven himself with an established track record of capital markets sales," Fitzgerald said in a statement.
While with JLL, Tilton was part of the team that represented VanTrust Real Estate in its sale of Residences at Park Place in Leawood, Kansas. In February, he won a CoStar Power Broker award for his role in that deal that closed in late December.
Also while at his former firm last year, Tilton represented the seller of Deer Creek Surgery Center in Overland Park, Kansas. And he and a team at JLL represented the seller in last year's sale of Peck's Plaza, the 109-year-old office building at 1044 Main St. in downtown Kansas City, Missouri.
As for the struggling office market, Tilton appeared confident it will bounce back based on his comment added to a recent CBRE post on LinkedIn. In that post, CBRE said uncertainty in the office market is being caused partly by companies deferring leasing decisions until the economic outlook becomes clearer. Tilton said that means there's "Bottled up demand!" for space that "Will pop when confidence resumes…."