Tyler Courtney, who just left Cushman & Wakefield for the newly created head of brokerage position at a firm known for real estate development and management, said he sees the opportunity to win business even as uncertainty swirls around the global economy and the country's commercial property market.
In an interview days before he planned to fill the role of executive managing director of national brokerage at Lincoln Property Co., Courtney said leaving Cushman & Wakefield after 16 years for Lincoln will enable him to work for a nimble company that quickly adjusts when needed. He was set to start his new job Monday at Lincoln's Atlanta office.
"What we're trying to do is really set the foundation to take advantage of all of a sudden uncertainty in the market," Courtney said in an interview. "The disruption is not necessarily a bad thing in the brokerage business. It provides all sorts of challenges, but a ton of opportunities."
The addition of Courtney as national brokerage leader "is an important part of planned growth as a real estate services provider in the United States," Lincoln co-CEO David Binswanger said in a statement. "Lincoln already has a significant portfolio of assets that we lease throughout the country and our goal is to grow our third-party portfolio."
Combined, the size of the portfolio Lincoln leases or manages on behalf of institutional clients exceeds 562 million square feet of commercial space. Since its founding in 1965, Lincoln has developed 164 million square feet of commercial property and has another $19.5 billion under construction or in the pipeline.
Lincoln is working to expand its brokerage as the outlook for the U.S. office market "remains complex and widely variable across geographies," even as leasing momentum increased in the first quarter, according to a CoStar Market Analytics report. "Despite the overall improvement, some gateway cities and many secondary markets are still losing occupancy as slow job growth blunts the impact of stronger office attendance."
Targeting industrial assignments
Ten consecutive quarters of vacancy rate increases have pushed the county's overall rate to 7.1% and "shifted market conditions more in tenants' favor," CoStar said in a separate report. "It could be another 12 to 18 months before owners have the leverage needed to raise rents at a more aggressive pace. There is clear potential for the national vacancy rate to peak in late 2025 or early 2026."
The industrial sector presents opportunities as Lincoln expands its agency leasing business, Courtney said. He said the company also will chase business in the office, healthcare, medical office and retail sectors, while he sees potential in data center assignments.
While the office market is "not something we will shy away from by any means because there's so much opportunity in the brokerage business on the office side, I think industrial will be a larger focus going forward."
Courtney said he'll spend much of the next couple of weeks traveling to Lincoln's major markets including Dallas, Washington, D.C., Boston, Chicago and Charlotte, North Carolina, to understand how executives there built their business books. He'll also begin the important step of recruiting brokers, he said.
During his time at Cushman & Wakefield, where he started in 2009 representing corporate occupiers, Courtney worked his way up to managing principal in Atlanta. In that role, he led the strategic direction and business development efforts in the firm's Atlanta market that has more than 550 real estate professionals.
"It was the hardest decision I've had to make in my career," he said of leaving Cushman, one of the world's largest publicly traded real estate services companies. "They presented me leadership opportunities early on in my career, and I really enjoyed my time."
But the entrepreneurial pull of Lincoln, a private firm that does not need to align its growth plan with quarterly Wall Street expectations, proved too strong not to take the opportunity. He knows he starts his new endeavor with "a lot of noise out there" about the economy and tariffs, but he's confident he'll succeed.