Judi Hilton
Title: Chief Operating Officer, Cresa
Age: 42
Experience: 21 years
Judi Hilton put her project management experience to work right off the bat after joining Boston-based Cresa in 1998, overseeing an office projects in Silicon Valley and Europe before moving to Cresa’s corporate offices in Boston in 2003. Hilton was named chief operating officer in January, the latest in a series of positions in which she has focused on internal operations of the company. Cresa, the nation’s largest commercial brokerage specializing in tenant representation, had revenues of $290 million in 2014, a 20 percent one-year increase.
Q: What effect has consolidation in commercial real estate had on Cresa’s place in the industry?
A: With all the industry consolidation that’s happened, there were some that were privately held and now with all the mergers and acquisitions, it’s unique. We feel that makes our strength in our niche of solely focusing on occupier services even stronger. Other companies are getting bigger and their tenant services portion is becoming a less important piece of it. When you put all of those groups together, you have more market saturation of overlap in brokers, market-to-market. In markets where there’s a lot of overlap, we believe to be on a platform that only focuses on tenants, resources aren’t fighting. It really come down to the clients.
Q: What percentage of Cresa employees have an equity interest in the company?
A: We have just over 20 percent nationally. The way I explain the company, it’s very unique. It’s an upside-down organization chart. We, the parent company, are owned by the field offices. While each office is individually owned and operated, they have shared ownership in the parent company. It’s an interesting dynamic but it works for us. We’re all bound by the same core values.
Q: What distinguishes Cresa’s corporate culture?
A: This is a collaborative organization like none I’ve ever seen. If a client has a need, there’s no hesitation of a broker to send an email to everyone in the organization. I don’t think that happens in other organizations. Sharing best practices of what’s working in our market. … If it works, we share it with everybody. It creates an environment people choose to be in.
Everything we do is for occupiers, which is what we call tenants: that includes transaction management, which is leasing, helping them figure out how much space they need. The best negotiated lease in the world, if you fall down between signing the lease and getting it built out, that’s a bad experience. We mitigate that risk by integrating construction management and transaction management. We see that as a differentiator.
Q: How many new offices are opening this year?
A: We have eight today overseas. Our goal is to have 20 offices overseas by the end of the year. In the U.S. we will add five new offices by the end of this year. In Boston, the local Boston office has 55 employees plus 15 people on the corporate team who sit here.
Q: What’s the biggest misconception people have about tenant brokers?
A: People have access to more information on the full-service side because they see the landlord side of all the deals done. But I’d also argue leveraging that data for the benefit of your tenant is an unnatural argument. You have a landlord with a building that is a recurring revenue source for that firm. We just have a hard time seeing around that conflict.
There was a time when this industry was a little bit more old-school. It was who you know. At the end of the day, it’s do I trust you and do I believe you? There’s more transparency today on conflicts of interest and that helps us.
Hilton’s Top 5 Places To Ski:
- Jackson Hole, Wyo.
- Aspen/Snowmass, Colo.
- Sunday River, Maine
- Park City, Utah
- Vail, Colo.
