When Ventas Inc. chairman & CEO Debra Cafaro isn’t busy running the most powerful seniors housing and healthcare REIT in the business, she is an enthusiastic sports fan. Given her love of competition, it is fitting that Ventas has piled up a stack of Hall of Fame-caliber statistics under her leadership. During the past decade, Ventas sported the best record of any publicly traded financial company in the United States, rewarding its shareholders with returns of more than 2,000 percent, according to a 2009 analysis by Morningstar Inc. and REIT Zone Publications L.L.C. Cafaro’s strategy for much of that period has emphasized the acquisition of operating companies in seniors housing and medical office buildings.
Over the past seven years, Cafaro has pulled off seven major acquisitions, including three blockbusters valued at $10 billion since July 2010. Those deals have brought the company’s holdings to more than 1,300 seniors housing, skilled nursing and medical office assets in 47 states and two Canadian provinces.

Cafaro’s feats in rescuing the company from extinction and then transforming it into a nearly $23 billion enterprise rank among the most impressive in recent REIT history. “She’s done an absolutely remarkable job,” noted David Neithercut, president & CEO of Equity Residential and a longtime friend. Colleagues credit Cafaro with single-handedly leading the trend toward consolidation in healthcare real estate in recent years. In an indication of Cafaro’s standing among her peers, she was tapped to serve as 2010 chairman of the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts, barely a decade after making a mid-career switch from law to real estate.

As the chief architect of Ventas’ improbable surge, Cafaro is described by colleagues as bringing together an unusual combination of qualities: inexhaustible reserves of energy, mastery of detail, hard-nosed bargaining skills and an engaging, down-to-earth manner. “What I can’t emphasize enough is the abundance of energy that she brings to all her activities,” said Steven Weschler, NAREIT’s president & CEO. “Debbie is an incredibly energetic, tough-minded, warm, engaging individual.” Colleagues say that Cafaro demands a great deal of those who work for her and rewards good performance in equal mea sure. In addition, she has a knack for inspiring loyalty; the company’s senior leadership has remained intact for the better part of a decade.

Cafaro describes Ventas as a kind of hybrid—part real estate, part finance and part seniors housing. Although Ventas is a prolific owner, its focus is investment rather than operations. “You can almost think of it as being a private-equity investor in a public format,” she explained. Cafaro said she has striven to mix a conservative approach to the company’s balance sheet and an opportunistic approach to the market.

The first of the three most recent transactions to close emerged from a strategy to take advantage of the growth trajectory in the medical office building market, which Cafaro notes is on track to grow 30 percent over the next decade. In July 2010, Ventas completed the acquisition of Lillibridge Healthcare Services Inc., an operator with more than 25 years of experience. The deal expanded its medical office portfolio from 59 properties to 154.

Seniors housing is another happy hunting ground for investors, as Baby Boomers drive demand over the next couple of decades. Ventas’ $3.1 billion acquisition of Atria Senior Living Group, the fourth-largest operator of assisted living facilities in the United States, added 118 properties to its portfolio. A high-growth, high-quality portfolio and strong management team made Atria a particularly attractive addition, Cafaro explained. Ventas projects that Atria will deliver in the neighborhood of $186 million to $196 million in net operating income annually. The properties will be managed by Atria Senior Living Inc., a new affiliate spun off from the property ownership business. Another plus: Atria’s revenue stream is derived from private consumer demand rather than from government reimbursement.

Though the impact of demographic trends appears to be inevitable, the future shape of the healthcare system itself is very much open to question. Reform legislation enacted by Congress last year remains a subject of uncertainty and even debate. Yet Cafaro is confident that the elements of the reform package are a net plus for healthcare real estate. “Healthcare reform will bring 32 million people in a more regular way,” she pointed out. “We think that increased demand will also benefit the medical office building business.”

During the past decade, Ventas has pursued a strategy that should stand it in good stead even if federal government reimbursement policy shows some ups and downs. Through a steady diversification of its portfolio, an estimated 70 percent of the company’s net operating income now flows from private sources rather than from the government.

As Ventas prepares for whatever changes Washington brings to healthcare, it seems clear that the company is far from done seeking out opportunities to expand. Cafaro contends that the circumstances are welcoming. She cites estimates that a scant 8 percent of the $1 trillion healthcare and seniors housing sector is controlled by public companies. By contrast, public REITs own about 65 percent of the retail mall market.

To the process of acquiring healthcare real estate companies, Cafaro brings more than a decade of experience as a CEO combined with a 15-year legal career that offered an intimate knowledge of the legal nuances of mergers. Colleagues cite her mastery of financial issues. “She knows the numbers cold. She gets it,” said Eric Gordon, a vice president with Waud Capital Partners L.L.C., a Chicago-based investment management firm. Gordon, who served as the firm’s manager of real estate investments from 2002 to 2006, got an inside view of Cafaro’s abilities while handling analysis, due diligence and execution on several early mergers. “To go to a $200 million REIT and say, ‘Let’s try to make a deal’ requires strategic thinking and the ability to execute,” Gordon explained.

Yet even after building up this track record, Cafaro insists that there is nothing routine about acquiring another company. “I think people really do not realize how difficult it is to get some of these transactions done,” she said.

Each of Ventas’ three most recently acquired companies brought unique challenges. For the $7.6 billion Lillibridge acquisition, the main challenge was the blending of a closely held, 25-year-old company with a public REIT. Successfully integrating the companies demanded a balance between preserving the qualities that made Lillibridge successful and uniting it with a publicly traded parent company, subjecting it to the scrutiny of the public markets.

By contrast, Ventas’ $7.6 million purchase of Nationwide Healthcare Properties was a public-to-public deal. NHP will add considerably to Ventas’ scale and diversification, expanding its holdings by more than 660 seniors housing, skilled nursing and medical office properties. Cafaro expects that the additional scale lent by NHP will provide another plus by boosting Ventas’ credit curve, thus driving down financing costs.

Cafaro’s account, however, underscores that the NHP deal was no less challenging than the Lillibridge acquisition. “Especially in a public-to-public merger, the stars really have to be aligned to get a deal done,” she noted. To begin with, she points to the deal’s lengthy gestation period. Cafaro and her top lieutenants spent about eight years becoming familiar with NHP and developing good relations with its leadership. Market conditions also had to favor the union, and Ventas and NHP principals had to strike the notoriously difficult balance of pricing the transaction so that NHP shareholders of the target company were confident that they would receive a premium for their stock while Ventas shareholders viewed the sale as accretive.

Opening Doors

In 1997, Cafaro’s aptitude for handling difficult and complex legal cases led to an invitation to serve as president of Ambassador Apartments Inc., a Chicago-based REIT. No sooner did Cafaro step into her new role than she had to grapple with defaults on credit agreements, overstated earnings and other issues. Those challenges notwithstanding, it took less than a year for her to orchestrate the $682 million sale of the company’s 52-property portfolio to Apartment Investment and Management Co. That brief tour of duty opened the door to the executive suite. As it turned out, the business challenge of a lifetime was waiting just around the corner.

In 1999, Cafaro was approached by Douglas Crocker, then CEO of Equity Residential Properties, about another executive opportunity in the residential real estate sector. Crocker, who was also on the board of a struggling assisted-living operating company called Ventas, asked Cafaro to consider becoming the company’s CEO. At the time, the company faced a perfect storm of problems. The U.S. Department of Justice was seeking $1 billion in Medicare fraud claims. A separate category of claims stemmed from a step taken by the company before Cafaro joined. In 1998, Ventas took the name and corporate structure of Vencor, its predecessor. The newly renamed company then spun off its operating functions into a new unit, which was branded with the old Vencor name and became Ventas’ sole tenant.

Creditors claimed, however, that the spinoff amounted to a fraudulent transfer that Ventas was using as a means to avoid payment. By the time Cafaro came on board, in March 1999, the newly spun-off Vencor was close to bankruptcy, and the unit wound up filing for bankruptcy protection that September. On top of that, Cafaro also had to address the looming October 1999 maturity of a $1 billion unsecured bank loan. As Neithercut summed it up: “They were under extreme duress.”

Nevertheless, Cafaro found the challenge to be compelling, and took the job. At the outset, the assumption was that the exit strategy would ultimately involve selling the company. She started by systematically working to get the company onto more solid footing. The first steps, taken in 2000, included adopting REIT status and securing $1 billion in debt financing. The following year, Cafaro restructured the company’s debt and oversaw the restructuring of Vencor, which was recapitalized and rebranded Kindred Healthcare. Those first few years required every bit of Cafaro’s dogged determination. “Our fight for our shareholders was us versus everybody else,” she recalled. “It was our little band of Marines that had to fight off all those challenges and preserve equity value for our shareholders.”

Over the next several years, the strategy shifted from rescue to recovery. Cafaro assembled an executive management team, completed the first stock offering and began to carry out the strategic plan. By 2003, strategic asset sales strengthened the quality of the company’s portfolio and provided capital for future growth. Ventas’ streak of acquisitions started in 2004 with the $184 million deal for Wilmington, Del.-based ElderTrust, which added 18 healthcare and senior living assets to the portfolio, and the separate purchase of 15 independent and assisted living facilities leased to Brookdale Senior Living Inc. That proved to be the warm-up for Ventas’ first large-scale deal: the $1.2 billion merger with Provident Senior Living Trust in 2005. By mid-decade, dividends were tallying annual double-digit increases: 13 percent in 2003, 21 percent in 2004 and 11 percent in 2005.

During these early years, well before Ventas achieved its current scale, Cafaro sought to demonstrate that the company’s market knowledge and professionalism were on a par with those of much larger companies. “We’d sit for hours before each earnings call, anticipating questions, deciding who would answer what questions, going over data,” Gordon recalled. He summed up Cafaro’s reasoning: “If you can provide analysts with confidence that you know what you’re doing, you’ll get a premium for your shareholders.”

Sure enough, Wall Street started to take notice. In 2006, Fitch Ratings gave the company’s corporate credit an investment-grade rating for the first time. On the acquisition front, Ventas acquired a 67-asset, 16-state portfolio of senior living facilities from the Reichmann family of Canada. Those properties are leased to operator Senior Care Inc.

The Next Level

For Ventas, 2007 was a watershed year. The company wrapped its largest merger to date: a $2 billion acquisition of Sunrise Senior Living REIT that Cafaro describes as “transformational.” The Toronto-based company added 79 high-quality properties to the portfolio. It provided diversifi cation and marked a departure from earlier acquisitions: Previously acquired companies supplied revenue streams in the form of fixed triple-net leases with a corporate tenant. By contrast, Sunrise’s revenue comes through direct payments from some 7,000 residents. As a result, Ventas was able to refl ect revenue from Sunrise directly on its balance sheet—a seemingly subtle difference that greatly boosted the company’s clout in the capital markets.

As is true of most large mergers, some headaches accompanied the Sunrise acquisition. Ventas has successfully argued in federal court that a competing bid by HCP Inc. violated the ground rules of the auction for Sunrise and drove up the cost of the merger through fraudulent and misleading statements. The courts have affirmed an award of $100 million in compensatory damages, and a follow-up jury trial over punitive damages is scheduled to begin in February 2012.

Seeing the steady deterioration of the capital markets, after the Sunrise acquisition closed, Cafaro swiftly launched the biggest follow-on equity offering ever undertaken by a REIT. That effort raised $1.1 billion, and proceeds were used to replace short-term debt from the Sunrise acquisition. The company also sold assets owned by Kindred Healthcare, and used those proceeds to fund the balance of its acquisitions that year, including a $150 million investment in medical offi ce buildings.

Like most REIT executives, Cafaro responded to the 2008 economic slump by limiting acquisitions to $300 million and strengthening Ventas’ balance sheet. Among other measures, the company sold $132 million worth of assets, raised $400 million in equity to repay debt, expanded its revolving credit line from $650 million to $800 million, and repurchased $176 million in corporate bonds at a discount. These steps led Standard & Poor’s to rate the company’s corporate bonds “investment grade.”

The strategy continued into 2009 as the capital markets struggled to right themselves. That year, the company raised $312 million in equity, $173 million in mortgage debt and $169 million in debt capital from the public markets. Ventas took advantage of favorable interest rates to repurchase or retire $521 million in debt. That trimmed its debt load to 28 percent of enterprise value, best among equity REITs. Ventas attained a pair of other milestones in 2009, making its first appearance on the S&P 500, as well as earning recognition as the top-performing financial company of the decade.

Cafaro’s success at Ventas has made her sought after outside of real estate. Since 2007, she has served on the board of Weyerhaeuser Co., for which she chairs the finance and compensation committees. “She’s a terrific board member,” said company chairman Chuck Williamson. “She has a penchant for the numbers.” Cafaro advised Weyerhaeuser on making the transition to REIT status, which the company elected to pursue and which became effective on Jan. 1 of this year. “She convinced a lot of us that REITs can grow,” Williamson explained.

Besides Cafaro’s authoritative knowledge of the real estate capital markets, she also brings a team-first approach to her board work. Though she had no direct prior experience in the forest products business, she worked hard to learn the industry. “Despite how energetic and quick she is, she’s very respectful of management and other members of the board,” Williamson explained. “It would be easy to be short when you have a lot on your plate, but she listens very well.”

After years of watching Cafaro take on apparently intractable situations and turn them into unlikely wins, some colleagues suggest that her ability to lead a balanced life is no small factor in her success. “She enjoys life, despite all the stress of being a CEO,” Williamson said. “She talks about her family a lot; she takes vacations.”

For a while, Ventas’ run of acquisitions limited the opportunities for reading, a favorite pastime, but Cafaro reports that she is finding a bit more time to hit the books. One recent favorite is The Greater Journey, an account by the historian David McCullough of American artists’, writers’ and scientists’ sojourns in Paris. As compelling as it has been so far, Cafaro’s own journey undoubtedly has some eventful stops ahead.

This year, CPE introduced a new awards program, the Distinguished Achievement Awards, to recognize outstanding deals, projects and strategies of 2010. Submissions underwent a vigorous judging process, and those that stood out are truly remarkable in their achievement and contribution to their markets.

We would like to thank all of those who responded to the call for entries. All carried some merit, and ultimately our judges selected winners for Best Lease, Best Sale and Best Project. The following pages offer details on our first- and second-place awardees, all of which demonstrated very significant achievements.

Our panel of judges took their job very seriously, considering among the criteria the deals and projects themselves, the markets in which they were achieved and the challenges brought on by the difficult economy. Judges included Jahn Brodwin, senior managing director of real estate advisory for FTI Consulting; Matt Bruck, managing director at McDuff Advisors L.L.C., partner at McDuff Capital and former managing director of RICS Americas; Dan Fasulo, managing director of Real Capital Analytics Inc.; Constantine Kontokosta, director of the Center for the Sustainable Built Environment at New York University’s Schack Institute of Real Estate and principal & founder of The KACE Group; and Dennis Yeskey, senior advisor at AlixPartners L.L.P.

We invite you to read about this year’s award winners on the pages that follow and log on to CPExecutive.com for more of their stories, including videos featuring observations from the judges about the markets in which these deals took place.

Best Lease: First place

Tenant: Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc.

Landlord/Property: Building & Land Technology and Lubert-Adler/ 333 Ludlow St., Stamford Harbor Plaza, Stamford, Conn.

Brokers: Neal Golden, Ross Perlman and John Goodkind, Newmark Knight Frank

Size of Lease: Approximately 300,000 square feet

Size of Property: 423,394 square feet; was 61 percent vacant

The Story: In a deal that took four years to complete, Starwood will be moving its headquarters from its longtime location in White Plains, N.Y., to the new Harbor Point mixed-use development in nearby Stamford, Conn.’s South End. The Newmark-brokered deal started with a wide-ranging site search and ended with multiple financial incentives and reduced occupancy costs. Occupancy is planned for 2012

Judges Praised: The deal’s complexity, the public-private aspects, the long nationwide search, its contribution to urban redevelopment and economic development, its location in a transit-oriented development, its size and its sustainability. One of the only major tenants to move around in the Northern New York City suburbs during the economic downturn, Starwood “legitimized the neighborhood. … They took advantage of a tough environment to get the deal done.”

Submitted by: Newmark Knight Frank

Best Lease: Second Place

Tenant: Defense Health Headquarters

Landlord/Property: GBA Associates; 7700 Arlington Blvd., Falls Church, Va.

Brokers: Cushman & Wakefield Inc. for landlord; CB Richard Ellis Group Inc. for tenant

Size of Lease/Property: 668,285 square feet

Length of Lease: 15 years

The Story: With tenant Raytheon vacating the property by Dec. 31, 2010, after 30 years, landlord GBA Associates sought a replacement. Broker Cushman & Wakefield identified the Department of Defense but had to contend with a number of obstacles before convincing the General Services Administration it could meet BRAC 2005 guidelines and be considered a candidate for the consolidation of 13 owned and leased locations, spanning ground from Washington, D.C., to Texas, into one property inside the Beltway. It successfully fought two protests, the first by an existing lessor and the second by a losing competitor, at both the GAO and Court of Federal Claims levels, and finally ran a “stealth” mission to win the lease over Victory Center, the one option considered able to meet government requirements. With a legally mandated occupancy deadline, GBA invested between $1 million and $1.5 million to keep the process moving forward during this questionable time.

Judges Praised: The speed of execution, especially considering the need to navigate government bodies; consolidation of such a large number of offices; adaptive reuse of the asset; its standing as the largest lease in the market for the year.

Submitted by: Cushman & Wakefield Inc.

Best Sale: First Place

Buyer: Google Inc.

Sellers: Jamestown Properties, Taconic Investment Partners and New York State Common Retirement Fund

Property: 111 Eighth Ave., New York City

Broker: Eastdil Secured

Size of Property: 2.9 million square feet

Occupancy at Time of Sale: 98 percent

Asking Price: $2 billion (selling price reported to be $1.9 billion)

Cap Rate: Reported at 5.25 percent

Lender: Reportedly all cash

The Story: The Jamestown 25 private investment fund joined Taconic Investment Partners and the New York State Common Retirement Fund as majority owner in early 2004. Jamestown and Taconic worked to complete a $68 million building-improvement plan designed to transform the Chelsea-located property into a Class A alternative to Midtown office space, with base-building renovations, an overhaul of the vertical transportation systems and other upgrades, as well as lease-up to 98 percent. Net operating income increased by more than 70 percent, and the owners were able to sell the property ahead of schedule. When Google purchased the property for its headquarters, Jamestown realized a return that was more than double its initial equity investment.

Judges Praised: The Google purchase gave the Chelsea/Meatpacking District meaning as an office market. The property was advantageous for a technology user, as a carrier hotel and entry point for telecommunications wiring into the market. Google paid full market value, a win for the sellers, yet competed with some of the largest real estate investors and “kind of pre-empted the process.”

Submitted by: Jamestown

Best Sale: Second Place

Buyer: Tishman Speyer

Seller: Mesirow Financial

Property: 353 N. Clark, Chicago

Brokers: Bruce Miller, Jim Postweiler, Jascint Vukelich, Nooshin Felsenthal, Dave Hendrickson, Mike Melody and Jimmy Board of Jones Lang LaSalle Inc.

Size of Property: 1.2 million square feet

Occupancy at Time of Sale: 79 percent

Selling Price: $385.5 million

Property NOI: $21.9 million

Lender: Deutsche Bank

The Story: Tishman Speyer scored a coup with the purchase of 353 N. Clark, which closed in December 2010. Mesirow Financial Real Estate developed the office building in 2009 and launched strongly, but leasing stalled at 79 percent, and the owner, unable to meet lender Hypo Real Estate Holding’s construction loan deadlines, was forced to sell quickly. Tishman Speyer snapped up the property for a price that was reportedly lower than the cost of construction. The brokerage team secured a large single CMBS loan, part of a package that satisfied nearly the entire debt stack, allowing for the second-largest purchase in the city’s CBD last year. Anchor tenants include Mesirow Financial and law firm Jenner & Block. The property stands at 46 floors, with 214 underground parking spaces and a number of amenities.

Judges Praised: A bond-like asset; the first CMBS deal in the city following Lehman Brothers’ demise; Tishman paid an aggressive price for a property with some vacancy, which was risky in 2010, but it allowed the investor to make a comeback in the market.

Submitted by: Jones Lang LaSalle Inc.

Best Project: First Place

Project: CityCenter, Las Vegas

Project Type: Mixed-Use

Owners/Developers/Financiers: MGM Resorts International and Dubai World

Date Construction Completed: July 2010

Total Cost of Project: $9 billion

Project Size: 18 million square feet on 67 acres (4,004-room ARIA Resort & Casino; 1,495-suite Vdara Hotel & Spa; 47-story, 392-room Mandarin Oriental; two-building, 37-story Veer Towers; 500,000-square-foot Crystals retail and entertainment district)

The Story: The developers set out to “raise the bar” in Las Vegas by creating an urban metropolis on the Strip, with three goals: Make it transformative in design, sustainable in construction and practice, and the platform for the city’s most dynamic public space. The largest private construction project in the world within a single development, it brought together eight internationally noted architectural firms, 45 interior designers and hundreds of expert consultants. It won six LEED Gold certifications, the 2010 Earth-Minded Award and the 2009 FSC Award. It established the city’s first major permanent collection of art integrated into a public space, and ARIA assembled many of the country’s top chefs and restaurateurs and incorporated Control4 Corp. personalized automation for each guestroom.

Judges Praised: The developers’ success with such a huge project, a tremendous boost to the Las Vegas economy; MGM’s ability to convince Dubai World to recapitalize the project. A big construction job creator, mixed-use and green. Libeskind’s retail center is “spectacular.” Overall center is “really interesting, not just Las Vegas architecture,” which upgrades the market.

Submitted by: MGM Resorts International

Best Project: Second Place

Project: Constitution Square, Washington, D.C.

Project Type: Mixed-Use

Owners/Investors: StonebridgeCarras and Walton Street Capital

Developer: StonebridgeCarras

Date Construction Completed: One Constitution Square: Feb. 25, 2010; Two Constitution Square: April 9, 2010; Flats 130: Oct. 6, 2010

Total Cost of Project: $600 million

Project Size: 2.5 million square feet on 6.9 acres (340,000-square-foot One Constitution Square; 589,000-square-foot Two Constitution Square; 440-unit Flats 130; 50,000-square-foot Harris Teeter)

The Story: Constitution Square transformed an industrial rail yard into a mixed-use heart for the emerging NoMa district. Financed at $425 million in 2008, the project moved forward despite the economy’s collapse, achieving $350 million in construction financing and partnering with the federal and district governments and private property owners. A 50,000-square-foot Harris Teeter grocery store was followed by a 200-room Hilton Garden Inn and a 575,000-square-foot office commitment by the U.S. Department of Justice, the GSA’s headquarters and additional retailers. Sixty percent of the Flats 130 luxury apartments have been rented, with construction underway for a new headquarters for the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The first phase is LEED ND Gold, with One and Two Constitution Square certified as LEED Platinum for Core and Shell.

Judges Praised: Redevelopment of a whole neighborhood within an existing infrastructure, extending the Triangle District; green mixed-use transit-oriented development near Union Station; innovative public-private teaming that reinvented an industrial area as office.

Submitted by: StonebridgeCarras

EDIT: Tags included CPE TV, Healthcare, Investment, Management Strategies and REITs.

Source: Real Capital Analytics

CPE Radio: Click here for more of Turner’s insights into who’s hiring where and how to retain talent.

Permanent positions are increasing, asset managers and analysts have been in demand, and good existing employees are now able to obtain matching offers that net them substantial increases. Those are some of the improvements Jana Turner has noted through her day-to-day work as a partner in real estate and financial services recruiting firm RETS Associates.

“I think it’ll be an interesting last quarter (of 2010),” she observed, noting that many companies will either be hiring then or at least actively looking for candidates. “I don’t know if they’ll pull triggers before the first of the (new) year.”

The real-estate-executive-turned-recruiter has noted an overall increase in companies seeking to fill positions since last November—an estimated 40 percent—with a shift in interest toward hiring for the long term rather than bringing in interim personnel, which she attributed to the current ability to “get more for less.” Meanwhile, having sought to fill asset management and analyst positions in the first half of 2010, companies are now looking for more acquisitions expertise as they prepare to start buying property again, with an emphasis on the more-affordable mid-level positions.

The ability to attract or retain talent for less compensation is also allowing companies to match offers for good employees, with as much as 30 to 40 percent increases in return for taking on increased responsibilities, she noted, since it still represents a discount to the cost of filling those new responsibilities from the outside and company leaders are starting to recognize growing restlessness among personnel as the difficult economy takes its toll. Getting more for less remains an issue, though, and incoming talent may not yet be able to match former incomes, while executive compensation remains focused in the long-tem-incentive area.

However, those that suffer most may be the new college graduates, since nobody is hiring them, Turner said. This “lost generation” has been hurt by decreased ability to allocate time and money to recruitment efforts.

New Start

Turner herself knows about redirecting experience to start a new career. She moved into recruitment in 2008, after more than 30 years in the real estate business. “I had done my time in the large corporate world,” acknowledged the former president of asset services for CB Richard Ellis Inc., who joined the real estate services behemoth with its 1997 acquisition of Koll Real Estate Services, the one-time development firm that she had helped transition to focus on property management.

Involved in subsequent integration relating to mergers with Insignia/ESG Inc. and Trammell Crow Co., Turner left CBRE at the end of 2007 for the next step in her career. She formed a consulting firm, JT Solutions, but began talking with a colleague from her Koll and CBRE days, Kent Elliot, who in 2002 had partnered with real estate consultant Christopher Lee to form RETS Associates, a real estate and financial services recruiting firm specializing in interim and mid-level positions and interested in expanding.

The business was new to Turner, but “the majority of my career was really spent recruiting and hiring great talent, and I loved that,” she observed.  She bought in as a partner and has since been working with Lee and Elliot to expand the firm to placement at the executive level so it can provide a full range of recruitment services to any client (among them Regency Centers and DCT Industrial Trust). While she continues to learn the recruiting business, she noted, the firm differentiates itself not only because it fills interim and mid-level positions but also because its executives come from a real estate background and therefore have personal experience with the positions and firms with which they are working.

“It’s a great way to maximize my many years of networking and building relationships,” she said.