Before Jeremy McGown embarked on a career in commercial real estate, he was a U.S. Navy officer who confronted pirates off the coast of Somalia. His time in the Navy ultimately led him to pursue opportunities in Dallas.
The connection point? Roger Staubach. The former Dallas Cowboys star won a Heisman trophy while playing QB for the U.S. Naval Academy in 1963—and the two hit it off when McGown was presented with the Roger Staubach Award as a starter on the same team decades later. By the time McGown was up for shore duty, he landed in Dallas and reconnected with Staubach.
McGown was at a crossroads for his future—he could stay in the military or return to civilian life. And with a daughter on the way, the decision held even more weight. It was Staubach who told McGown that a career in Dallas commercial real estate was a promising endeavor.
Staubach was right. Following a decade-long stint with JLL (which acquired The Staubach Co. in 2008), McGown made the move to CBRE as a senior managing director in 2022. And now, he has been tapped to head the global firm’s Dallas office.
As executive managing director and market leader, McGown will oversee advisory services—including leasing, sales, valuations, debt and structured finance, and property management—across all property types in DFW, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. His promotion comes after Brooke Armstrong, formerly market leader over Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana, was promoted to run U.S. Advisory Services in CBRE’s West Region and Texas.
In an exclusive interview, D CEO spoke with McGown to discuss his outlook for the Dallas office and the future of advisory services in the industry. Here are highlights from the conversation.
D CEO: What long-term goals are you keeping in mind as you take on this new role?
Jeremy McGown: “Bob Sulentic, our global CEO, has a vision of building a commercial real estate company that no one could have ever imagined. We want to represent that as a market. I want to be operationally excellent. I want to make sure we continue to have the best brokerage professionals in the world, and that they have the best tools in the world to service their clients.
“I think we’re well on our way to that. It’s an ongoing journey as new technology arises and new landscapes emerge. But we have a tremendous number of people moving to the market. It’s our global headquarters. We are really well-positioned to do something special in Dallas.”
D CEO: How do you see the nature of CRE advisory services evolving?
McGown: “AI is becoming a great expediter of trends that were already underway before the pandemic. As a result, our clients are becoming more sophisticated—and they are demanding more sophistication from us.
“The ability to simply provide value just because we have access to a little more data than someone else is lessening—more of that is democratized. There’s more of an opportunity to access a platform that will tell you, ‘Here are the spaces available in your market.’ A lot of people have access to at least a baseline level of that, and so you need to have a substantial data advantage and a way to crawl that data and provide meaningful insights to the client.”
D CEO: What are you seeing in terms of talent and hiring?
McGown: “We’ve seen some interesting things. Focusing on college graduates, there are more schools with better real estate-specific programs. We’re also seeing a huge trend of people from other markets who want to come to Dallas. Even if we see TCU or SMU grads, graduates from some of the local, well-known colleges, traditionally, that person would be from the region. Today, more than half the people we speak to from those schools are not from Dallas and do not have Dallas roots. That seems like a very new trend.
“The word is out—if you’re looking for a place to start your career and grow, there’s a true opportunity in Dallas, no matter what you want to do or what you want to get into. And it’s in a great environment where the cost of living in comparison to the coast is really solid, with a lot of potential for upside and great companies continuing to move there. Our pool of talent to choose from has gotten way stronger over the last couple of years, and we can feel it. This year in particular, it’s at a peak from anything I’ve ever seen.”
D CEO: What economic headwinds are you forecasting?
McGown: “Things that continue to lock up the capital markets, to cause the bid-ask spread between buyers and sellers to be a little bit wide. But we see all the signs that all that capital sitting on the sidelines is ready to deploy.
“We are seeing every sign you can imagine that Dallas-Fort Worth and the surrounding areas are right there on the forefront of when those flood gates open—and there are several things that can cause them to open, they’re starting to creak open. We are right there in the forefront of it.
“The headwinds today are causing that activity to be better than last year, but still not near where it was at its peak. As those headwinds turn into tailwinds—which we’re hopeful will be in the relatively near future—we’re going to see another massive influx in Dallas.”
D CEO: And what tailwinds are you keeping an eye on?
McGown: “The diversification of our economy. If oil and gas is not doing well, we don’t feel that anymore in a meaningful way. If technology is not doing well, we really don’t feel that in a meaningful way. There are some markets that [are overly dependent on a specific industry]. With financial services and the Y’all Street phenomenon coming to North Texas, [the diversification is going to cause things to] pick up, despite the headwinds.”
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Audrey Henvey
Audrey Henvey
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Audrey Henvey is the associate editor for D CEO, the business title for D Magazine.