JLL Capital Markets advances SFR team expansion

ATLANTA, Nov. 29, 2022 – JLL Capital Markets announced today that it has welcomed Senior Director Jamie Smithson and Director Conor Welton to its national single-family rental team. Both team members are current members of JLL Capital Markets and sit in the Atlanta office.

Since joining JLL in 2019, Smithson and Welton have spent the last three years with the firm focusing on land investment advisory along with close team members, Scott Cullen and Mark Lindenbaum. In these roles they have successfully executed $450,000,000 of land transactions, representing $2 billion in total developed market capitalization.

Both team members will maintain their functions within land advisory, and this new opportunity will serve as an extension of their current roles. Smithson and Welton will concentrate on investment sales both locally and nationally within the SFR team and will work alongside platform leads Matthew Putterman, Zach Nolan and Chris Shea.

“We see a big opportunity to become a more full-service intermediary to our developers, sponsors and capital clients, who have a specific mandate for the build-for-rent real estate sector,” said Smithson. “In the past several quarters, we have successfully transacted across a spectrum in this niche arena – land, capital and investment sales.  This is an exciting and dynamic space, and we are fully committed to advising on an array of capital and investment sale solutions for BTR and SFR.”

While Smithson and Welton will operate both nationally and locally, their location in the booming Atlanta market will be beneficial in meeting current client demand. Single-family rentals across the Sun Belt have continued to achieve double-digit rent growth year-over-year with the Atlanta market seeing a 12% increase. At the same time, nationally, new lease SFR effective rent grew 6.5% in Q3 2022. The sector is expected to see rents increase 5.0% in 2022 and 2.4% in 2023 as rents begin to moderate.

“The Sunbelt, and specifically the Southeast, will continue to be major focus markets for build-to-rent and single-family rental practitioners,” Putterman noted. “Conor and Jamie operate in a prime geography and possess a unique investment advisory background that serves our national efforts well.” 

JLL Capital Markets is a full-service global provider of capital solutions for real estate investors and occupiers. The firm's in-depth local market and global investor knowledge delivers the best-in-class solutions for clients — whether investment and sales advisory, debt advisory, equity advisory or a recapitalization. The firm has more than 3,000 Capital Markets specialists worldwide with offices in nearly 50 countries.

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