Office and industrial leasing broker Grant Killingsworth jumped to JLL from CBRE, amid a South Florida commercial brokers shuffle that’s taken hold in recent years.
He joins the firm’s South Florida’s team as senior managing director, marking a homecoming for him as he previously spent nearly a decade at the brokerage, according to a JLL news release.
His move comes as the tri-county region’s industrial market booms, largely due to a hefty demand for last-mile distribution centers. While the office market has experienced renewed excitement over more out-of-state company expansions here, questions still loom over its prosperity as a whole.
Killingsworth represents tenants. In recent years, he worked on behalf of FIFA as the international soccer governing organization opened a permanent office in Coral Gables as a base for the Americas ahead of this year’s World Cup. FIFA expanded its office at 396 Alhambra Circle to 75,000 square feet in 2024. In other deals, he represented law firm Fowler White Burnett, which late last year ditched Brickell for a 20,000-square-foot office at Citigroup Center in downtown Miami.
Many of his clients have both office and industrial needs, such as countertop and flooring provider Cosentino, which he has represented in several leases.
Killingsworth, who has a degree in real estate from Florida State University, started out at South Florida-based Holly Real Estate and first joined Chicago-based JLL in 2006, according to his LinkedIn.
During his first JLL stint, he worked on more than 3 million square feet of leases, including at Brickell Arch at 1395 Brickell Avenue and the 1221 Brickell office buildings in Miami’s financial district, JLL’s release says.
In 2015, he jumped to Dallas-based CBRE, where he has been ever since, most recently as senior vice president of Occupier Services Group.
South Florida industrial real estate is perhaps the only asset class that has continued to thrive, despite higher interest rates and insurance, market reports show.
Miami-Dade County’s second quarter leasing totaled 1.7 million square feet of new deals and 800,000 square feet of renewals, according to JLL. Asking rents have continued to climb, hitting $16.68 per square foot, up by 1.7 percent, year-over-year.
After the office market’s boom in the pandemic years, it cooled due to the higher cost of capital that tenants faced. This year, excitement erupted again over South Florida becoming a magnet for companies when controversial AI firm Palantir Technologies moved its headquarters to Aventura from Denver. At the same time, longtime firms are leaving Brickell and downtown Miami for more attainably priced offices in suburbs such as Coral Gables, brokers have said.
Miami-Dade’s second quarter absorption hit 327,000 square feet, the highest since late 2022, according to JLL. Average asking rents in the county hit $72.79 a foot, a 10.2 percent increase, year-over-year.
The city of Miami claimed the top spot for asking office rents this summer, with rates averaging at $59.66 a foot, according to LoopNet.
Firms still are moving to South Florida, but now they’re biding their time to ensure their workforce will follow or that they can hire locally, Killingsworth said. They also are picking office locations more carefully, taking into account employee commutes.
“They are still coming but with more of a strategy in mind,” Killingsworth said. “We have all these titans of industry that moved here. When they come here, they have this ripple effect that they bring their family offices and make these huge investments and also contribute to charities.”
Killingsworth’s move to JLL comes as the brokerage has been beefing up its South Florida bureau. Most recently it hired Andrew Frey, a former city of Miami head of real estate, as managing director.
Some of South Florida’s commercial brokers have played a game of musical chairs over the past three years. CBRE poached a five-member power team led by investment sales broker Robert Given from Cushman & Wakefield in 2023. For its part, Cushman last year hired Mitash Kripalani and Virgilio Fernandez, also investment brokers, from Colliers.
This year, Gian Ridriguez left CBRE to join industrial developer Kurv Industrial, previously called Bridge Industrial, as Miami market officer.
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