MAKING MOVES, CLOSING DEALS
JLLs Julia Silva finds her groove in capital markets

By Ashley Gurbal Kritzer
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: Dec 4, 2020

Just six weeks before the novel coronavirus pandemic took hold in the U.S., Julia Silva made a big career move.

Silva, one of Tampa Bay’s best-known industrial real estate brokers, moved from senior managing director at Cushman & Wakefield Inc. to JLL’s Florida industrial capital markets team. At Cushman, Silva led a leasing team; her role at JLL is focused on investment sales.

Although Covid-19 has accelerated the growth of online shopping — and driven demand for warehouse properties to record levels — at the onset of the pandemic, no one knew what was in store for any sector of commercial real estate.

“You can say that in retrospect I was brilliant, but when Covid hit I was scared to death,” Silva said. “I made this huge leap thinking the market would be OK and we’d have a decent runway. Then Covid hit, and we never knew what the endgame would be.”

Silva spoke with the Tampa Bay Business Journal about leaving her comfort zone, the industrial real estate market and what she loves about selling warehouses. The market shows no signs of cooling; she says she fields three to six calls a week from investors interested in the Interstate 4 corridor between Tampa and Orlando.

Was it a hard decision to leave Cushman and make this move? You're now going head to head with some former Cushman colleagues who have a very successful track record.

It was incredibly difficult because that was my family and I had been there for a little over six years, but I was ready to make room for the new version of me and my career. At the pinnacle of your brokerage career, to be asked to be doing something like I’m doing – it’s a tremendous amount of responsibility, competing with colleagues and veterans who’ve been doing it for decades.

So you have to hit the reset button, but I loved the idea of the challenge and paving the way for a new Julia in this career. Most of the portfolio was leased; the clients were happy, and I felt like it was the right time. These opportunities are few and far between.

Has it been a difficult transition from leasing to investment sales? It was, with respect to volume. Our team at Cushman would generally transact over 100 deals, and that I miss. But I love what I’m doing now. It was definitely a shift for me [because investment deals tend to take longer to complete than leases]. I was very comfortable in my practice and at the top of the game, and the easier thing would have been to stay and just take that ride. That’s not who I am. There’s a saying that mediocrity is a prison, and not that that was mediocre, but I felt like my team was ready to take it on and as a leader you want to pave the way for that.

The industrial real estate market is as hot as it’s ever been. Do you see any hiccups or is it only going up from here?

I think behaviorally we’re not going backward. You’ve introduced a new generation of people who never would have ordered food or furniture online who are now doing it, and I think the runway is super long and Florida is a beneficiary of that.

Before Covid, e-commerce represented 15 percent of all retail sales. I just saw a study that says it’s grown to 30 percent to 35. The general rule is that for every billion dollars of e-commerce sales you need 1 million square feet of warehouse space.

Why aren’t there more women in industrial real estate? I was fortunate when I started, I had great mentors, both female and male. It’s more my perspective, but when I started, [industrial real estate] was rougher. So the more glamorous roles were in retail and office, and there were more women in those asset classes. People always think of warehousing and distribution as dirtier and not as glamorous, but I always loved it. If I had the opportunity to scream it from the rooftops I would, but it’s one of the best careers you can dream of because the whole country moves in and out of these warehouses, and you have the opportunity to transact those.

It’s about more than real estate; it’s about infrastructure coordination, rail, logistics, whether it’s a regional transportation node or a statewide logistics position, it’s just a little more complicated than people think.

What’s ahead for you and your team in 2021? So many things. We are going to outwork everybody. We are going to grow the market share for us throughout Florida. If we do it right I want to create a very different experience for the clients that pick us. I would argue JLL from a tech standpoint is one of the best companies out there, and I want to leverage those proprietary tools to help us gain market share.