Walker Webcast: How Hines Became a Global Powerhouse and Remains One

Two generations of one of commercial real estate’s most a) pioneering and industry-leading development firms b) dramatic growth stories c) versatile and nimble global asset management platforms were on hand Wednesday to share their insights on the 51st weekly Walker Webcast. Chairman and CEO Jeff Hines and senior managing director Laura Hines-Pierce discussed how the privately-owned Hines organization has grown since first branching out from a strictly North American base in the 1990s, and how it has managed to continue growing even during the global pandemic.

Key to maintaining that growth over the past year has been the Houston-based company’s “strong cultural glue,” Hines-Pierce told Walker & Dunlop CEO Willy Walker. It has helped maintain the momentum even as some of the normal means of doing so, such as in-person meetings, have been off the table to due to pandemic-related travel restrictions.

However, she acknowledged that Hines senior management felt a sense of “drawing down that cultural capital” over the past 12 months, and added that there was work to do to replenish it.

If the pandemic has ushered in anything, it has definitely been change, and that’s the kind of environment that creates opportunities for Hines, Jeff Hines said. “Change is generally good for us,” he said. “We’re usually able to profit on the margins in times of change.”

Along the way, some of that change has occurred within Hines itself. The company founded by the late Gerald Hines in 1957 initially focused on development, engaging some of the world’s premier architects and becoming a pioneer of sustainability along the way. Today, Jeff Hines shared, development is just one of the planks in the Hins platform. He recalled that it was “a two-year process” to get approval to buy the first building that wasn’t developed in-house.

The process of moving from a domestic focus to an international one didn’t happen overnight, either. Today, Hines is undoubtedly a global player, with a presence in 225 cities around the world, $144 billion in assets under management—a twelve-fold increase in AUM since 2005—and 165 active developments underway.

“You look at our footprint now, and it’s dots all over the map,” said Jeff Hines. But getting a start on establishing that multi-national presence was “tough,” requiring a great deal of time and effort—and numerous mistakes along the way.

“That’s why there’s not a lot of people that have what we have—it’s tough to do!” he said.

On-demand replays of the March 17 webcast are available by clicking here and through Walker & Dunlop’s Driven by Insight podcast series.