Perspective on HFF before JLL
I was curious to hear HFF’s origin story and what it was like before combing with JLL. Was HFF more of an Eastdil type? How was their deal volume and culture? Specific regions or national?
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Nationally very good, and yes on par with Eastdil. I think the merger has also done nothing but help them.
From what I’ve heard their culture is still pretty pervasive within JLL capital markets in certain cities, as the HFF guys basically took over.
Pretty old school professional vibe, suits everyday, long hours, definitely gravitated more towards IB/finance culture than RE culture (or at least brokerage culture), so in that sense yes probably pretty similar to Eastdil (though I don’t know much about Eastdil). Pretty sure they’d also put huge teams on every deal instead of running lean and mean like most shops.
Also 95% men
Take this all with a grain of salt since I’m currently an incoming SA into a legacy HFF office. From what I’ve heard HFF was an amazing place to work at to build a base in CRE. A professor of mine started out at hff in the early 2010s and his analyst class has had amazing outcomes. The pay and hours sucked but there were few opportunities better in terms of learning. Very scrappy and hardworking culture. In terms of how they compared to Eastdil, they were neck and neck with them on a national scale. Both Eastdil and HFF repped some crazy deals while they were competing. They were also similar in the sense that they’re structured more like a traditional investment bank than a brokerage. As someone’s mentioned before me the JLL acquisition has made the HFF platform an even better place to work. A lot of HFF rainmakers and key staff are at JLL now. Some of the top producing offices are just straight up Hff guys who stuck around. The analyst experience is better under JLL and the teams overall have more support. They can also cross sell and have more leads coming in so higher deal flow. Overall I wouldn’t say that HFF is gone since it’s dna is intertwined with JLL Capital Markets.
Can speak to this as I spent time there. HFF is a very old school professional banker atmosphere where hours were routinely 60-70 per week with some weekend work required when slammed. Suit and tie every day, very buttoned up across the board. Mark Gibson who took over JLL's Capital Markets vertical in the reverse merger is a very good barometer for the culture still today - he has been there over 20 years. Very similar to Eastdil in that both were pure play capital markets/investment firm sales known for brokering massive deals. Only had a presence in major institutional markets. Both liked to be thought of more like investment bankers than brokers and aim to provide "white glove" service to clients. Great place to cut your teeth, almost everyone I know became a broker or left to a successful buy side career. Easy to get burned out by it but paid well and learned a ton from some legends in the game.
HFF used to be one of the best analyst/associate brokerage spots nationally. Everyone really likes those guys
my buddies at HFF were pissed when they got bought. i think the other comments here are accurate in terms of culture. more finance types/Eastdil-esque in terms of culture, low base pay but commission pool on debt/equity teams was solid. i had a friend there who made like $160k there in a year as an analyst on a debt team, probably 7 years ago at this point. seems like the legacy HFF guys kind of took over (at least in markets that I am familiar with).
They were basically a mini Eastdil in how they operated. Sharp guys who crushed it from both the institutional level and also a great relationship with the smaller private developers/owners in their markets. They probably had the best Analyst/Associate program for someone who just wants to be a “RE guy” and not necessarily go on to work for a MF. They operated in small teams and didn’t have the corporate BS and you got exposed to tons of different deals with face to face time with all different Sponsors.
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