Photo courtesy of JLL
Sarah Griffith
Senior Vice President, JLL
Age: 33
Industry experience: 10 years
Friends outside the commercial real estate industry wondered whether JLL office broker Sarah Griffith would entertain a career change after the pandemic disrupted traditional workplace models and office leasing. In fact, Griffith said that she was having career years advising tenants and landlords “in an interesting period where your clients needed you the most.” The volume of business earned her recognition from JLL’s Platinum Achiever awards in 2022 and 2023. In recent years, she’s represented such clients as Argenx, Duck Creek Technologies, Constant Contact and Flexcar in office leasing transactions in Boston and the suburbs.
Q: What was the impetus for your change of career in 2015 after working in sales and marketing outside real estate?
A: My mom was in residential real estate and she said she always loved the idea of commercial being more business-oriented and encouraged me to look into it. It was kind of the right time and the right place. They had an opening right when I was looking, and it turned out I had a lot of connections at JLL. I worked in operations for about 10 months and then they pulled me up to join the brokerage team, so I’ve been a broker close to 10 years. At that time, the Seaport was still mostly a parking lot and it’s been fun to watch that neighborhood really grow. We used to do a skyline graphic showing all of the buildings and leasing, and we stopped doing that because there were so many changes to the skyline, it was hard to get it into print as long as it was relevant. Unfortunately, new construction in Boston has taken a downturn.
Q: What are the goals of CRUS11TOUR, the charitable initiative you co-founded to benefit Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in memory of Davey Hovey?
A: My boyfriend passed away in 2017 of glioblastoma multiforme, which is unfortunately a vast, fast-rising type of cancer. As part of honoring his memory, we started a foundation. They can immediately use half, and it’s half endowment, so we’re trying to keep it going forever. It’s affecting people at a younger age. He was 25 when he passed away. We continued to want to fight back and fight a cure. I’m not a runner. He made me do [the Boston Marathon] before he passed away, and his dad is spearheading a Pan-Mass Challenge team that is close to 150 riders.
Q: How did you manage work-life balance during that sort of personal crisis?
A: When we were going through that, it was all-encompassing. It was a 16-month process from diagnosis to death and then after that it was grief. [JLL] was great in giving me space, but I also needed work as a distraction oftentimes, so it was important to me to stay connected to them and stay connected to my clients and some sense of normalcy. They just became a family, and supported me in every way they possibly could – “I’ll pick up this call or showing” – and my clients were so understanding as well.
Q: What’s a typical day in the life of a broker these days?
A: You get a call in the morning and it sets you off on a new path. Our clients are mostly hybrid, so we’re on Zoom calls a lot more. It used to be conference calls. We’re constantly popping into phone rooms to have a 30-minute conversation about needs, and we’re touring very often. I think something that has changed over the last few years is the process has gotten a little bit longer from start to finish. Now tenants are involving their chief people officer, or HR is a lot more engaged in the conversation in a good way. There’s a lot more thought behind an office space decision: workplace strategy, how to set a hybrid policy, getting in the weeds with their personnel changes. It’s just a lot more conversation leading to a lease.
Q: With all of the vacancies in Greater Boston’s office market, what are successful landlords doing to differentiate a property and get leasing traction?
A: Traditionally, class A has all the amenities and class B was lagging. But Synergy is a great example of amenitizing class B assets and competing with class A. We’re not even calling it return-to-office anymore. Most people are back everywhere, except for tech. But they are looking for similar conveniences as they had at home. Fitness, a cafe and really a hospitality feeling more than a traditional office space. It’s like you’re walking into a hotel lobby.
Q: Is location still paramount to lease decision-making?
A: If you’re coming in three days a week, Friends outside the commercial real estate industry wondered whether JLL office broker Sarah Griffith would entertain a career change after the pandemic as a huge focus. We look at where their employees live and how their commutes can be impacted by the options they are looking at.
Q: Are sublease transactions complicated by factors such as landlord approvals?
A: Landlords want the sublease market to come down. They want active buildings, they want people coming in and out of their lobby. On the sublease market, we have 3.5 million square feet available right now, but there is confusion when you go out with a tenant who thinks there’s a glut of office space, and a lot of those subleases have limited term left, or it’s a dated buildout. The reality is you only have a couple of sublease options to look at. A lot of the good ones go quickly. Interestingly, we’ve seen a lot of inbound requirements from your typical locations like Chicago and New York and L.A., but more and more, I’ve seen a trend of business coming from London and Tel Aviv. For those cities, our pricepoint compared to New York is obviously a discount, so the cost of doing business is certainly better. We focus on our talent and retention, and you have the feeder schools and a huge hub of really talented people who went to school here and want to be here.
Griffith’s Five Favorite Ski Mountains:
- Stowe, Vermont
- Sugarbush, Vermont
- Copper, Colorado
- Snowbird, Utah
- Bromley, Vermont
