ATLANTA—Creativity. Diligence. Positive attitude. Those are among the qualities April Hawkinson,associate vice president at Cassidy Turley in Atlanta, carries in an ultra-competitive Atlanta commercial real estate landscape.
“I believe that there is an opportunity to create your own business and specialize in an area that's best suited for your personality and skill set,” says Hawkinson. “It's critical to leverage people skills and develop relationships to create new business opportunities. You have a chance to work with so many different types of businesses and stay on top of development and growth in your community.”
Working with both tenants and landlords, Hawkinson was instrumental in winning the corporate services business for the State of Georgia's 195-million-square-foot portfolio, SunTrust Bank's 14-million-square-foot portfolio and Aaron's three-million-square-foot portfolio. She's been named a Cassidy Turley 2013 Rising Star and received the firm's national Cross-Selling Award for the past two years, among other accolades.
“The Southeast, and specifically Atlanta, are experiencing a significant turnaround across all commercial submarkets with positive absorption and construction development that we hope will last over the next five years,” says Hawkinson. “Atlanta still has the second-lowest cost of living for a major city behind Detroit and relatively low real estate occupancy costs compared to other tier one markets, so the city continues to be a big draw and is experiencing a significant amount of success with luring large corporate relocations and new jobs.”
Hawkinson rightly points out that Atlanta has historically been known to be a key transportation hub for the East Coast, which adds to the appeal. However, she notes, in the last three to five years Atlanta has become a huge market for IT and tech start-up growth companies based on the city's access to talent with top universities, and qualitative lifestyle.
“With the rise in market activity, we will continue to see vacancy rates decrease, rental rates increase, new spec development break ground and a shift in the market from a tenant's market to a landlord's market in the very near future,” Hawkinson says. “As the market turns, tenants will need to begin evaluating their real estate goals sooner in order to find opportunities amongst the competition.”
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