Two of the world’s largest commercial real estate services firms posted record revenue in what's gearing up to be the most profitable year for dealmaking since the pandemic.
JLL, the world’s second-largest property services firm, reported first-quarter revenue of $6.4 billion, up 11% from the same time last year and a record for any first quarter. Newmark Group posted $846.5 million in revenue, up 27.2% from the year-earlier quarter and a $14.4 million profit, up nearly 60%.
Newmark and JLL joined Dallas-based CBRE, the world’s largest property services firm, in expecting strong earnings growth and deal activity as a rebound in dealmaking that started last year picks up steam. Leasing and sales demand is now meeting or surpassing levels in 2019, the last year before the pandemic and its aftermath upended dealmaking.
“The commercial real estate tailwinds are not slowing down,” Piper Sandler analyst Alexander Goldfarb said in a note to investors.
New York-based Newmark, the fifth-largest firm of its kind, raised its outlook for the year, based on the strong start to 2026 and healthy transaction pipeline, CEO Barry Gosin said during the firm’s earnings call.
“This was our seventh consecutive quarter of double-digit top-line growth and eighth quarter in a row of double-digit earnings improvement,” Gosin said. “Our results reflected broad-based gains across management services and servicing, leasing and capital markets, driving record first-quarter revenues for each of these service lines.”
JLL maintained its target of $21.80 to $23.50 in adjusted earnings per share for the year; at the midpoint, that would mark a 20% jump over last year, when it reported a 45% increase in its profit to $792 million and 11% annual revenue increase to $26.1 billion.
AI office demand
Double-digit increases in leasing and property sales revenue fueled a $159 million profit for Chicago-based JLL, almost three times higher than the $55.3 million profit for the prior-year period.
Strength in office and industrial leasing, including “a meaningful contribution from data centers” drove a 16% revenue increase in JLL’s leasing business, Chief Financial Officer Kelly Howe told analysts Thursday.
JLL executives said they have not seen a reduction in office demand due to artificial intelligence workforce downsizing.
Quite the contrary, Howe said.
“Ironically, I would argue that the AI boom has actually been a boom for our leasing business,” she said. “AI startups, and I would say financial services, have really caused an uptick in activity, particularly on the coast — San Francisco, New York."
Newmark’s expansion into international markets and business lines such as data centers is yielding profits for the New York-based brokerage, according to Goldfarb.
Deal momentum
Double-digit increases in property sales and financing volume posted by JLL, Newmark and CBRE signal a broad recovery in global capital markets.
Global property sales jumped 27% year over year in the first quarter, according to an analysis April 23 by Morgan Stanley analyst Ronald Kamdem. That follows a nearly 40% annual sales jump in the last three months of 2025.
Based on the strength of the first three months of 2026, Kamdem projects a 10% jump in global sales transaction volume to roughly $600 billion this year.
Newmark's investment sales and financing revenue jumped 46% year over year in the first quarter. JLL's capital markets revenue rose 21%.
"Capital markets started the year with really very significant momentum across the globe, and this momentum has continued in the second quarter," JLL CEO Christian Ulbrich said during an earnings call.
Newmark posted some of the fastest growth among its peers, driven by a sharp increase in capital markets activity and strong leasing demand.
“Our first quarter results reflect the meaningful recovery in transaction volumes, particularly in capital markets,” Gosin said.
Newmark said it now expects total revenue for the year to increase 15% to 18% from last year to between $3.78 billion and $3.88 billion.
The JLL and Newmark results follow CBRE reporting its largest year-over-year revenue growth since the second quarter of 2022. That return to "record earnings" didn't occur by happenstance, executives said.
Outperforming uncertainty
While economic uncertainty — from the war in Iran to shifting regulations on policy — has "captured headlines," demand is still outperforming, according to Goldfarb.
“The lack of supply, tenants needing advice on tech and AI, low-cost debt refinancings and global teams that bring about more occupier relationships remain active as ever," Goldfarb said.
Executives for both brokerages said they aren’t seeing major effects on real estate activity outside the Middle East and Europe from the war in Iran.
“From a macroeconomic perspective, we're seeing very little impact in our business today but we are monitoring the situation very carefully,” Howe said. “If there was to be impact, it would come in the back half of the year.”
Ulbrich said the U.S. market is "pretty much unimpressed by the geopolitical environment so far."
Some deals in Europe are being cancelled as the global economy and real estate markets start to feel the pinch of higher energy prices caused by a bottleneck in oil tankers at the Strait of Hormuz, he added.
“If the conflict would have been solved within four to six weeks, I would have said the impact outside of the Middle East would have been almost unnoticeable,” Ulbrich said. “The lengthening out of that conflict will have a heavier load on the global economy.”
Newmark Chief Financial Officer Mike Rispoli said the global turbulence hasn’t caused deals to be canceled or postponed.
“We don't see transactions falling out of the pipeline. They’re closing," Rispoli said. “Maybe they take a few more days to close because of the complexity of the market. So we feel really good about [our] guidance.”