After retiring from his role at JLL this summer, Jeff Pearey sat down with CoStar News to discuss his 40 years in property and how the UK's regional office markets have changed over that period.
Pearey, who spent two decades with JLL leading its UK regional office agency team as a senior director, discusses his career journey, from driving his red Vauxhall Chevette to his first job in Cambridge, to returning to run JLL's Leeds office.
He also explains how cities like Leeds, Newcastle and Sheffield have evolved their infrastructure and amenity over the decades to attract blue-chip tenants.
He says: "I think if someone arrived in a time capsule, they would probably find it quite hard to accept that Leeds has changed so dramatically compared to the city it was perhaps when I first arrived back in 1988."
Pearey, who is "enjoying a bit of me time" after a long stint at JLL, also describes what his next role might look like and why he thinks regional rents will continue to rise over the next five years.
"It has got to happen and it will happen and increasingly the large to medium size corporates will pay a reasonable rent to be in modern buildings".
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