Commercial real estate broker JLL posted its fifth quarterly profit in a row as the firm racked up double-digit gains in property management and other nontransaction services.

The world’s second-biggest brokerage reported a $84.4 million profit as revenue jumped 12% to $5.6 billion in the second quarter from the same time a year earlier. The gains were driven by a 5% increase in leasing revenue and a 16% rise in what it called “resilient” businesses such as property and project management.

“While risks remain, investor sentiment is more positive at midyear compared to late 2023, supported by the expectation for easing monetary policy in many large markets,” CEO Christian Ulbrich told analysts Tuesday during an earnings call. "Although the first interest rate cut in the U.S is still to come, there have been early signs of an inflection point in real estate markets."

JLL, based in Chicago, joined rivals CBRE, Cushman & Wakefield, Colliers and Newmark in reporting profit and revenue gains driven by stepped-up office leasing and steady growth in nontransaction services such as engineering, consulting and management of properties, projects and investments.

Transaction revenue increased 5% from the same time a year earlier, driven by increased office leasing volume that partially offset a decline in industrial deal activity, Ulbrich said.

JLL expects global leasing to improve for the rest of the year, especially in the United States, where more tenants looking for new space should lead to increased activity, he said.

The brokerage's $84.4 million profit was higher than the $2.5 million in net income for the year-earlier quarter, mainly due to higher revenue and the benefits of cost-cutting moves made last year.

It’s the latest in a string of five profitable quarters in a row for JLL since it posted a $9.2 million loss in first-quarter 2023, a period when all the major brokerages were clamping down on expenses amid a slowdown in investment sales and leasing fueled by rising borrowing costs and turmoil in the banking sector.

JLL's capital markets revenue increased 3%, with broad-based growth across all business lines, even as investment property sales volumes remain well below historical levels amid continued uncertainty about the economic, geopolitical and interest rate outlook, Chief Financial Officer Karen Brennan told analysts.

The company's global investment sales revenue, accounting for nearly 40% of capital markets revenue, jumped 17% in the quarter, outperforming an industrywide 1% decline in property sales volume across the globe, Brennan said.

A bright spot in industrial leasing has been the communications and technology sector, where average lease rates have more than doubled as large tech companies take space to support data center operations, according to Ulbrich.

JLL announced plans in the spring to acquire SKAE, a New York-based provider of data center technical and project management services. A JLL report forecast that consumers and businesses will generate twice as much data over the next five years as created over the previous decade.

"The data center market is an area where we see growth for the foreseeable future, and the SKAE acquisition positions us well to take advantage of this opportunity," Ulbrich said.

The acquisition is an example of how JLL is plans to strengthen product offerings and what he called “resilient” business lines growing internally as well as tapping into its cash reserves to acquire companies.