EXCLUSIVE: New Colliers Houston President On Taking The Reins, Being Ready To ‘Ebb And Flow With The Market’
Colliers Houston has a new president for the first time in 14 years.
In an interview with Bisnow Friday, his first since taking on the role, Danny Rice said he is ready to guide the brokerage through a tumultuous market that has seen transaction activity — the lifeblood of the business — plummet.
Rice moved with his family from Florida to Sugar Land about a month ago before starting his post as the top executive in Colliers' Houston office last week, he said.
“It's such a great community,” Rice said. “We've been welcomed with open arms, it feels like the Southern hospitality is definitely real here.”
Rice started working with his predecessor, Patrick Duffy, when Duffy hired him straight out of college. Duffy previously said his decision on when to step down as president — he remains at Colliers as a partner — was based on when Rice was ready to move to Houston.
“It’s hard to find somebody that you want to hand your baby to, and once I knew that I had the right person, it was really all about his timing,” Duffy previously told Bisnow.
They worked together in the Colliers Orlando, Tampa Bay and Southwest Florida office, which Duffy set up and operated for 24 years, before moving to Houston to take the president role in 2009. Rice eventually came to lead that Florida office, but not before leaving Colliers for about five years to work for Xceligent, where he last worked as chief revenue officer before the company shut down in 2017.
Rice said he always considered living in Texas and appreciates the business-friendly environment that is similar to Florida. But while the Orlando area is a tourism-centric market, Houston is more business-centric.
He's coming to Houston as its office market is facing challenges — JLL reported the market had a 25.2% vacancy rate at the end of the second quarter — but Rice said the brokerage focuses on its clients and diversity of asset classes.
“We're pretty diversified across all the asset types,” he said. “We have office brokers, industrial brokers, retail brokers, multifamily investments. So having that diversified look around our business allows us to kind of ebb and flow with the market and still be able to provide the services that our clients and our future clients are looking for.”
Colliers is still arranging transactions on the office side, although Rice acknowledged the market's challenges.
“Now, maybe they're not as big as they used to be, but they're still transactions,” Rice said. “That velocity still continues there.”
The investment sales market has taken a bite out of Colliers' business — its revenue dipped 3% year-over-year in the first quarter, and after turning a $21M profit in Q1 2022, the company operating at a slight loss in the same period this year.
When it comes to managing brokers through tumult, Rice said it’s important to focus on the needs of the industry, local community and clients.
“There is still activity that is happening out there. Businesses are still relocating. Maybe they're downsizing in some ways, maybe they're expanding in some ways, or they're just renewing space and keeping the status quo. There's still a lot of stuff to figure out,” Rice said. “Putting all of those pieces together, those are all opportunities.”
It brings brokers back to the basics, he said.
“It sounds silly to say, but that's a big component of what we need to be always focusing on,” Rice said. "And I think that's what a lot of the brokers are doing here."
Rice said he is impressed by what the Colliers Houston office has accomplished, and taking over from Duffy gives him big shoes to fill.
"He's been probably one of the best leaders that I can think of in the market, but also just in the commercial real estate industry," Rice said of Duffy. "It's pretty humbling. It's pretty exciting."
