JLL SVP Simmi Jaggi, leader of JLL’s land division, is known for handling commercial reserves within master planned communities. She’s got 430 acres working now in some of the hottest up-and-coming suburban communities.

Simmi says she had a real obsession to get into real estate. She earned her real estate license at 18 and leased apartments through college. She was always fascinated by landscape and how cities fit together and believes real estate is in her blood—her dad bought and sold properties, and her brother Naveen is president of the Americas for JLL’s retail brokerage. Simmi started off in retail and organically ended up with more clients who bought land; eventually that morphed into primarily selling land. Last year, she and VP Elizabeth Clampitt closed $150M in land transactions, a busy year.

Yet the two ladies still found time to hunt hogs out of a helicopter, pictured. Simmi’s very passionate about her work on commercial reserves in master planned communities. She and Elizabeth were recently awarded Grand Central Park (Johnson Development’s redevelopment of Camp Strake) and also handle Aliana, Imperial and Fulshear Run. She tells us she loves these assignments because she gets to place services that families use, and it’s fun seeing a vacant site form into a community, gain critical mass and become a hot spot. She recently sold tracts for large power centers in these four communities, something we may see quite a bit of—Simmi says retail will be the best land segment through the rest of the year.

Simmi also loves working on redevelopments; she says it’s a pleasure to see areas improved. One example: She sold the land tracts to OliverMcMillan to build River Oaks District. One of Simmi’s more challenging deals was selling Post Oak Park Townhomes last year, a $20M deal. The five-acre tract is just inside the loop and was a fully operational, 100-unit condo community. A homeowner had spearheaded the efforts to sell as a group (it’s called a condominium collapse) because each owner would net considerably more than selling individual units. Still, it was a very complex deal with lots of parties involved; Simmi and Elizabeth had to regularly meet with the board and follow homeowners’ association rules. Under her leadership, JLL is looking to grow its land division—in fact, Nicki Praiswater is joining the team soon. Pictured, Simmi's with Nicki, Elizabeth and JLL office broker Lisa Nickelson

Here’s Simmi with her husband, Bobby, and their kids Maya and Cameron. They’re an active family, Simmi says, and you can usually find them at the beach. (She grew up in Clear Lake, and the ocean and fishing are in her blood.) For spring break they went watercoloring together and had a boys versus girls fishing contest. (She’s as competitive at home sometimes as in the office, she admits.) Simmi says moving to JLL seven months ago was a check off her bucket list—she always wanted to be an integral part of leading a business line.