With Gainesville, Florida, Attracting CRE Investment, A Local Player Is Optimistic For Its Future

Miami, Tampa and Orlando, Florida, have seen strong economic growth over the past several years, thanks to an influx in population, tourism and businesses moving their operations to the Sunshine State. 

But Florida’s major metropolitan areas aren’t the only ones experiencing this growth. 

Gainesville, home to nearly 150,000 people and the highly ranked University of Florida, one of the nation’s largest universities, is witnessing unprecedented growth. 

“People have started to understand what a viable investment market we're in,” said Teresa Callen, senior acquisitions director and senior sales and leasing agent at Portal Realty. “We have two colleges that are state- and federally-funded organizations. University of Florida has an incredible medical program and hospital, so all of this has really just been a catalyst for growth in every segment of the market.”

Callen will speak at Bisnow’s inaugural Gainesville CRE State of the Market event at the University of Florida Hilton on Dec. 9. Register here.

Bisnow spoke with Callen to learn more about how Gainesville CRE is faring in 2025, Portal Realty’s role in the market and what will interest attendees the most at this upcoming event. 

Bisnow: How would you describe the current state of the market in Gainesville?

Callen: College markets are usually very resilient, even in times of a recession. Santa Fe College and the University of Florida are both robust organizations, so we stay pretty steadily busy. 

We have a very stable and attractive market for investors, especially in multifamily. We're starting to see investors that are interested in senior living as well because of the excellent hospitals we have nearby. 

The metro area of Alachua County and surrounding tertiary cities will add about 20,000 new residents in the next 10 years. I'm feeling pretty optimistic about our market and its conditions at the moment.

Bisnow: Can you tell us more about your role at Portal Realty? 

Callen: I'm the senior acquisitions director and the senior sales and leasing agent at Portal. I have a team of three or four other people that I regularly work with as a leasing agent, and I've got a couple of co-listing agents that are really integral to the process of completing transactions. I lead a team of some really talented, thoughtful and progressively minded agents.

Bisnow: What’s Portal Realty’s position in the market, and what projects are in the pipeline for the Gainesville area? 

Callen: We're a boutique brokerage owned by investors. We were originally a hospitality company that branched into brokerage. We've done everything from multifamily investing to single-tenant drive-thrus. 

Being a boutique brokerage, we’re very nimble. We are also specialists and consultants. We can sell a piece of land and walk the developers through the entire process of entitlements — we basically do everything. We furnish investors with everything they need to get going in our market. 

We're working on a couple of assemblage projects near the University of Florida, as well as some project and development services further west. In Gainesville, we're working with different hotel groups that are just about to dive into the market. We don't like to dilute ourselves, but this is a generalist market by virtue of our population. We have to understand all the major commercial asset classes in order to be competitive.

Bisnow: What do you think will be the hottest topics of conversation at this Bisnow event? 

Callen: Growth is going to be a really hot topic. People will be interested to hear how the city is going to handle the infrastructure improvements that are necessary for growth. I'm on the downtown advisory board, and I really want to focus on how the entire corridor, from the University of Florida to downtown, is going to be going vertical. The city’s urban development plan is going to take us into a much more attractive future. 

Some of the challenges that we face with our urban development plan, infrastructurally and otherwise, is how to handle the influx of population we’re expecting to see. The east side of Gainesville is more university-centric, having more of the downtown element such as nightlife, restaurants and bars. The west side is more of the suburban sprawl area of the city. I'm sure there's going to be some conversation about the comparison between those two sides of our city and how we can merge some of the goals of the county at large to make sure that everybody wins.

Bisnow: What is the main takeaway you hope attendees will have from this event?

Callen: I want people to understand what a viable investment market we're in. I want to inspire people to understand that this is an excellent, stable and well-appreciating market for investment. 

This article was produced in collaboration between Portal Realty and Studio B. Bisnow news staff was not involved in the production of this content.

Studio B is Bisnow’s in-house content and design studio. To learn more about how Studio B can help your team, reach out to studio@bisnow.com.