The new Pennsylvania leader of a wide-ranging commercial real estate firm is eyeing offices with ties to health and education anchors, residential conversions and powered land deals.

Lincoln Property Co. Executive Vice President Charles McGrath joined the company this month and will lead its 40-person team spanning the entire state between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. The firm manages 7M SF of property across Pennsylvania, the vast majority of which is on behalf of third-party clients.

“What I represent is dedicated leadership to better connect our local clients, existing opportunities, with the larger resources Lincoln can bring to the table,” McGrath said of his role at the Dallas-based brokerage, property manager and owner with offices nationwide.

“Pennsylvania is an incredible state to grow all of our service lines across,” he added.

McGrath spent two years each at Cushman & Wakefield and Newmark after 17 years at Washington, D.C.-based MRP Realty, where he led the firm’s Philly-area operations.

While the office market in Pennsylvania’s urban centers has suffered in the wake of the pandemic, McGrath is bullish on buildings with ties to educational and medical anchors.

Institutions like that accounted for more than 1.3 million jobs, or about 22% of all nonfarm employment in Pennsylvania last year, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

“I see eds and meds as being an incredibly bright spot right now,” McGrath said.

“What we're looking for is any of those buildings that are adjacent to those types of uses,” he added. “We see them as being incredibly sticky, and they'll be around for a long, long time to come.”

In Philadelphia, some of that attention will be focused on University City, where the University of Pennsylvania and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia are based. Those two organizations were Philadelphia’s largest nongovernment employers in the first quarter of 2026, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry.

McGrath also has his eye on Center City, particularly parts of the submarket associated with Thomas Jefferson University, which was the city’s third-largest nongovernment employer.

In Pittsburgh, he is targeting buildings near the University of Pittsburgh and the independent but closely associated University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, which were the top two employers in Allegheny County in Q1.

McGrath was also excited about office-to-residential conversions, which have helped take some underutilized stock off the market in recent years.

He estimated that only between 5% and 7% of Pennsylvania’s office stock would be suitable for a conversion, and many of the most suitable candidates have already been tapped.

“You really want a rectangular footprint that's about 60 to 70 feet wide so you can have an efficient layout,” McGrath said. “You need to make sure your column spacing works. You need to make sure your floor-to-ceiling height works.”

Lincoln has set its sights on five of the most prime candidates across the state, but McGrath declined to share which buildings the company is eyeing.

He did say he is bullish on suburban office conversions, particularly when it comes to buildings accompanied by vast parking fields that could be built on.

“As those office buildings continue to potentially not work anymore, there’s a lot of operators and managers like us who are trying to figure out the best use for this land,” he said.

Pennsylvania’s industrial heritage has left it with an ample supply of power. Land with access to the grid has become increasingly valuable in recent years as data centers have proliferated across Pennsylvania.

McGrath also sees dollar signs on that front but expressed a note of nuance and caution.

“It’s a great market,” he said. “I just think you need to be very careful on how you underwrite powered land deals.”

The market experienced a speculative boom in recent months that drew the ire of many residents and contributed to Gov. Josh Shapiro’s August data center executive order, which explicitly seeks to disincentivize investors looking to make a quick buck without firm development plans.

Powered land deals are only sound when the zoning is already in place and there is a clear path to getting the property hooked up to the grid, McGrath said.

“Without those two very specific bullet points, I think you have to be very honest with yourself before you spend a lot,” he said.