A little more than a year ago, international commercial real estate broker Jones Lang LaSalle Inc. decided to expand its presence in Iowa by opening a full-service brokerage in Des Moines.

The Chicago-based company, which prefers to be called JLL, was no stranger to the area. In August 2011, it was named property manager for Principal Financial Group Inc.’s 4.3 million square feet of office space, with 2.4 million square feet located at its downtown central campus and the rest scattered across the United State and 15 other countries.

Heath Bullock left CBRE|Hubbell Commercial in December 2013 to join JLL as a senior vice president and its Iowa markets leader. Within a couple of months, he was joined by Marcus Pitts, a senior vice president who had most recently been with NAI Optimum, and Justin Lossner, who left R&R Realty Group to take a vice president’s role.

Since the office opened, the trio has surpassed goals set by the corporate office by 300 percent, completing $45 million in investment deals, leasing more than 500,000 square feet of space at a value of $16 million and generating first-year sales volume of more than $60 million

JLL has picked up some signature clients as well. It represents DRA Properties LC’s Prairie Trail development, the 250,000-square-foot Two Ruan Center in downtown Des Moines, the owners of a planned industrial park that will have 600,000 square feet of high-cube warehouse space in southern Ankeny, and Nelson Construction & Development’s 30,000-square-foot Ashworth Place office building in West Des Moines.

The Des Moines office also launched a website, www.jll.com/des-moines. 

Bullock said he is adding to support staff and plans to hire and train a commercial real estate analyst this year. He noted that JLL spent more than $70 million on technology, primarily for software that can provide data on the fly to clients.