John Morran

Did you always know you wanted to go into the real estate industry? What attracted you to that career path? 

I was attracted to a career in commercial real estate (CRE) for a couple of main reasons:

The people: When I was finishing my education and beginning my career, the CRE industry was much different than it is today.  Ownership in CRE was still dominated by local private investors and developers with very few institutions and large organizations taking an active role in the industry other than as traditional debt providers. These local private investors all had unique backgrounds and interesting personalities, and several became friends and mentors. I was attracted to the entrepreneurial spirit of the industry and the ability to form relationships with interesting people, not just engage in transactions.

The opportunity: Also during that time, Austin and the entire state of Texas were experiencing one of the worst real estate cycles in history. So, most of my MBA classmates had no interest in real estate. I viewed that as a unique opportunity to be a contrarian and position myself in the CRE industry in Austin when it recovered. I still find that most of my peers are either several years older or younger than me because of the timing of when I started my CRE career.

You started Texas Realty Capital, a commercial mortgage banking firm in 2006. What inspired you to start your own firm and how did you scale the business? 

My former business partner of 28 years, Jim Lemos, and I had been partners in a privately held mortgage company through the 1990’s that we sold to a large national firm in 2001. In 2005, we knew we still enjoyed the industry and our ability to contribute to our client’s success, but we realized it was much more enjoyable to be working for ourselves – so we decided to start TRC in Austin in 2006. After that experience with a large national platform, we both aligned on the belief that bigger is not necessarily better, but better is better. While we did scale and grow with the market, we did so with the purpose of staying focused on what we were best at:

– Providing exceptional service originating and servicing our client’s capital needs in a few markets where we could add the most value.

– Helping provide opportunity for young people to start their career and learn how important it is to put your clients’ interests first.

– Giving back to the community by starting our Funding the Future charitable giving program where our company donated over $600,000 to locally based non-profit organizations.

One of TBHF’s core values is community. Your latest venture, TOPO, is a full service commercial real estate development company that believes “responsible growth means creating spaces that both grow our community and pay tribute to its roots.” Why is community so fundamental to TOPO’s mission and how do you achieve this goal? 

Community is fundamental to us because several core members of our team at TOPO have been part of the Austin community since 1984 and we want to actively contribute by delivering developments that are unique in the market. We call our type of project: Creative Commercial. Since that is not a label that is traditionally recognized by our industry, we explain a TOPO project as an activated, mix of commercial uses in space that has thoughtful design, unique forms and human scale while still offering our tenants attainable rent. We focus on creating a place for small to medium size local business operators to be successful and in order to best set them up for that success, our projects need to include food & beverage, retail, entertainment, fitness, creative office uses that combine with the design of the project to create meaningful interactions for our tenants and visitors. It is about creating experiences, or evoking feelings, with some emotional value when you are at the property. 

What has been the greatest lesson you have learned so far in your career? 

A great reputation takes years, or decades, to earn – a bad reputation only takes minutes.

How do you define “excellence” in business? 

Excellence in business really is about staying true to your core values and working with others that share those values. Everything else is just an extension of that idea. For me at this point in my career, I am most passionate about building a great team and organizational culture while we also build great real estate projects. If we can attain both of these goals, it would exemplify how I envision excellence for TOPO.

How did receiving the TBHF scholar award impact your entrepreneurial journey? 

While not only allowing me to graduate with very little student loan debt, the award exposed me early in my career to the achievements of others that helped me understand the importance of not just striving for exceptional quantitative outcomes — but also really valuing qualitative outcomes and the larger impact those can have on employees, clients and the larger community.