As an executive managing director in Newmark’s Atlanta office, Kay Davis specializes in tenant representation for law firms, professional services firms and Fortune 500 corporations. Since the start of her real estate career, Kay has worked for developers, tenant boutique firms and national full-service companies, including Grubb & Ellis, which was acquired by BGC Partners in April 2012. BGC merged Grubb & Ellis with Newmark to create one of the most comprehensive, vertically integrated real estate platforms in the industry.
Kay has executed a wide array of services for her clients, including single-tenant headquarters, build to suits, lease renewal/restructuring, site selection, property disposition/acquisition, feasibility studies, and merger and acquisition analysis. She has also developed and implemented long-term strategic real estate plans and managed extensive real estate portfolios, including lease administration for several national professional services firms, bringing a strategic approach coupled with application support tools such as Vision to provide a comprehensive, real-time management process resulting in enhanced value creation through reduced cost, strategic application and time savings.
Kay has served as a mentor on the Atlanta Commercial Board of Realtors Diversity Committee, where she was responsible for working with women and minorities to broaden their knowledge of the commercial real estate forum.
In 2019, GlobeSt.com/Real Estate Forum named Kay one of the year’s Top Women of Influence Broker Tenant Representation. Nominees were chosen based on their impact and reputation within the industry, deal making savvy and innovation means of achieving to client satisfaction, as well as ingenuity in creative thinking, problem solving, coupled with having the highest ethical standards, service and excellence. In 2011, Real Estate Forum selected Kay as a 2011 Women of Influence based on her achievements in the industry. She also received Grubb & Ellis’ 2011 Enterprise Selling Award, for referring the most business throughout the organization.
Kay was most recently executive vice president at Grubb & Ellis, from April 2006 to April 2012. She was previously a managing director at Newmark and Studley (now Saville Studley), which had both been tenant boutique firms at the time. Kay began her real estate career in 1986, after graduating from Georgia State University. As the marketing and research director at Ackerman & Co., a regional development and brokerage firm, she oversaw the development of such notable projects as Crown Pointe I & II, a Class A mixed use office project in Atlanta’s Central Perimeter, and Westin Buckhead Hotel, formerly the Swissotel.
Over the past three years, Kay has completed in excess of 750,000 rentable square feet of projects totaling more than $150 million in transaction volume in more than 30 cities.
Partial List of Client Transactions
- Ogletree Deakins - national portfolio of 47 offices (622,000 SF)
- Fisher & Phillips - national portfolio of 39 offices (450,000 SF)
- Waller Lansden - Nashville, TN (150,000 SF)
- Ricoh Corporation - renewal/restructure - Macon, GA (100,000 SF)
- Morgan & Morgan - Atlanta, GA (70,500 SF)
- Focus Receivables - Atlanta, GA (50,000 SF)
- Sequium - Marietta, GA (35,000 SF)
- Comverge - Atlanta, GA (19,000 SF)
- Reed Elsevier - disposition - Atlanta, GA (5,000 - 16,000 SF)
- Nokia Siemens - disposition - Atlanta, GA (16,000 SF)
- Arnall Golden Gregory LLP - Washington, DC & Miami, FL
- AVAYA - Atlanta, GA
Professional Achievements
- Winner, Connect Media 2019 Women in Real Estate Atlanta, 2019
- Women of Influence, GlobeSt.com Real Estate Forum, 2019
- Power Women of Atlanta, 2014
- No. 1 Producer, Grubb & Ellis Atlanta, 2011
- Enterprise Selling Award, Grubb & Ellis Nationally, 2011
- Women of Influence, Real Estate Forum, 2011
- No. 1 Top Producer, Grubb & Ellis Atlanta, 2010
- No. 1, Top Producer, Grubb & Ellis Nationally, 2010
- No. Top Producer, Atlanta Commercial Board, 2010
- No. 2 Top Producer, Grubb & Ellis Atlanta, 2009
Professional Affiliations
- Member, Atlanta Commercial Board of REALTORS®
- Member, Commercial Real Estate Women (CREW)
Licenses and Designations
- Master of Corporate Real Estate (MCR) designee, CoreNet Global
- Licensed realtor, states of Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee
Education
Kay received her Bachelor of Business Administration degree in real estate and urban affairs from Georgia State University.