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Despite the uncertainty caused by Covid-19 in 2020, real estate firm Sansone Group has hired 81 employees since the height of the pandemic.
All of the new hires, including an additional four workers brought on in January, correlate with the Clayton-based commercial firm’s expansion into new markets across the country, as well as overall growth in the multifamily sector where the company added approximately 850 apartment units under its management arm. Furthermore, Sansone’s diversification helped the company stave off job cuts.
“We try to keep (operations) lean, and we try to hire in a way so when we do have a downturn, we don’t have to do layoffs,” Principal Jim Sansone said. “We look to capitalize on growth trends and increased hiring within those divisions to support that additional work.”
For Sansone Group, which has made deals in Savannah, Georgia, Port St. Lucie, Florida; New Jersey; and Salt Lake City over the past year, the growth comes at an uneasy time for the commercial real estate industry, whose office and retail markets have been hammered by the pandemic.
Historically, the real estate industry’s unemployment rate has trailed the overall U.S. average. But the industry reached its highest unemployment rate in a decade in April 2020 when it was 9.9%. The latest unemployment statistics report there is a 5.3% unemployment rate in real estate. Nationwide, unemployment stands at 6.3%, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Sansone Group’s new employees are filling needs across accounting, marketing, property management, IT and development divisions, and bring the firm’s headcount to over 300, officials said. The firm does not disclose revenue.
In response to Covid-19, Sansone Group has used a work-from-home strategy that has come in handy with the new hires. The company will look to restructure its current office layout to better accommodate the larger workforce, though Jim Sansonedid not detail specific plans.
The company also does not have specific hiring goals for 2021, but the firm isn’t implementing a “cap” on the number of new workers it could bring on, either, he said.
“We will want to support the growth our associates are finding,” Sansone said.
