DePaul Real Estate Durburg Experience
About John Durburg
John Durburg, Chief Executive Officer of Advisory Services at CBRE, has spoken about the role his MBA from DePaul University played in his career. In a 2017 appearance, Durburg described his MBA experience at DePaul as an inflection point in his career. He stated that his real estate professors were "top-shelf" and that the program was "excellent." Durburg noted that the college's decision to locate in the South Loop, near working professionals and the businesses that employed them, made it feasible for him to walk from his office to the downtown campus. He said he could "trace back a lot to DePaul and the opportunities that the program gave to me." Durburg has also discussed the commercial real estate market in the context of CBRE's business. During a 2016 interview, he said that a lack of new construction in many cities meant the market was tight, which he described as "good for a lot of people," including owners, financiers, and service providers. He characterized the environment as a "slow growth environment but a long growth environment" and expressed the view that it would "keep running for a while." In a 2017 interview, Durburg addressed the retail sector, stating that there was "a little bit of a misconception about what's going on in retail." He said that retail was a "very healthy part of the commercial real estate sector" the previous year, with rents rising more than in office space, and that the company expected rents to increase again.