Founded in 1965 by Peterson’s late father, Milt, Peterson Cos. is responsible for some of the most prominent

and successful mixed-use retail, residential and office developments in Northern Virginia and Maryland, including Fairfax Corner, Fair Lakes, National Harbor, Burke Centre and Tysons McLean Office Park.

Peterson, who became executive committee chairman in 2016 and CEO in 2018, helms the 170-employee real estate development firm, which also develops self-storage and industrial projects, including data centers. In May, the CIA purchased a 10-story office building in Chantilly for $246.4 million from Peterson Cos.

The Peterson Family Foundation made significant donations in 2024, including a $20 million gift to Inova Health System and a $5 million donation to George Mason University to renovate its Concert Hall auditorium.

A 1986 Middlebury College graduate, Peterson serves on George Mason’s board of visitors and the boards of the Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance and Youth for Tomorrow, a nonprofit organization started by former NFL coach Joe Gibbs.

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Divaris co-founded his real estate firm more than five decades ago in South Africa, where he earned degrees in accounting and real estate marketing, and then brought the company to Virginia

in 1981. The following year, Divaris Real Estate, one of the companies now under the Divaris Group umbrella, opened its doors in Virginia Beach.

Today, the firm manages or leases more than 40 million square feet of office, retail and industrial space nationwide under subsidiary Divaris Property Management. Divaris Group has offices in Newport News, Norfolk, Richmond and Roanoke, as well as North Carolina, California and Washington, D.C.

In March, the company announced that the Virginia Beach Town Center, a property Divaris and Armada Hoffler started building in 1986, is now 99% occupied, with Clark Nexsen, Kimley-Horn and Associates and other businesses renewing and expanding their leases in five towers.

The Divaris Group continues to be a family business, with Michael Divaris, Gerald’s cousin and co-founder, as president and Tony Divaris, his nephew, as chief operating officer.

In 2024, Divaris Real Estate acquired S.T. Burke Retail Partners in Philadelphia.

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While a student at George Washington University in 1974, Kettler got his start in real estate by remodeling apartments. A third-generation builder and the product of a long line of real estate developers, he left school to focus on work. After discovering a passion for community development, he founded real estate development company Kettler in 1977.

On the advice of the late Fairfax developer John “Til” Hazel Jr., Kettler, then in his early 20s, bought up as much land in the county as he could. His first big development was Sully Station in Centreville, a 3,000-home community. Since then, Kettler has been involved with developing major Northern Virginia projects such as Tysons Corner Center, The Boro and One Loudoun.

With a mission to build planned communities with access to transit and infrastructure, his company has developed more than 30,000 multifamily units, 10 million square feet of commercial space and over 75,000 homes in 40 master- planned communities, as well as numerous mixed-use communities in the Washington, D.C., area.

In 2024, the Leesburg Town Council approved the town’s first data center project, a 33-acre, 54-megawatt proposal from Kettler and partner Springfield East.

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CoStar Group, a real estate marketplace and analytics company, owns Homes.com, Apartments.com, LoopNet and STR, among others. In March, the company moved its headquarters from Washington, D.C., to Arlington County, a $20 million investment on top of its $339 million purchase of the 560,000-square-foot tower on Wilson Boulevard.

Over the past year, CoStar has acquired Ag-Analytics, Matterport and Visual Lease. In May, Florance announced the company’s agreement to acquire property listings platform Domain Holdings Australia for $1.9 billion, a deal expected to close in the third quarter of 2025. In July, CoStar sued Zillow for allegedly using nearly 47,000 of CoStar’s copyrighted photos on its listing sites, as well as its partners’ sites.

With $2.7 billion in 2024 revenue, CoStar has more than 6,800 employees across 13 countries, and it is nearing completion on its $460 million Richmond campus expansion on the James River, which is expected to be finished by May 2026.

Florance started CoStar in 1986 in his Princeton University dorm room, and it went public in 1998. He serves on the Virginia Commonwealth University’s board and was vice rector for the past year.

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In May, Phipps took the reins as the residential real estate developer’s leader, succeeding Carl L. Hardee, who retired. A graduate of Purdue University, Phipps joined Lawson in 2013 as vice president and chief financial officer and received a promotion to senior vice president in 2017.

Lawson was founded in 1972 and specializes in the development, construction and management of approximately 5,100 multifamily housing communities. Although the company got its start in Hampton Roads and still develops and manages numerous residential properties in the region, Lawson also has expanded into Richmond, Lynchburg, Roanoke and Woodbridge.

It is particularly focused on affordable housing and was ranked No. 34 on Affordable Housing Finance’s list of the nation’s top 50 affordable housing developers, and Lawson has about 700 units currently under development.

Before joining Lawson, Phipps worked in investment real estate and private equity.

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Since 1978, King has been leasing shopping centers for individuals, private partnerships and institutional clients, and he has led the commercial real estate company’s retail leasing team since 1985. He was named president of the firm in 2019 and took over as chairman in 2023 when his adoptive father, Harvey L. Lindsay Jr., died at 93.

Founded in 1919, the company provides brokerage services, asset management and property management services. Under King’s leadership, it has grown its shopping center portfolio to more than 4.5 million square feet of retail space.

In December 2023, the company acquired a management portfolio of 50 buildings in the Hampton Roads area, with the majority of the structures located in Norfolk and others in Virginia Beach.

A longtime member of the International Council of Shopping Centers, King is a graduate of Duke University and received his MBA from Old Dominion University.

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Bain became Long & Foster’s president and CEO in 2023. Founded in 1968, Long & Foster has more than 7,000 real estate agents across seven states and Washington, D.C. Bain joined Long & Foster in 2010 as president of its insurance and home warranty businesses.

Berkshire Hathaway affiliate HomeServices of America acquired Long & Foster in 2017, and in 2018, Bain took on oversight of Long & Foster Property Management and Long & Foster Rental Service Center. Bain rebranded the property management business as HomeServices Property Management in 2022, and in early 2022, launched Insight Home Inspections.

In March, HomeServices of America denied reports that it was in talks to be sold to Compass, the Washington, D.C., region’s largest real estate brokerage by sales volume.

Long & Foster completed 34,000 transactions in 2024. Prior to joining Long & Foster, the Allegheny College graduate served as vice president and general manager for Pittsburgh-based Howard Hanna Insurance Services. He founded internet insurance startup InsRateDirect.com in 1998 and was managing partner at the McDonnell Bain Group.

He negotiated both companies’ sales to larger insurance companies in 2002.

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Between her leadership positions with the Richmond Association of Realtors and the Central Virginia Regional Multiple Listing Service, Lafayette serves more than 6,800 Realtors in Central Virginia.

In May, her MLS launched a data share agreement with Bright MLS, allowing subscribers to search current and historical property listing information. While the Central Virginia system covers the cities of Richmond and Petersburg and counties ranging from Hanover to Sussex, Bright’s system includes several mid-Atlantic states and Washington, D.C.

Lafayette continues to advocate for affordable housing through her work on the board of the Partnership for Housing Affordability, where she was previously executive director. She also is on the board of trustees for Virginia Episcopal Real Estate Partners.

A William & Mary graduate, Lafayette did postgraduate work at Yale Divinity School and the University of Virginia. She also wrote speeches for former Gov. Doug Wilder when he was lieutenant governor and later was his press secretary.

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Gannon joined Colliers International as executive managing director and Washington, D.C., market leader in 2019, taking on responsibility for the strategic direction and performance of the firm’s offices in Washington, D.C., Northern Virginia and Maryland. He also leads the company’s national agency leasing platform, having served in a similar role at Paramount Group before moving to Colliers. Gannon also worked in leadership roles at Vornado Realty Trust.

An international commercial real estate and investment management corporation, Colliers has $100 billion in assets under management and nearly $5 billion in annual revenue.

The company has been charged with leasing for a 2 million-square-foot spec industrial park in Stafford County known as Austin Ridge Logistics Center, which is under construction, although the first building is completed.

Gannon serves on the board of the Commercial Real Estate Brokerage Association of Greater Washington, D.C., and is a graduate of Fordham University in New York.

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Since Rogers founded Capital Square in 2012, the real estate investment company has completed more than $7.9 billion in transaction volume and grown from handling mainly Delaware Statutory Trust 1031 Exchange offerings to launching a real estate investment trust and developing and operating multifamily properties across the nation.

In 2022, Rogers’ son-in-law, Whitson Huffman, was promoted from chief strategy and investment officer to co-CEO. In 2023, the company launched its Capital Square Living subsidiary

for multifamily property management. In July, Capital Square Housing Trust offered up to 4 million shares of preferred stock at $10 a share, seeking $40 million to fund more investments.

With nearly 400 employees, Capital Square made the Inc. 5000 list of the fastest-growing privately held companies for the eighth straight year in 2024, with a three-year growth rate of 136%. The company has been the largest developer in Richmond’s Scott’s Addition neighborhood.

A graduate of Northeastern University, Oxford University and the University of Virginia School of Law, Rogers previously served as president of Triple Net Properties, which he helped found. Before that, he was a partner with Hirschler Fleischer.

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