Named CEO in 2022, Faulkner previously served as chief operating officer and president of property management for Breeden, which has about 425 employees in Virginia.

Previously, Faulkner was president and COO of Lawton Lumber, and he also worked for American Coating Technologies and Procter & Gamble. As Breeden’s CEO, he oversees a real estate development and property management company founded more than 60 years ago by Ramon W. Breeden Jr., whom Faulkner succeeded as CEO.

The company has a portfolio of more than 25,000 apartments and 2 million square feet of retail and office space. Breeden appeared on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing companies in 2022 and 2023, with 205% growth attributed to expansions in its third-party construction and property management divisions. In October 2024, Breeden’s $66 million apartment complex Pinnacle on 31st Street in Virginia Beach opened.

A West Point graduate who served in the Army as a platoon leader and personnel officer, Faulkner is a past chair of the Virginia Symphony Orchestra’s board, and he says that supporting animal protection organizations and protecting the Hampton Roads region from sea-level rise are priorities for him.

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Jennings is the third generation to lead the general contracting firm, which was started as a masonry firm in 1952 by his bricklayer grandfather, Lawrence Floyd Jennings. Larry Jennings, L.F.’s son and Jon’s father, joined the company in 1965 and helped expand the business into general contracting.

In the 1980s, the company made another shift, building a backlog of large-scale private projects for commercial developers. Today, Jon Jennings oversees about 350 employees and a large portfolio of projects in the Richmond and Washington, D.C., regions. L.F. Jennings’ fiscal 2024 revenue was approximately $405 million.

The firm serves the mid-Atlantic, with offices in Cary, North Carolina, Falls Church and Richmond; clients include Target, Whole Foods Market, Federal Realty Investment Trust and Trammell Crow.

Current projects include the New Manchester Flats VI in Richmond and The Henley, a multifamily development in North Carolina.

Richmond’s Mutual on Main apartments, a 168-unit property that emerged from the renovation of the Mutual Assurance Society Building constructed in 1905, won three awards for adaptive reuse and historic restoration.

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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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Franklin became CEO in 2023, succeeding his father, Wendell, who is now chairman of the real estate development, management and investment firm. Previously chief operating officer, Franklin oversees approximately 1,050 employees, as well as a portfolio of 200 properties in 10 states and Washington, D.C.

In 2013, Franklin, his father, Tom Johnston and Steve Cooper started The Franklin Johnston Group after leaving S.L. Nusbaum Realty. Johnston stepped down from the firm last year, and the two Franklins remain managing partners of the company, now the Franklin Group.

Over the past decade, the business has developed more than 10,000 new multifamily residences across Virginia and North Carolina, totaling more than $1.6 billion in financed projects.
Construction is underway on The Canopy, the company’s $80 million mixed-use development in Virginia Beach that will have 132 apartments as well as retail and office space. The Franklin Group plans to relocate its headquarters to the new building once complete.

Franklin serves on the William & Mary Board of Visitors, and he is chairman of the Chesapeake Bay Wine Classic Foundation board, as well as the 2022 King Neptune for Virginia Beach’s Neptune Festival.

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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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