PORTLAND, OR—JLL has expanded its brokerage practice in Portland with the addition of Deron Jones as senior vice president. As a market-leading landlord representative, Jones is responsible for leasing buildings totalling more than three million square feet of office space in the Portland metropolitan area, where he specializes in office and medical properties.

With rising employment and a vibrant and steadily expanding technology sector, Portland is now among the 10 most-dynamic office markets in the country, according to JLL's most recent national report on the impact of the high tech industry on office markets. This has pushed rents to historical highs in the city's CBD as well as surrounding markets and led to a market-wide vacancy of just 10% in the third quarter 2014. This, in turn, has spurred developers to push projects forward and more than three quarters of a million square feet of new office product is under construction, almost half of which is already leased.

Jones has developed long-term relationships with local and regional developers and building owners and currently represents several institutional landlords including the largest office landlord in the state. His clients also include local and national tenants in the healthcare, legal, financial, and technology industries.