Emma Giamartino
Global Group President, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Investment Officer at CBRE Group
Thanks, Bob. Please turn to Slide eight. CBRE began the year with our strongest ever financial performance for our first quarter. Consolidated results were supported by double-digit revenue and segment operating profit growth in each of our three operating segments. As Bob noted, GAAP EPS was up 48% to $1.16, while core EPS grew 72% to $1.39. GAAP EPS was $0.23 below core EPS, mostly due to the mark-to-market valuation of our noncore investments, particularly our Altus Power stake.
The change in Altus' valuation during the quarter largely reversed the noncash gain we realized in Q4, which we also excluded from our core earnings. Corporate overhead grew approximately $23 million from Q1 2021, but fell $40 million compared with Q4 2021. We continue to expect overall corporate overhead to decline slightly from 2021 levels for the full year. Our results were ahead of our own expectations across revenue, margins and earnings.
We're excited about the strong start to the year and the momentum we're seeing across our business. Please turn to Slide nine for a deeper look at our advisory segment. Advisory Services net revenue reached a first quarter record of $2.2 billion, up 32% from last year. Within capital markets, we continue to see strong sales activities, with total sales revenue up 58% versus last year. Strong property sales growth was broad-based across all major geographies, with Pacific, North Asia and the U.S. being particular standouts.
We have yet to see a material impact from rising rates on property sales. Globally, office, industrial, retail and multifamily sales all surpassed the prior first quarter peak levels. While office remains the largest asset class and is back to prior peak levels, it comprised about 20% of property sales in the quarter versus nearly 1/3 in Q1 2019, reflecting the sizable gains we've made across the other property types.
Our mortgage origination revenue, excluding OMSR gains, rose over 22% compared to Q1 2021. Industrial and multifamily originations continue to lead activity across property types. Lending markets remained highly liquid during most of the quarter with private lenders continuing to increase volumes. Lower government agency originations reflected robust private lending activity for multifamily assets, which continue to create attractive terms for borrowers and reduce demand for agency debt. Our OMSR gains declined $15 million from the first quarter of last year, reflecting the shift from agency to private lenders.
Leasing revenue eclipsed prior peak first quarter levels in all global regions. Global revenue was up over 48% in Q1, led by Continental Europe and the U.S. Continuing recent trends, industrial revenue rose strongly. While the Omicron variant caused continued challenges, we were encouraged to see global office leasing improved significantly from last year's COVID-suppressed levels and fall modestly short of the Q1 peak set in 2019. We expect that recovery for office leasing will continue to improve from the COVID depressed levels of 2021 as leases roll over and occupiers upgrade their office space.
70% of our surveyed occupier clients are planning a hybrid approach for their office return, and over 90% of them are planning to either expand or contract their office footprint over the next three years. This is a clear positive for our Office Advisory business as any changes in space requirements drives not only commission revenue, but often also workplace advisory and project management fees.
Despite heightened macro risks from persistent inflation, rising interest rates and geopolitical tensions, U.S. sales and lease activity has remained strong since the end of Q1, with revenue up significantly over the prior year during April. Advisory Services segment operating profit started the year stronger than expected, up 40% to $466 million, with our net margin increasing to 20.9% from 19.7% in Q1 2021. Prudent operating expense management largely offset higher cost of sales due to deals being more heavily weighted to our highest producing brokers and the lower OMSR gains.
Turning to GWS on Slide 10. Net revenue grew over $400 million or 27%. Excluding Turner & Townsend, net revenue rose nearly 9% overall, with Project Management up 13% and Facilities Management up 7%. Our new business pipeline points to Facilities Management revenue accelerating significantly as the year progresses, as clients gain more visibility about their space utilization and thus their need for outsourcing services. Our pipeline revenue is at a record level, with a diversified mix of financial services, defense, automotive, retail and logistics prospects. Overall, GWS segment operating profit grew 33% or over 6% organically.
Margins on net revenue grew to 10.9% in Q1, benefiting from the Turner & Townsend acquisition. Absent this acquisition, net margin declined very slightly from prior year in line with our expectations. We expect this slight margin pressure to subside towards the end of the year. Turning to Slide 11, our REI segment posted another outstanding quarter. Revenue increased 34% to $284 million, and segment operating profit grew to $167 million, up $104 million versus Q1 of last year, which was modestly better than our expectations at the beginning of the year.
Our development business continued to post excellent results benefiting from a strong pipeline and compressed cap rates. Development contributed nearly $107 million of segment operating profit in the first quarter, up from $10 million in the prior year. We saw multiple large co-investment asset sales in the first quarter notably in industrial and multifamily. Looking ahead, development operating profit is expected to be weighted to the first half of the year. However, any movement of development asset sales between periods, which is common in this business, could impact the quarterly cadence of our results.
Our development pipeline rose to more than $10 billion and in-process portfolio reached almost $20 billion, both record levels. This gives us visibility into strong, long-term development operating profit growth. Historically, we've converted about 1% to 2% of our in-process portfolio into operating profit annually. Our development business is also strategically well placed, with industrial and multifamily comprising over 3/4 of the combined pipeline and in-process portfolio.
Fee development and build-to-suits make up more than 50% of in-process activity. Our investment management business also turned in a strong performance in Q1, while operating profit declined by $9 million versus the same period last year. The decline was due to a onetime $24 million accounting methodology-driven gain we booked in last year's Q1 and called out at the time. Absent this gain, operating profit improved about 33%, supported by co-investment returns, which benefited from appreciating asset value.
Investment Management AUM reached a new record of nearly $147 billion, with logistics and infrastructure climbing by 9% and 7%, respectively, over the quarter. AUM growth was driven by $4 billion of net capital inflows as well as higher property valuations, only partially offset by unfavorable FX rates. We've also continued to benefit from the partnership between our investment management and development businesses, which has supported AUM growth for investment management and pipeline growth for our development business.
Turning to Slide 12. We CBRE repurchased more than $390 million of shares in the first quarter, a record amount. As Bob mentioned, year-to-date through May three, we repurchased nearly seven million shares for $627 million. We anticipate maintaining a significant pace of share repurchases for the balance of the year, absent substantial and compelling M&A opportunities. We also remain committed to maintaining a durable balance sheet. Net leverage was just under 0.1 turns at the end of Q1, well below the midpoint of our 0 to two times target range.
This is despite the share repurchases, seasonally higher use of cash for employee incentive compensation and the seasonally light revenue and earnings typical of our first quarter. Absent any substantial M&A opportunities, we anticipate remaining below one turn at the end of 2022, even allowing for an elevated pace of share repurchases. Turning to Slide 13. As we look ahead, we have the same expectation for achieving mid- to high-teens consolidated core earnings growth for the full year that we provided at the end of February. Our business today continues to have strong momentum.
Our base of contractual work in project management, facilities management and investment management is large and growing rapidly, and lease and sales transaction activity through April remains robust. Commercial real estate markets also are healthy with office, retail and multifamily fundamentals improving, and industrial fundamentals remains strong in core markets. Materially offsetting these continued positive trends, the broader economic backdrop has softened and interest rates have risen since we provided our earnings outlook in late February.
We have taken some of these dynamics into consideration and reaffirming our full year expectations. Specifically, should an economic downturn emerge, we expect the more resilient and secularly favored parts of our business to help offset any potential weakening in other parts of our business. In particular, we have noted that office leasing is benefiting from strong tailwinds that we expect to sustain for some period of time. Additionally, we have identified cost measures we can implement quickly should market conditions warrant.
On the other hand, if the macro environment remains supportive for the rest of the year, there could be upside to our current expectations. Additionally, our outlook does not include any benefit from incremental M&A activity or share repurchases. We expect it to be active capital allocators for the rest of the year, and would be positioned to move aggressively in a weaker economic environment. We look forward to updating you when we report second quarter results in July. With that, operator, please open the line for questions.
