Kurt Stuart to Co-Lead Commercial Term Lending at JP Morgan Chase 

Stuart was previously J.P. Morgan’s area manager for the Northeast, overseeing a team of 150 originations professionals as well as strategic direction and financial performance for the region. As co-head of CTL — reporting to Michelle Herrick, head of commercial real estate for JP Morgan —  Stuart’s purview will expand to tailoring solutions for commercial real estate borrowers and investors to acquire, refinance and manage their multifamily assets. 

“Kurt has demonstrated outstanding leadership in the Northeast, and his nationwide efforts will unlock numerous opportunities for the CTL business,” Herrick said in prepared remarks. 

Under the oversight of Ely and Al Brooks, whom Herrick succeeded on Jan. 1 as head of CRE, CTL has become the No. 1 multifamily lender in the U.S. — a ranking that Stuart has already contributed significantly to. 

The Chicagoan joined J.P. Morgan in 2015 as a regional manager in the firm’s Southern California multifamily lending business. In 2017, he moved to New York City to succeed Chad Tredway as the head of CTL in the Northeast, where his focus was on the New York, Boston and Washington, D.C., markets. 

“This is a great opportunity,” Stuart told CO. ”I’ve led our Northeast markets here for the last six years, and I led our Southern California teams previous to that, and so I’ve been proximate to our largest markets for my entire time here at J.P. Morgan Chase. What’s terrific about this role is I have an opportunity to work directly with Ed Ely. Ed will be my partner in this. He brought me into the firm, and I’ve learned a lot from him over the years. To have that continuity there is going to be fantastic.” 

When he first moved to the East Coast, Stuart learned about the assets on which the bank was lending by putting on a pair of sneakers and running around them and their surrounding neighborhoods. With a national footprint before him now, his “first steps” as co-head of CTL will be a little more stationary. 

“I’ve always viewed success as something that is built by the hands of many, and so my immediate first steps here are getting to know parts of the business that I don’t know as well, and, most importantly, the people that drive those parts of the business,” Stuart said. “I’ve always taken the approach of listening and learning. This is a relationship business at the end of the day, whether that’s folks internally here or clients externally. So I intend to do a lot of listening and learning over the next several months.” 

Much has changed over the past decade in commercial real estate, but multifamily continues to be a crown jewel in the portfolios of many lenders and investors despite the interest rate headwinds that dominated much of the past two years. As such, Stuart said he’s feeling pretty optimistic about 2025. 

“If you think about the fundamentals of our space, you’ve got positive net absorption in most new supply in most markets around the country,” Stuart said. “You’ve got more stability in interest rates than we’ve had in the last 18 months, and the capital-raising side has stabilized quite a bit as well. If you put all those things together, it’s understandably a year in which people are talking about deploying capital and acquiring assets. It’s also a year that people are talking about reinvesting in their assets and potentially seeing some net operating income growth that they haven’t seen over the last 18, 24 months. Those are all good things for the industry. As we travel around and speak with clients and our teams and hear about 2025 plans, it all points to stabilization first, and then deploying capital over the next 12 months and acquiring assets.” 

William Oehler, who has spent 16 years at J.P. Morgan, will replace Stuart as the new area manager for the Northeast, beginning March 1. Oehler was previously a credit risk executive focused on CTL’s Northeast region, and a regional manager for New York and Washington before that. 

“I’m excited about what Will can do for us here in New York,” Stuart said. “He started as a banker, so he knows firsthand just how hard it can be for clients. He’s originated business and banked these clients — so that’s a great place to start — but he’s also been my partner on the credit side, and he has helped us make sure that we avoid, you know, large-scale risks out there, like what COVID might have meant for the real estate space. He’s a great mind, and I’m really, really lucky to have him on the team.” 

In addition to helping CTL scale the ranks to become the nation’s top multifamily lender, Stuart has helped preserve more than 200,000 affordable housing units across the U.S. during his tenure at the bank. Separately, Stuart and Ely supported the integration of First Republic into J.P. Morgan in May 2023, expanding CTL’s loan portfolio by 30 percent. 

As he settles into his new role, Stuart said he has two big priorities in front of him. 

“One is to not only maintain but extend our leadership position in the real estate finance space, and I think we can do that in a couple of ways,” Stuart said. “We’ve got a terrific balance sheet execution, which has been highly regarded in all the markets that we serve. But we’ve also invested heavily in the agency space over the last couple of years, and you’re seeing us be much more active there. And so I think if we bring those two together in a more meaningful way, not only this year, but in years to come, and provide our clients with really a full suite of financing solutions there and much more optionality that’s going to really position us for long term success.”  

Secondly, Stuart will be leaning into the expertise of J.P. Morgan’s real estate-focused banking team, “where we can bring together our best thoughts, our best ideas around the payment space and around the banking space,” Stuart said. “It allows us to do something unique, and we can marry together two important parts of our clients’ day to day: How they capitalize their assets, and how they operationalize their platforms. We can bring those two things together in a very seamless way and provide a lot of terrific solutions for clients.” 

Ely will remain in Irvine, Calif., while Stuart and Oehler will get down to business in New York City, covering the bank’s ever-expanding business from coast to coast. 

“Kurt has a proven track record and is well equipped to propel our business forward,” Ely said “His talent for developing outstanding employees and delivering excellent service to our clients will support us in sustaining our leading position in the market.”

Cathy Cunningham can be reached at ccunningham@commercialobserver.com