JD Cohen.
JD Cohen, 29
Managing director at Newmark
JD Cohen kicked off his career doing something not many in the industry get to say they did: help get a new building built in New York City.
After meeting an employee of short-term lodging company Sonder at a dinner, Cohen followed up with him later and eventually got the job to find a new location for the startup.
In 2018, Cohen landed on 23-20 Jackson Avenue in Long Island City, Queens, convincing owner the Vorea Group to tear down the existing one-story property and build a 148-foot, 72-story, mixed-use building in its place. Sonder leased it for 15 years.
“It’s cool to see that a building stands in New York because of you,” Cohen said. “At 25, to do a deal like that, I thought I was the king of the world.”
But Cohen didn’t rest on his early success. So far this year he’s inked about 60 leases. The largest involved representing the owner, the Chetrit family, in apparel company Sunrise Brands’ 54,881-square-foot office deal at 1412 Broadway, which he locked down “after hammering the phones and pounding the pavement for about a year,” Cohen said.
Cohen said that was par for the course as he’s often reading as much about the market as he can, working the phones, or even slipping fliers underneath offices in WeWork to try to drum up new business.
But he almost didn’t get into real estate, even though it’s in his blood. His dad, William Cohen, has been a broker for 37 years and is currently a vice chairman at Newmark. Instead, the younger Cohen wanted to get into photography and graduated from Pratt University in 2015. After an internship at Newmark during his junior year, he found the industry “fun” and “fast-paced,” so he switched gears. He joined Newmark in 2018 and has been there ever since.
Cohen grew up in Westport, Conn., and currently splits his time between Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and Southampton. He enjoys concerts and boating — and still taking photos during his off time. —N.R.
