Thomas Farrell, 32

When Thomas Farrell was playing lacrosse at Lehigh University and studying journalism early in his college days, he envisioned a career as a sportscaster for ESPN. He soon discovered a passion for real estate, though, and, after taking some classes on the profession, pursued an MBA at Lehigh that catapulted his career. 

“I started taking some real estate classes and, unfortunately, I picked it up a little bit too late to add it to a minor, but it was something that I found to be really interesting and really exciting that I wanted to pursue,” Farrell said. “I took a fifth-year master’s program and parlayed it with my interest in real estate from some of those classes that I had taken previously, and dove headfirst into it.” 

Farrell began his commercial real estate career at J.P. Morgan Asset Management (JPMAM), working on equity investments, before heading over to the investment banking side of the business at Barclays, where he executed commercial mortgage-backed securities and balance sheet loans. After five years at Barclays, Farrell returned to JPMAM. For the last four years, he has led debt originations across the East Coast.

The largest deal of Farrell’s CRE finance career so far involved a $1.24 billion balance sheet loan while at Barclays to finance Blackstone’s acquisition of Space Center, a private real estate company that owned a portfolio of 38 industrial assets. 

A recent notable transaction Farrell executed was a $142 million loan from JPMAM backing Catalyst Investment Partners’ acquisition of a 38-property, 112-acre industrial outdoor storage portfolio. Farrell said the deal reflects the collaborative nature of the JPMAM team in determining alternative CRE asset classes to explore with strong tailwinds. 

“We’ve been making a big push into extended sectors this year such as industrial outdoor storage and build to rent, a little more niche asset classes that have been rapidly institutionalizing,” Farrell said. “We’re really trying to grow our business and, to do that, we’re taking advantage of our network and the information that’s at our fingertips, whether that’s broader information that we’re able to get from the firm or the network that we have as a real estate investment manager.”