Hale King.
Hale King, 28
Associate Vice President at JLL
Hale King had always taken a data-driven, measured look at the real estate market, but his job came about by happenstance.
King, a Greenwich, Conn., native, jumped into the industry by talking with several alumni at his Virginia college, Washington and Lee University, who encouraged him to explore the field. He initially wanted to go into asset management and then, in 2017, applied for a job with the capital markets team at JLL that was based in Chicago.
A month later, he was told to move to New York. That led to a serendipitous after-work happy hour with JLL’s brokerage group, which was looking to expand its team.
“I had no idea I wanted to be in brokerage,” King said. “I wanted something more analytical, but met my future boss and a couple people from his team, and we just hit it off.”
King has since been the lead analyst on a number of deals, including a New York-based hedge fund that took its talents to South Beach and opened a branch office there. Few companies have actually relocated to Florida during the pandemic, King noticed.
“A lot of people talk about moving, but nobody seems to want to lay down the money to permanently relocate,” King said. “A couple people higher up in the firm had vacationed in Florida, and it made strategic sense since they thought they would have good access to talent.”
Not that you’ll ever see King leave Manhattan. During the pandemic, he’s been playing tennis in courts along the West Side Highway and visiting museum exhibits. He also joined a kickball league this fall, although his team doesn’t have a name yet.
King has even gone back to working at the office after staying home for several months. He found it was a challenge to market properties, not to mention interact with potential clients, over Zoom. “If you’re not in the same room, it turns out to be very hard to read a proposal or pick up the terminology, and it made me appreciate the office.”—A.S.
