Dina Wetchler, 29
Senior analyst at Avison Young
Dina Wetchler initially envisioned a future in medicine while a math major early on at the University of Wisconsin, but a shift toward the business school sparked the beginning of her commercial real estate journey.
“I decided to switch into the business school, because it was a pretty long road ahead with pre-med, and I discovered that Wisconsin had a really strong real estate program,” Wetchler said. “All of the professors I had were professionals in the industry before they became professors, and the material just clicked, and the rest is history.”
After beginning her commercial real estate career at Ernst & Young for five years in the firm’s transaction real estate practice, Wetchler joined Avison Young in 2021 as a senior analyst with the brokerage’s tri-state debt and equity finance team. In her nearly two years now with Avison Young’s capital markets group, Wetchler has facilitated $230 million in deal volume spanning 2.3 million square feet.
Wetchler said the average deals tend to range in size from $75 million to $100 million across all major asset classes. Her arrival at Avison Young came shortly before the Federal Reserve began aggressively hiking interest rates, which in turn caused a significant slowdown in the CRE debt markets.
“It is tougher, but there are still banks out there who have capital and want to lend on good opportunities,” Wetchler said. “If the property’s in the right submarket and it’s a strong sponsor and the property is performing, then the capital exists and it’s just about finding the right counterparty.”
When not helping to close transactions, Wetchler is community service oriented with heavy involvement in Cycle for Survival, a fundraising program for rare cancers that is affiliated with the Memorial Sloan Kettering Center. She also volunteers with the Salvation Army.
