Harrison Potter, 27
Associate vice president at JLL
Harrison Potter found his calling in real estate through a summer internship at Saugatuck Commercial Real Estate in Westport, Conn.
“I love that it’s really a people business,” Potter said. “I get to build relationships and see them grow.”
He wasted no time in starting at JLL’s New York office two weeks after he graduated from Hamilton College in 2018. Potter is part of one of the company’s most prolific brokerage teams led by Mitchell Konsker, Paul Glickman, Matthew Astrachan and Alexander Chudnoff. The team’s agency portfolio spans some 30 million square feet in New York City, Potter said.
Over the past five years, Potter has completed more than 100 deals across 1 million square feet. Probably his biggest client is Global Holdings Management, the property management arm of Global Holdings Group, which leans on JLL to oversee leasing across its Manhattan portfolio.
This summer, Potter took the lead on arranging a 20-year lease with the New York Compensation Insurance Ratings Board for 30,166 square feet at 875 Third Avenue. The deal brought the property to 98 percent leased, he said.
Other prominent New York landlords Potter works with include RXR, Stawski Partners and AEW Capital Management.
“One of the nice things about brokerage is that what I do is not drastically different than what a vice chairman on my team does, except he’ll probably be taking the lead on those same tasks for a bigger transaction,” Potter said. He added that he especially enjoys working with newcomers to the city as a tenant rep and helping companies find space for the first time.
Those clients sometimes outgrow their leases faster than anticipated, as was the case with Pittsburgh-based private equity firm Incline Equity Partners, which had barely settled into its 10,000 square feet at 505 Fifth Avenue before JLL’s brokers stepped in again to help it upgrade to 18,000 square feet at 101 Park Avenue earlier this year.
Potter said his grandmother, Sandra Byrne, who grew up outside of Boston and worked her way up the ranks in the corporate world, is his “number one business guru.”
“She’s always been a huge supporter of me, and helped me every step of the way,” Potter said. “She’s always just a phone call away.”
