Jordan Roeschlaub (left), Jonathan Firestone (top right), and Dustin Stolly.
Jordan Roeschlaub, Jonathan Firestone and Dustin Stolly
Co-president/co-head of global debt & structured finance (NYC); co-president/co-head of global debt & structured finance (L.A.); co-president of debt & structured finance (NYC) at Newmark
Last year's rank: 5
You would never know it was a volatile commercial real estate market at Newmark’s New York City headquarters.
While other brokerages have struggled the last two years amid higher interest rates, Newmark keeps chugging like a freight train with large deals across various property sectors. The Newmark team led by Jordan Roeschlaub and Dustin Stolly arranged $19.2 billion of debt for the year ending March 1, 2024 to go along with $2.8 billion of equity and platform raises.
“We’ve always made a very consistent effort of going to where the puck is, or being in front of the respective trade or finding the creases in the market,” Roeschlaub said. “When it was very difficult to do very large-scale transactions, we pivoted to stuff that was in vogue and more infrastructure-oriented, whether it was data centers or cold storage.”
Newmark’s super active past year involved adding some key talent to help further ramp up its deal activity, including the addition of Jonathan Firestone from Eastdil Secured in February to help run the debt platform. Firestone executed $13.7 billion of financing with his Eastdil team in 2023 and $175 billion in his 23 years at the rival brokerage’s Los Angeles office.
Another big personnel move by Newmark in the last year involved the hiring of Brent Mayo from investment bank DH Capital in August to lead its newly launched capital markets arm focused on data centers.
Newmark arranged a number of large deals over the past year across the country, including $600 million of construction financing for Mast Capital’s planned 80-story Cipriani Residences Miami condominium project slated for completion in 2028. The deal included a $350 million loan from Banco Inbursa and $250 million from Ascendant Capital Partners.
Another notable transaction facilitated by Newmark involved a $114 million construction loan from Apollo Global Management for Aurora Capital Associates to build an 11-story, ground-up condominium development in Manhattan’s West Village on a vacant lot at 134 Jane Street.
The Newmark capital markets team has hit the ground running to start 2024, with Firestone estimating around $9.5 billion of deal volume closed or in the process of closing in his first 60 days since joining the firm. Firestone said a big advantage Newmark has over the competition is the connectivity of a dominant investment sales team run by Doug Harmon and Adam Spies, whom he previously worked with at Eastdil, along with other experts in the CRE space.
“Typically it’s a lot of silos within brokerage houses, but we’re re-creating and putting the DNA in place for it to be where the client feels they always have access to information and access to everybody,” Firestone said. “We wake up every day thinking about how we can do better for our clients and bring them new ideas and new ways to do things.”
