Jackson Irwin, 30

For Jackson “Jack” Irwin, heaven is other people.

“In business school, we had a few real estate classes that sparked my interest,” he said. “I liked the sales side of it. I’m a very social person.”

Commercial real estate financing and advisory allowed him to marry his finance degree and his easy skill at forming relationships. In the eight years he’s been at Walker & Dunlop, he has had six separate positions. Irwin started in government-sponsored enterprise underwriting, became the liaison to Aaron Appel’s vaunted capital markets team, and then joined that team, where he is now a generalist.

“I love the brokerage personalities,” Irwin said. “I love the craziness and the chaos.”

The past couple of years have been a difficult interest rate environment for CRE, but Irwin sees cracks in the ice. “I think we’re now in an environment of ‘higher for longer’ and people are just trying to get deals done,” he said. He also noted it’s a “super-liquid environment from a debt perspective.”

Even back in the bad old days of higher rates, Irwin was firing three-pointers, such as working on the $754 million bridge loan — plus condo inventory loan — for the Aman New York. The project occupies Fifth Avenue’s Crown Building with 22 condos and 83 hotel rooms. The prices have been eye-popping, with one penthouse condo notching more than $10,000 a square foot. Then, last year, the Appel team arranged a $1.2 billion refinancing for One High Line, the Bjarke Ingels-designed project formerly known as The XI.

The future of the luxury market? “I think there is more room to run,” said Irwin, who relaxes by cooking Italian specialties such as pasta all’Amatriciana during his downtime. “New York is New York — it’s the mecca of finance. From a real estate perspective, you should never bet against it.”