Elijah Rechler, 29

Elijah Rechler grew up around real estate, but pursued a path in finance to get a quantitative understanding of the world and ultimately help expand his family business.

“Being able to work at a big institutional firm like RXR with our team every day has been a real pleasure and honor,” he said.

The Long Island native concentrated in economics and the arts at Cornell University before graduating early in 2018. After college, he started a small hedge fund with another partner, but found it difficult to grow the fund once the pandemic erupted.

“The volatility of COVID made it a stressful time,” he said. “We had to pay attention to how the market was shifting on a day-to-day basis.”

Rechler exited his hedge fund Starfish Capital in 2020 and joined RXR, the firm his father Scott Rechler launched nearly 20 years ago. Elijah has taken on different roles, starting out with RXR’s digital lab for nine months before joining its capital markets team. Most recently he has been working with internal stakeholders, capital partners and leaders on high-level strategic concepts.  

One of those concepts has been to strengthen RXR’s lending arm, RXR Capital Solutions, as banks pulled back investment and interest rates rose. RXR has since acquired 590 Madison Avenue, refinanced 1211 Sixth Avenue, and recapitalized the Starrett-Lehigh Building with Blackstone.

“We use our owner mindset to serve as a hybrid lender and partner to our borrowers,” he said.

He also helped design and structure Gemini, which pools funds to acquire similar commercial assets, and to offer those who purchased those buildings before COVID the opportunity to contribute all or a portion of the building into Gemini in exchange for stock or cash. Gemini now has a $3.5 billion underlying gross asset value.

Since starting at RXR, Rechler has learned how to find consensus among a variety of stakeholders to close a deal.

“There’s always a way to find a win-win outcome,” he said. “You have to understand everyone’s sensitivities and goals, and generally you find common ground and work with them like partners even if they’re on the other side of the table.”