Andrew Coe.
Andrew Coe, 27
Vice president at JLL
One of the best stories that a real estate entrepreneur can tell about themselves is how early they got their start — all the better if it goes something like, “even before they graduated from college, they were buying, selling or fixing up real estate.”
Andrew Coe will have a similar story to tell when his real estate biography is written. Back when he was at Bucknell University, he was a founding member of the Bucknell Brothers, a landscaping company.
“We found that there was a gap for local services; what was available was overpriced and the quality was not great,” Coe said. “The locals liked the idea of supporting a bunch of college kids getting out there” and fixing up houses. By the end of his undergraduate career, he had 15 students working under him.
We imagine it gave Coe the hustle necessary to complete some 89 deals totalling over 2 million square feet since he started at JLL (JLL) in 2015.
Indeed, hustle, drive and initiative were part of Coe’s business life from the beginning. When he arrived at JLL, he was “given a phone and computer and told to generate meetings — period,” he said. “It took six months to get hired by my first company.” That company, a technology firm called Postlight, took 7,000 square feet at 101 Fifth Avenue, in a deal that closed in April 2016.
Since then, the New Jersey native, who still lives in the Garden State, has done tenant and landlord advisory work.
This summer, amid the COVID pandemic, he helped his company grab one of the few plums of office leasing: His team advised AIG on what resulted in three leases totaling more than 760,000 square feet at 1271 Avenue of the Americas, 28 Liberty Street and 30 Hudson Street in Jersey City.
It was, no doubt, a moment for a victory lap, but the hustler in Coe is wary of resting on any laurels.
“It’s been a period of uncertainty and change,” he told CO. “For AIG and the mega-projects, business planning must proceed. For our bread-and-butter deals — 10,000 to 15,000 square feet — a lot of occupiers are waiting on the sidelines with no clear answer on who’s going to work from home … The medium-sized [firms are] waiting to see what the big ones are doing.”
But don’t expect Coe to wait on the sidelines. The hustle will continue. — M.G.
