Jonathan Tan, 29

Jonathan Tan’s exposure to global cities helped shape his pursuit of commercial real estate finance.

Tan grew up in Hong Kong before attending Harvard University, and then landed in New York City for a job with Goldman Sachs’ structured finance desk. That’s where he learned to appreciate CRE as an asset class.

“Our team covered really all asset classes ranging from infrastructure to consumer credit, and for me that was a great crash course in how asset-backed finance works,” Tan said. “By 2018, I wanted to focus more specifically on an asset class.  I’ve lived in big cities my whole life, so real estate to me, I think, was an obvious choice because you can see and feel in these cities probably more than most places how much real estate shapes how we live.”

Since joining Goldman Sachs’ real estate financing group in 2018, Tan has focused on large loan originations for both commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) and balance-sheet deals. He has grown sharply during his seven-year run managing CRE deals at Goldman Sachs and now spearheads data center lending coverage for the investment bank. 

One of Tan’s highest-profile deals involved executing a $485 million acquisition loan in late 2024 for DigiCo REIT’s purchase of the 190,000-square-foot 800 Devon data center property in Chicago from Prologis and Skybox. 

“We were able to securitize that data center construction loan in the CMBS market, and that’s the first time that’s been done,” Tan said. “These more innovative deals are often challenging because you’re solving many of the problems for the first time, but those deals are also for me the ones which have been the most interesting and the most rewarding.” 

When not closing large loans, Tan enjoys reading about history and browsing the used books at the Strand in Manhattan.