Will Grover.
William Grover, 26
Associate at Newmark
As a child, William Grover was printing out MLS sheets for multifamily properties along the Long Island waterfront.
“From a young age it was a field I’ve been interested in,” Grover said. His parents were in the boating business and picked up nearby marina property. Apparently, their son felt the need to pitch in on the real estate side of the business.
And his taste for real estate did not dissipate over time; at 18 he got his real estate license, and, while he was working for a degree at Fordham University, he started clocking hours as an office manager for a boutique residential real estate firm. By the time he was a senior, he had realized that his passion was more for commercial real estate than residential and started an internship at Cushman & Wakefield before ending up at Marcus & Millichap.
Since landing at Newmark three years ago, landlords have entrusted some 1 million square feet of space into Grover’s real estate-infatuated hands, including 45 Bond Street, 510 LaGuardia Place, 38 East 29th Street and 22 West 38th Street, not to mention 455 Jefferson Street and 200 Kent Avenue in Brooklyn.
As the real estate industry was getting hammered during COVID-19, GFP Real Estate brought Grover and his colleagues in to rebrand and lease the 350,000-square-foot 515 Madison Avenue, an office building in Midtown, and, even as leasing largely dried up, Grover and his team have hustled their way to six leases at the property.
Internally, Grover has been an active member of Newmark’s LGBTQ community. “There’s not a lot of LGBTQ people in the industry,” Grover said. While he was at Cushman & Wakefield he was mentored by another gay broker. This was important, “seeing someone so comfortable with himself out — it was really eye-opening to me and changed my perception of what I needed to be successful.”—M.G.
