Willy Walker (left) and Aaron Appel.
Willy Walker and Aaron Appel
Chairman and CEO; Senior Managing Director and Co-Head of New York Capital Markets at Walker & Dunlop
Last year's rank: 26
Willy Walker has stood alone on this Power list for the last few years. But, the official closing of Walker & Dunlop’s (W&D) acquisition of real estate debt and equity advisory shop AKS Capital Partners in January meant it was time for him to receive some company.
With the acquisition, W&D added to its ranks a versatile and robust brokerage team that originated $14 billion last year, bolstering an already impressive, ever-expanding real estate finance business that produced $32 billion in transaction volume in 2019, a 14.3 percent jump from 2018.
AKS’ co-founders included debt and equity advisory heavyweights Aaron Appel, Keith Kurland and brothers Jonathan and Adam Schwartz — honorees on previous iterations of this list via their roles leading JLL Capital Markets’ debt and structured finance group as recently as last July. The quartet founded AKS shortly after leaving JLL, and by the end of the year, they were on their way to W&D.
Walker’s behemoth shop registered another impressive year in 2019, again expanding in nearly every area of its business. It ranked again as the No. 1 Fannie Mae DUS lender with $8 billion in volume, a position it’s taken in five out of the last eight years. It also ranked as the No. 3 Freddie Mac Optigo SM Lender ($6.4 billion) and the No. 3 HUD lender ($848 million).
With that, and in reinforcing the addition of AKS, W&D’s broader advisory practice arranged $10.4 billion in debt, up from $8.4 billion in 2018. And its sales activity expanded to $5.4 billion from $2.7 billion the previous year.
For AKS, its 2019 included deals such as the $180.3 million construction debt package from Square Mile Capital Management and Pacific Western Bank arranged for Jeffrey Gershon and Hope Street Capital to develop its planned luxury multifamily tower at 550 Clinton Avenue in Brooklyn. And there’s the $215 million in permanent CMBS financing they arranged from JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs to finance Essex Crossing’s main mixed-use residential building, The Essex; it was provided to Delancey Street Associates, a joint venture between five investment and development firms.
And shortly after taking up the W&D flag, the team arranged $340 million in debt from Deutsche Bank to help fund Atlanta-based multifamily investor Cortland’s $1.2 billion purchase of Pure Multi-Family REIT.—M.B.
