W&D Expands Into Hospitality with Key Hire
The new senior managing director has helped execute over $20 billion in lodging transactions.
Walker & Dunlop has announced it is expanding into hospitality investment sales. To lead the new practice, The company has hired Jonathan (Jay) Morrow as senior managing director to lead the initiative. The real estate veteran will focus on striking sales in the asset class along with origination and capital placement nationwide.
Before joining W&D, Morrow spent more than 15 years leading Hodges Ward Elliott’s hotel team in New York City. There, he helped the firm execute over $20 billion in lodging transactions. Morrow, who will be based in the metro area in his new role, brings a range of services to the table including advisory, capital placement, and investment skills.
While this will mark a new chapter for W&D, it isn’t completely a neophyte to hospitality in general. It has served on a variety of representative deals including the purchase of Aman New York Hotel & Residences for $754 million. Some others are for The Moxy and AC hotel Los Angeles ($325 million), The Lexington Hotel New York ($155 million), and SOHO Beach House Miami ($140 million).
In 2023, W&D originated $24 billion in debt financing volume, with $500 million dedicated toward hospitality. And since 2021, the company has completed more than $51 billion of property sales volume.
“Multifamily has been the cornerstone of Walker & Dunlop’s growth and competitive market position, said W&D chairman and CEO Willy Walker, in a statement.
“But just like in our financing business, once we built a defendable market position in multifamily investment sales, we planned to move into other asset classes. Jay Morrow’s deep knowledge of the hospitality industry, transaction track record, and leadership capabilities make him the perfect person to lead this expansion for our company.”
The Maryland-based firm said that the hospitality sector is seeing strong demand from urban markets thanks to business and leisure travel activity. In some metro areas, daily rates are even higher than pre-pandemic averages. In 2022, annual volume for investment sales in hospitality hit $49 billion, more than triple from the $12.8 billion posted in 2020, according to data cited by Walker.