Real Estate is in his blood.
Jay Luchs, 31, a Potomac native whose father was the Luchs in real estate company Shannon & Luchs, had been around the business from a young age.
“Growing up around real estate gave me the interest,” Luchs said.
Luchs is now working for Insignia/ESG, a commercial real estate services provider. While the company has offices around the country, Luchs works in their Los Angeles office. “I moved to LA for what should have been a summer and ended up staying here,” Luchs said.
Before long he found himself working in the business that he had grown up in.
Luchs has since worked on some major deals. In early April, Luchs and his company represented Tommy Hilfiger when they leased their Rodeo Drive location to Brooks Brothers, which is scheduled to open this September.
Those that know him are not surprised. “In the back of his mind, I think he always knew that’s what he would be doing,” said longtime friend Andrew Schwartzberg. “He was born and bred to be in the real estate business.”
“It’s three or four generations that his family’s been involved in real estate,’ said Potomac resident Henson Moore who has known Luchs for over 25 years.
Luchs started out interning for some real estate companies. He would walk around to different properties and look for those, which would be suitable for different retail companies. “Canvassing buildings is what you call it,” he said.
The Hilfiger deal, estimated at more than $15 million, will create an anchor on one end of one of the world’s most famous shopping districts.
“For this town, it was a real big deal,” Luchs said.
In the past year, Luchs has also brokered deals to bring other high-end retail companies to Rodeo Drive and the sale of a large shopping center in Palm Desert, Calif.
Luchs attended Bullis for a few years before transferring to Pomfret in Conn. He then went on to study rhetoric and communications at the University of Virginia. “It was basically communications,” he said.
Shannon & Luchs’ residential sales division was sold to Weichert Realtors in 1993 and the commercial brokerage and property management divisions were sold to Polinger Company. That division is now known as Polinger Shannon & Luchs.
Schwartzberg is not surprised by Luchs’ success as a broker. “He knows what makes sense for both sides,” he said. “He’s very charismatic.”
Luchs has the right temperament to be a successful broker, Moore said. “He’s somebody that would move easily between buyers and sellers,” Moore said. “He has just the right kind of personality.”
Even from the other side of the country, Luchs keeps up with Washington’s real estate market. He noted that in his area of expertise, Washington, along with Southern California and New York, top the list for desirability. “The buyers that I deal with still have DC high on their target list,” he said. “There are a lot of long-term leases in well located office buildings,” he said.
In spite of his successes on the West Coast, Luchs’ voice became a bit wistful as he reminisced about the town where he grew up.
“We used to go to Potomac Pizza all the time,” he said. “I really have a love for Potomac and DC.”