John E. Gilmore IV is a managing director in the multifamily finance group at Walker & Dunlop, where he leads a five-member team that helped finance the construction or preservation of 8,000 affordable housing units last year.
Throughout the course of his career, he has closed more than 100 multifamily transactions that have helped to create and renovate more than 22,000 units, totaling more than $2 billion of debt originations.
Graduating from Morehouse College with a degree in finance and a minor in economics, Gilmore was drawn to real estate after being intrigued by Blackstone’s big acquisition of Equity Office Properties and other major deals from that time.
He soon joined KeyBank, where he held different positions in the income property, asset recovery, and private equity groups. He was also introduced to affordable housing and found he liked working on the complicated transactions.
“You work closely with other stakeholders in the deals, and you’re trying to solve a problem,” Gilmore says. “The problem is not necessarily that the deal metrics don’t work. The problem is there is a lack of affordable housing in the country. We’re trying to solve for a market need that has broader effects on our overall economy.”
He rose to a senior vice president in the community development and investment group at KeyBank Real Estate Capital before joining Walker & Dunlop in 2018.
Gilmore, 38, serves on the Mortgage Bankers Association’s Affordable Rental Housing Advisory Council, the Urban Land Institute Affordable & Workforce Housing Product Council, and the board of the National Housing & Rehabilitation Association. He’s also a member of the Real Estate Executive Council, an organization committed to advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion in the commercial real estate industry.
Based in New York, Gilmore and his wife have two young children.
