Creativity and Expertise Power Top-Tier Manhattan Team — RISMedia

Jessica Cohen was 21 in 1999 when she bought her first tiny studio apartment in New York’s upper west side for $93,000. A pre-med student tired of sharing a small walk-up rental with roommates, she scraped together the down payment to purchase the property that would launch both her investment journey and a laudable career in real estate.

“I was still in grad school, paying off loans and working long hours at a health club,” she said. “But at long last I had my privacy, and the payment was cheaper than rent.”

The daughter of an architect who taught her a thing or two about spaces, Cohen went to work as a pharmaceutical rep after college and set out to renovate her studio to make the most of its small square footage. When she sold it three…