A classic Yiddish trope distinguishes between a schlemiel and a schlimazel. A schlemiel is the guy who spills the soup. A schlimazel is the guy he spills it on. Now imagine being a double schlimazel in New York real estate.

Real estate is so capital intensive. If you really live financing event to financing event, you can find yourself when the capital markets are closed, as they have been for 2-3 years for the most part, in a bit of a pickle. 🥒

Did you see the Buff Dog’s quote? He said, “in 94 years I've met a lot of admirable people and not-so-admirable people. And I would put Tom Cousins at the top of any list of people I admire.”

This week on The Promote Podcast, we dive into the scarcely believable liquidity:net worth ratio of the late Jacob Chetrit, and how his estate’s become the battleground for some of New York’s spiciest lenders. We then break down the outsized life & career of seminal Atlanta developer Tom Cousins: skyline-shaper, quail hunter, Ted Turner lender, Buffett buddy – a real Man in Full. And finally, we chop it up on BXP’s spec (or is it?) office bet at 343 Madison Ave. Listen on Spotify here, YouTube here or Apple Podcasts here. To reach our devoted audience of CRE insiders, reach out here.

When law firms implode because the principal gets mired in scandal, scores of talented solicitors get displaced. In Big Law, think of Dewey & LeBoeuf. Closer to the ground, there’s Nussbaum & Lowinger, which abruptly shuttered this Jan. following allegations of escrow fraud. Mark Nussbaum, the firm’s founder & chief dealmacher ™ , is facing charges of grand larceny. The shutdown sent its lawyers scrambling, but for one particular attorney, it must have felt like the recurrence of a nightmare. That’s Benjamin Fish, who spent 13Y at Brooklyn-based Stein Farkas & Schwartz before joining Nussbaum in ‘15, per LinkedIn. It’s easy to understand the jump – Nussbaum’s shop, as The Promote has chronicled, was the place to be, at the nexus of much of the rampant dealmaking being done nationally by the Five Towns, Brooklyn and Lakewood crew. In ‘21, Fish left the Nussbaum pond for a spot at Wisnicki Neuhauser. Those in the legal world probably know what happened next.

In ‘22, that firm’s principal, Robert Wisnicki, resigned from the bar, amid an investigation into improper use of escrow accounts. (The following year, Wisnicki pleaded guilty to operating an $18.8M Ponzi scheme stemming from escrow shenanigans, and was later sentenced to 78 mos in prison.) So Fish returns to Nussbaum’s firm, hoping for a fresh start… Zero indications he’s implicated in any of the mess, it should be said, and he’s now started his own shop. Still, you gotta feel for the guy. 🍲🍲

When The Promote broke the news Monday that Adam Neumann’s splashy new venture Flow (“It’s a feeling”) was stepping into the Chetrit Group’s megaproject on the Miami River, we said: “How the final capstack will shake out is anybody's guess.” Flow has since confirmed that it is indeed in the mix, and its release Tuesday provides more deets: A partnership between Flow, frequent collaborator Canada Global (Asaf Touchmair, Barak Rosen) and Cypriot-Israeli billionaire Yakir Gabay’s Yellowstone will buy 60% of the development for $106M, while the Chetrits will retain a 40% stake. Publicly traded Canada Global and Yellowstone will each hold 23% of the project when the recap is settled, the companies told JPost, while Flow will hold 14%. Now, what exactly those stakes entail remains fuzzy; The Promote’s been told that at least some of Gabay’s action is pref. On the debt side, TASE filings show that the parties landed a $350M refi for the project’s first phase, a 54-story, 632-unit tower that’s nearly complete. The lender wasn’t disclosed, but per a LinkedIn announcement by Galaxy Capital, Henry Bodek’s scrappy debt shop, it was a bridge loan provided by Madison Realty Capital, the same lender that gave Chetrit a $310M construction loan on the project in ‘21 and kicked in an add’l $30M mezz last year. Madison will get repaid $22M as part of the recap, and will also receive prepaid interest on its debt.

The Governor: We generally fine a prisoner all his possessions.
Cervantes: All of them?
The Governor: It's not practical to take more. - Man of La Mancha

Zohran Mamdani’s rapid march to City Hall is generally being perceived as a full-blown crisis by NYC CRE moguls of all stripes (catch up here, here, and on the pod here). But at least one group sees the crisis as a sweet marketing opportunity.

Apartment mega-REIT UDR is putting a 5-building rental package on the sale/recap market via Newmark, and the listing language specifically calls out the portfolio’s insulation from Mamdani’s scariest (for CRE) campaign proposal, which is to freeze the rent (not directly, but via crusading RGB appointments 🧊) on the city’s 1M RS apartments. “With no exposure to income-restriction and minimal impact from Rent Guidelines Board limitations, the portfolio benefits from robust, market-driven rent growth across all assets,” reads the listing, per TRD. 4/5 buildings are free-market, while the 5th has an OG 421a agreement which would let an owner raise rents by 47% before the rent ceiling is hit. UDR, which bought the 710-unit portfolio w/ MetLife from Larry Gluck/Chetrit in ‘12 for $635M (≈ $900K/ 🚪 ), is hoping to fetch $500M (≈ $700K/ 🚪 for it.

I’ve been to TONS of CRE conferences. Sweaty palms, metallic business cards, coffee unfit to serve at Sing Sing. But Reconvene, a REPE conference hosted by Moses & Simran Kagan each Sept. in Santa Monica, was different: There was heaps of thought and care put into making sure you could actually spend time w/ relevant folks deep in the weeds of the biz. So I was honored when Moses asked me to host a breakout session on “How to Build an Actionable Audience” at this year’s edition. I’ll be breaking down, in detail & w/ real-world examples, how CRE players can up their game by understanding (and finessing) the media, and how they can develop an audience that can actually lead to capital & deals. If you’re interested in coming to SoCal for it, get $750 off your ticket by going here & using the code “HITEN2025” ☀🏄