If you’ve sold real estate for long enough, you’ll have come across a bevy of deals where your client took a pass (against your advice) when they should have pulled the trigger. The ones that got away. The property they should have bought still haunts them. Missed opportunities – but not life-changing. I can think of at least 50 times this happened to clients of mine.
Then there are the deals that have changed careers and generated wealth on a scale very few will ever know. A once-in-a-generation opportunity so sweet they change the trajectory of the lives of the people around them and the industry as a whole. I am fortunate to have successfully represented three clients where one deal changed their lives. These deals created a legacy and wealth that have allowed them to forever march to the beat of their own drum.
But then, there are those deals that got away. The missed opportunities will keep someone up at night knowing that they could have done it. They should done it – but they fucking didn’t. Opportunities I presented to clients that were no-brainers – and they passed.
I have spent most of my career becoming intimately familiar with Manhattan. Most specifically, downtown. It’s where I went to school, tended bar, played gigs, worked, hustled, lived, rented apartments, sold townhouses, and cut my teeth. I pride myself on knowing the neighbors and this market as well as anyone. I also have a very good idea of where the market is heading at any given time. There have been times when I have known to my core that the opportunity I presented to my client was a low risk with homerun potential. The deal may have seemed too good to be true – but it wasn’t. Having worked on many pioneering projects in neighborhoods that hadn’t yet come into their own, I experienced firsthand the evolution of downtown going from an affordable community to some of the world’s most expensive residential real estate. I’ve handled groundbreaking luxury residential projects in The Bowery, West Chelsea, SoHo, NoMad, Tribeca, and Hudson Square. All successful. So, downtown is my place, and I absolutely know a killer deal when I see it.
There have been few occasions in my career when I presented a life-changing “no-brainer” deal to clients – and they passed. This is the brief story of one of them...
In 2010, on my search for development sites and opportunities, I identified a beast of a building that was being grossly underutilized...in a neighborhood that had not yet arrived. The building was sitting vacant and had the mass and scale to define the area. Sandwiched between Hudson Square and The West Village, The old St. John’s Terminal building had been owned since 1962 by Eugene Grant. I found his phone number and set up an in-person meeting. Knowing that buying a site like this would take serious cash, I brought in someone very close to me. Someone extremely wealthy. Someone in real estate.
We all sat down in Eugene’s office, which consisted of a desk, a few chairs, a piano, and we talked. I immediately liked him. We connected over our shared love for the arts and the history of music in New York City. Often (although it seems less these days), deals are made first because of a human connection and then, comes the acceptable financial terms. This was one of those times. Surrounded by cathedral ceilings and empty warehouse space, we discussed his history, the building, and what it would take for him to sell this property. I structured a deal where my client could have purchased the site for less than $100M. This, to me, was a no-brainer based on the sheer volume and scale of the space. The upside was immense. After hours of trying to educate my client, pulling out the little hair I had left, and trying to persuade him how incredible this opportunity was, my billionaire client passed. He didn’t spend much time below 14th Street, but I hoped that he trusted my insight and intuition enough to commit. He didn’t – and it cost him.
Now I’ve know two types of billionaires. Those who take the wealth they have and look to grow it and those who spend their lives looking to protect it. I don’t know about you, but I don’t enjoy watching a football team play to not lose. But I digress...
A few years later, the site sold. (For more than $100M).
Last week, Google announced it would be purchasing the site from the current owner for $2.1Bn. That’s $2,100,000,000.
It is the largest commercial purchase in the United States since the pandemic. It is also an excellent endorsement for downtown New York City.
Congratulations to all of those involved in this deal, and more importantly, to those who had the balls to execute it.
Let’s do this!
-Shaun