real estate

  • 09 Aug 2010 at 2:30 PM

How To Convince A Hedge Fund Manager Not To Track Dirt All Over The Floor Of Your Open House

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Prudential Douglas Elliman broker Darren Sukenik has rules for people who come to his open houses: have the cash to buy what he’s selling, don’t waste his time, and do not bring god knows whatever is on your shoes into this apartment. In order to ensure prospective buyers abide by commandment number three, Sukenik typically insists people either take off their shoes before entering or cover them with “surgical booties.” Explaining his rationale, he told the Times, “[These] apartments are precious…you want to make it feel like a jewel box. You wouldn’t wear construction boots in a jewel box.”

Usually, people play by Sukenik’s rules. There is one group of people, however, who’ve brought some friction to the table.

Mr. Sukenik said that in the past, some buyers, especially hedge fund executives who view it “humbling” to bare their feet, have angrily stormed out.

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  • 05 Aug 2010 at 1:33 PM

Buy The House Tainted Only By Michael Jackson’s Death And Not Of Other Stuff

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Have you gotten started on your list of treats to buy with 2010′s year-end bonus? In need of some inspiration? Why not consider the house Michael Jackson was in when he bit the big one? Continue reading »

  • 04 Aug 2010 at 12:12 PM

Here’s The House That Anecdotes About John Mack Telling Tim Geithner To Go F*ck Himself Built

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Andrew Ross Sorkin is moving to the Upper West Side! Curbed reports ARS put his book royalties toward a co-op on West 79th Street, last sold in 2004 for $1.85 million, listed at $2.295 million this time around, and for which he and Lady Sorkin paid $2.315 million. At left, the room Lloyd will stay in when he spends the night.

Related: “Tell him to get fucked,” Mack said of Geithner. “I’m trying to save my firm.”

  • 19 Apr 2010 at 1:51 PM

Sleep Where Shia LaBeouf (Pretended To) Hath Slept, For $13 Million

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In 2003, an unnamed 47-year old “financial services pro” bought a 6,250 square foot apartment in the Flatiron district. Recently he’s been thinking about putting it on the market, having decided that the fact that an actor (who once shared a sandwich with a couplea Goldman Sachs employees) spent a couple days there will really up the resale value of the place. Continue reading »

  • 10 Mar 2010 at 12:00 PM

Buy The House Millions In Stolen Bonus Money From RBS Greenwich Capital Built

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Dreaming Big

A few weeks ago, we had a little chat about James Glover, the RBSGC managing director who, being pretty ticked about the subpar compensation situation for the past few years, decided to help himself to a bonus (he did so by having junior employees submit wires that would normally go to a counterparty to pay for trades, and then approving them to, instead, go to his personal account). Unfortunately, G-Love’s genius plan, which went on for months, was found by the damn chippies running the place and their infernal “internal controls.” They escorted him out of the building and turned the matter over to “law enforcement.” A lot of people back at the ranch were pretty miffed about what happened, especially on the legacy Greenwich Capital side (where The Glove worked for many years), because they apparently felt like it gave the RBS people ammo to throw it back in their faces, and somehow hurt the argument that “GC employees are better than everyone else” at the palace on I-95. But they may have been judging too harshly! It turns out Jimbo had a really good reason for “stealing” the money (if you want to put that sheen on it). Beyond the fact that he was miffed about the bank taking away cash bonuses last year, Glover had just built a nine-bedroom, five-bath ski house in Windham, NY (we’d previously been told it was Vermont), which he couldn’t *exactly* really afford (but if one of you can, it’s now on the market for $1.1 million). The other reason G-Love made it rain without permission was that he had a dream. A dream to build ski houses for everyone. Greenwich Time reports:

Many also knew about [Glover's] dream to build beautiful luxury mountain homes in his favorite ski town, Windham, N.Y. Glover has a second home he shares with his sister, Janet Glover, in Windham. But just three weeks ago, after his separation from RBS, he put the home up for sale. A Windham neighbor told Greenwich Time they were surprised he was going to sell the house considering he just finished an addition. The nine-bedroom, five-bath ski house is appraised for around $800k and listed at $1.1 million. Glover’s neighbor and local Realtor, Carol Shaw, told Greenwich Time she thinks he’s priced it to sell right away. You see, in June 2008 Glover took out a very large building loan and security agreement against the house and another piece of land in Windham from Port Chester-based USA Bank. Building loans are typically due in 18 months to two years and the pressure to pay this one off was mounting. If not paid off on time, the Glovers could risk losing their home and other Windham real estate investment. Glover had partnered up with Thomas Poelker, a builder in the upstate New York resort community, to develop a luxury subdivision near the Windham ski resort. According to people familiar with the transaction they bought the undeveloped 75 acres of land for around $1 million a few years ago. It was subdivided into 9 lots, a road was built into the area, and one 10,000 square foot spec house is under construction.

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  • 16 Feb 2010 at 10:10 AM

Sleep Where Ken Lewis Hath Slept

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Picture 149.pngIn the market for a place to call home in Charlotte, North Carolina? Want a place filled with memories and a wet bar where many a Boone’s cocktail was stirred? Fantabulous news– Ken Lewis is trying to sell his house. The 7517 Morrocroft Farms abode comes with 4 bedrooms, five fireplaces, a patio, a porch, a private pond for reflection time (“is this Merrill thing a good idea or a great idea?”), marble floors, and surround sound, all for the extremely reasonable price of $4.5 million. No one else has lived there (the place was “custom made” for Lewis in 1995), so you won’t have to wonder who left the vomit stains on the rug in the master bath, which is comforting. The listing also comes with a handy mortgage calculator and we’re told Countrywide CEO-cum-Bank of America butler Angelo Mozilo would be happy to sit down with you and talk options.

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  • 12 Feb 2010 at 4:21 PM

Raj Rajaratnam Needs A Place To Crash In The City

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Picture 146.pngRaj Rajaratnam (and lady friend Danielle Chiesi) know that there is “not even a chance” they will do one day in jail, because they’re innocent, and didn’t do anything wrong. Given. Still, Raj-Raj has to pay some lawyers to prove it, and representation does not come cheap. That presumably has nothing to do with the Galleon founder recently selling his 60 Sutton Place South apartment, for $1.575 million. He could’ve needed to free up the cash for a lot of things, like the money to pay a few more analysts to be tased, but this time with an even more powerful gun, and to hire actors for his annual April Fool’s Day joke (last year it was it was a dwarf pretending to be the Galleon’s latest “small-cap” stocks analyst; this year is anyone’s guess!). In any event, while the big man will probably be spending most of his time up at the house in Greenwich, he will need a place to stay when he’s too drunk to make the trip home. Someone should help a brother out.