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Your Commercial Real Estate Insider guide. From profiles of the biggest dealmakers to skyline-shaping transactions, we bring you the deals, breakdowns and war stories that move the market — for insiders, by insiders. From bad-boy guarantees to CMBS tranche warfare to syndicator sins, we cover it all.
Each week, The Promote Podcast explores three of the most interesting and consequential stories in CRE, taking you well beyond the headlines and into the heart of the action. Hosted by the award-winning “Bard of CRE,” Hiten Samtani, founder of ten31 media and author of The Promote newsletter, along with no-BS institutional insider Will Krasne. Also check out our 3x/week newsletter for industry insiders at https://www.thepromote.com/
Hiten Samtani (00:03)
I feel like on this podcast, we often ask a lot of questions we're not supposed to be asking.
Will Krasne (00:07)
such as, returns matter for fundraising? They do not.
Hiten Samtani (00:12)
Well, that and also more human ones such as if I work hard and make tens of billions of dollars in real estate, will it be enough to ensure that my son isn't a scammer?
Will Krasne (00:21)
Poet Donald Hall once wrote, baseball is fathers and sons, but baseball has got nothing on real estate. We're doing this. Let's go.
Hiten Samtani (00:40)
Welcome back to the Promote Podcast, your insider guide to the money and mania of the CRE markets. I'm Hiten Samtani
Will Krasne (00:45)
And I'm Will Krasne.
Hiten Samtani (00:48)
This week, we asked the taboo question about New York office to residential conversions. Do the numbers work? There's been enough distress from some of the OGs that it warrants that question. We then look at how a single man can drive pricing across product types and markets if that man owns a fast fashion powerhouse. And finally, we go a little bit tabloid to talk about the case of David Bren, the embattled son of real estate tycoon, and I really mean tycoon, Donald Bren. We promise there's some real talk in
Couple things we absolutely love when someone listens to the pod and then hits us up with some insider nugget on the thing we discussed. We got something tasty on the Veritas story recently from a listener. This is what it's all about people. Please, please keep.
Will Krasne (01:30)
And a reminder to check out the Promote Insider, our premium tier for CRE content that just launched, we highly recommend you check it out.
Hiten Samtani (01:37)
He'll debut
as called Confessions of a Battlescar GP. So now he's really, really keen that you sign up and check it out.
Will Krasne (01:42)
Absolutely. I more validation. And brands. If you want to get in front of our audience of CRE movers and shakers, the folks making the news, hit us up at partnerships at thepromote.com.
Hiten Samtani (01:52)
CRA is very much aware of your success on your wrist kind of industry, so it's a pretty good audience to market to.
Let's get started. You have a hulking New York office building in sore need of resurrection. There's a pretty, pretty good market for that.
Will Krasne (02:10)
There's one guy who's been running around and he's been seen as the silver bullet for all of your depreciation recapture problems.
Hiten Samtani (02:17)
We're talking Nathan Berman of Metro Loft Management. Nathan had a lot of success, I want to say in the 90s and 2000s with 421G. So he converted a lot of FIDI's office stock into apartments and did incredibly well there. And now he's back at it again. We've talked a lot, I mean, just more broadly about New York's affordable housing crunch. It's over supply of let's call it class B and class sort of old class A buildings. And here comes a guy who's done a lot of conversion jobs.
and everyone's just throwing money at him. However, there's probably a couple questions we need to ask given what's recently happened.
Will Krasne (02:51)
That's one of these things where on the surface everything looks great. These projects are getting done. They're getting leased up. They're getting huge construction loans. They're getting financed. then you think, go back to the first ones and be like, did that get given back to the lender? Is everything cool?
Hiten Samtani (02:58)
They're getting fined.
kosher?
It's definitely a very timely question because billions of dollars is flowing into funding this asset class. And every couple of weeks, you see a new trend piece. The former Pfizer digs in Midtown received a $720 million loan from Madison Realty Capital. And it's just one of many massive, massive nine figure loans that are coming from private credit for this new, I guess, budding asset class.
Will Krasne (03:26)
Yeah, I mean, the debt markets are awash with liquidity in no small part due to the private credit market exploding. But specific to this asset class, my comparado, good friend of the pod, former guest, he posted about this on LinkedIn, where he said that office values again, he's seeing them down 50 % and people are not marking these loans appropriately. And it's been a huge problem in a lot of these gateway markets. Office to resi conversion has been one of the ways
Hiten Samtani (03:38)
Run to the pot.
Will Krasne (03:53)
people have been able to get out of it. And the other thing too about these buildings is that you can't just give it back to the lender because in a lot of cases, you fully depreciated this. You've owned it for a long time. So you give it back, you say, okay, I've taken my basis out five times over and refis and cashflow and everything's kosher. Next April, the tax man's like, not so fast, my friend. Well, if this is it, old boy, I hope you don't mind if I go out speaking to Kings.
So one of the ways that these deals work is you contribute the asset and it's not a taxable event. you also then get a re-stepped up basis because you're spending a huge amount of capex to convert these things.
Hiten Samtani (04:31)
This is why you've seen a lot of the old families that are stuck with some of these buildings, the Rudens, the Silversteins, et cetera, are now tying up with Berman and others to re, let's say, vivify these assets.
Will Krasne (04:42)
Because it's a specific skill set. can't just, if you've been in development, this is different than that. And it's not even just the construction part of it. It's how do you think about floor plans? How do you think about light?
Hiten Samtani (04:51)
It's a messy, messy job and it's very, very expensive to build out. The reason we're talking about it now is not because of this giant trend of office to Rezzi. That's been very well covered. What I think has been less well covered is that there is some serious distress in this pocket. So 20 Broad Street is the latest casualty. This is a close to 500,000 square foot property, lower Manhattan. Berman converted it into 533 rentals. The equity's gone now. The equity's gone completely. The Mez lender has taken it over.
And check this out, when asked who that lender was, Nathan Berman told Cranes, I've put it out of my head. That's what he said.
Will Krasne (05:26)
It's like a confession of a shopaholic when she doesn't want to look at her credit card bill.
Hiten Samtani (05:32)
We're not sure who the lender is because it hasn't been identified, but unless something has changed behind the scenes, it's most likely our friends from a theme.
Will Krasne (05:39)
And what's interesting too is that 20 Broad by all means was a success. They leased it up. It was very highly occupied and the cap stack was the issue. But I want to expand on your point about new construction versus... I was going to say double click. I got to stop. I'm sorry. And I want to expand upon that point because floor plans in the actual product has a huge amount of variance in what rents you can get. The same built next door to each other can have...
Hiten Samtani (05:51)
You were gonna say double click weren't you?
Will Krasne (06:08)
very different rents for the same square footage depending on the floor plans. And it's one of these things where consumers, what they say in Congress about pornography, like you know it when you see it. You can't necessarily say why this is worse or better, it just feels better. That difference can be huge. I mean, you can have 850 square foot apartments that feel meaningfully smaller or meaningfully larger depending on how they're laid out. And if you're doing new construction, for the most part, you can really set floor plans in a way that makes sense. Whereas on these conversions,
Hiten Samtani (06:35)
You're kind of locked in a little bit. Yeah.
Will Krasne (06:37)
Yeah, you're dealing with a handy dealt because in a lot of cases you have interior stairwells, interior elevator banks that you can't really move in an economical way. So you have to work around that and then you've got to maximize the light. Good friend of the pod, good guy guarantee. One of his hobby horses is you don't need windows and bedrooms, you know, and that would make everything lot easier from a zoning perspective.
Hiten Samtani (06:56)
I think on this 120 broad, I want to dive into the cap stack a bit because it's super interesting. So in 2019, Athene comes in. Athene, as we've talked about, is the insurance arm of Apollo, and they seemingly want to fund every deal in the universe right now, right? They came in in 2019, they provided about $250 million in takeout financing. That's a loan basis of, mas o menos, $470,000 a door. This loan retired a senior from OZK and $83 million in Mez from Brookfield, according to published reports.
So my sense is that it's a theme that's taken over, but again, we don't have confirmation of this. The new owner, whoever it is, has paid down $25 million of the senior debt and extended the loan to 2027. Now, if it is a theme, it's obviously a theme negotiating with the theme, which is gonna be a good time.
Will Krasne (07:42)
Yeah. talking to me? Well, I'm the only one here. 470 units, a real debt basis. I mean, you need, what, 700, 800 a unit on an appraised value to just sort of make that work.
Hiten Samtani (07:54)
Berman was a little bit flippant about this. just said, it was over-leveraged, that's all.
Will Krasne (07:58)
the guy who had a stroke his brain just stopped working and it's fine. Like what are you talking about? Like that's the whole thing.
Hiten Samtani (08:04)
This isn't the first casualty. You'll recall that at nearby 180 water, Berman's hanging on basically by a hope note and a prayer.
Will Krasne (08:10)
And it's the same thing, like the leasing is going pretty well from an occupancy perspective too, but it's just, can you get the rents to justify the death report?
Hiten Samtani (08:18)
He
defaulted on a $265 million loan, then he did Rescue Capital. And in Cabin, two of the most interesting players in the market. One is Century Realty, which is run by the brothers Mamroute, Alan and Joe. And the other one is 60 Gilder's, Kevin Chisholm, former Savannah guy. He's buying up everything right now. It's super discounted.
Will Krasne (08:37)
60 yielders famously bought up lot of Soho retail with Carlyle back in the early 2010s.
Hiten Samtani (08:43)
Didn't go so well. This is the bleaker and all.
Will Krasne (08:46)
They recently bought a huge office condo at Metro Tech. Yeah, and then have been raising money and bought
Hiten Samtani (08:54)
this. I've been told the best way to think about Chisholm is like a poor man's David Werner. What he's really good at is tying up the deal, but then the real money comes from another partner like the Sentry guys. What I like about 180 Water, I put this in the promote, but did you catch the LinkedIn post? There were kind of two dueling.
Will Krasne (09:09)
did. This was incredible. Was it a sale? Was it a recap? Who knows?
Hiten Samtani (09:13)
According to Sentry, it was a recap. According to 60 Guilders, it was a purchase. I think they rejigged the LinkedIn post a little bit later. Maybe to spare Berman's feelings. What seems evident is that the equity, Berman's equity is wiped here.
Will Krasne (09:27)
Yeah, he's definitely wiped. think he got some sort of hope note potentially. Maybe. But I think the bigger story here though is that Officer Rezzi isn't immune to all of the other laws of gravity that surround real estate. Like I like to joke like, I'm investing in Sunbelt markets with positive growth trajectory and pro-business governments. Wow. What a thought. Like you've solved investing. Officer Rezzi, like you didn't solve investing. You still have to deal with, are you over levered? Does the product work?
can you lease it at the rents you hit.
Hiten Samtani (09:57)
biggest
change has been there is a lot of momentum for fundraising, right? Everyone is pouring in and we talked about private credit is just pumping billions of dollars into this asset class. The other one that jumped out at me was Jeff Garale, who's partnering with Rockwood on 25 water, which is a massive thousand unit plus conversion. got money from BDT and MSD, who I know you're fascinated with. Yes. And Apollo and Apollo REIT as well provided the financing on that. Their loan basis was just under 500 bucks a foot. Then they landed.
over half a billion dollars on that one.
Will Krasne (10:28)
We've talked about a lot last week if you have an institutional or non-institutional asset class that becomes institutionally financeable, like you're cooking with gas and like this is as good an example as there is, that you can write massive checks into it with real sponsors and that seems great, but the problem is that you can still be over levered because if you're not getting great product, it's not a new dev. It's just never going to be.
Hiten Samtani (10:52)
I think the thinking from some of the old families is we're going to, as you said, contribute this to some sort of JV, et cetera. And then we're going to kind of stay in the deal a little bit. So we have a ringside seat to how this process works. Cause I reckon that down the road, I might have to do this with 10 more of my buildings, 20 more of my buildings. So that's the thinking. But then I'm thinking about like a Michael Rudin seeing what's happening with Nathan Berman and knowing that his project is part of this Berman mix here and thinking, okay.
Do the numbers really pencil out? I think Van Barton, who's the other very big player in this asset class, has had quite a bit of success. just refied, Brookfield called it a cash neutral refinancing of 160 water. They're converting the Archdiocese's former headquarters into a bunch of units.
Will Krasne (11:36)
You can't mention Archdiocese of New York without one of my favorite stories. Please go read the long form about Raffaello Follari, the former Mr. Anne Hathaway. I haven't read these. Just one of the best stories out there. I want it on tape. We'll put it in the show notes. Everyone read it and then we'll talk about
Hiten Samtani (11:52)
I
actually really want to start a promote book club. on that one, they just landed alone a $250 million loan. The loan basis was just over 600 bucks a foot. So again, these are pretty steep targets to hit. Guess who the lender was there.
Will Krasne (12:06)
Was it a theme?
Hiten Samtani (12:08)
It wasn't a theme. It was Todd Bailey. Box. From Eldredge. It's just the box.
Will Krasne (12:10)
gosh, of course.
Think about these from a per vote basis. What are those worth as office? 400? 500? So you're getting debt basis for a new asset class that's worth more than the existing building would trade for right now. And what are the office rents for those buildings versus like what are the residential rents? Like think of it this way, office rents are what? I don't know, 80 bucks a foot. 80 bucks a foot is a huge number on the residential side right now.
Hiten Samtani (12:37)
like
the Bermans of the world or the Van Bartens of the world, there's also the fee aspect, right? Because we've talked about real estate isn't just about the deals, it's about the fun you have on the way and the fees you make on the way.
Will Krasne (12:47)
construction management, property management. I don't know if they do in-house property management, but there's a lot of fees to be had on projects of this scale. The other thing, though, I want to talk about a little bit is just the halo of this.
If you're seen as one of the groups that can do it, then all of the money floods to you, all the projects flood to you.
Hiten Samtani (13:07)
You
just become Mr. Fix-It, right? I think this is a little bit similar to that.
Will Krasne (13:10)
Yeah,
if you're one firm that has a specialty in software and then everyone just wants to give you a bunch of money to go do a bunch of software deals and like then the market gets over saturated, that's sort of where we are. But Nathan Berman, I mean, he has a halo around him. mean, people considered him like someone who could do magic.
Hiten Samtani (13:24)
The Promote called him the Alchemist a few issues or many issues ago before some.
Will Krasne (13:28)
⁓
Maybe it's what turning into the philosopher's stone didn't really come out. None of these things have solved investing. the end of the day, you've got to find a really good risk adjusted yield and find a way to manufacture that. And if you're just creating a new asset class, like the laws of gravity still apply to you.
Hiten Samtani (13:54)
I bought a sweater here in Madrid for 30 bucks. It was from Zara. Speaking of.
Will Krasne (14:00)
Vertically integrated. Manzaro-Tegas family office has been behind a ton of huge bets in past few years in commercial real estate. They've been buying everything from Trophy retail and office in Brickle to the largest Starbucks roasting facility in North America in Manchester, Pennsylvania. They can buy all cash. They're providing certainty. But is this all just a tax dodge potentially?
Hiten Samtani (14:23)
I don't know about that, but I know that they're shaking up the market. Cause when you have a group like your famous line, men with deep pockets come in, they can basically warp pricing in a market very, very quickly. They'll break records. The landmark deal was what Ortega did in 2015, Miami beach, Lincoln road. paid like $370 million. And that is not a number that you see in Miami prior to this. Right. And so suddenly the entire landscape of that market has changed.
Will Krasne (14:47)
You
talk about the landmark transactions that have really shifted, I guess you can call it the Overton window of real estate, I guess, in terms of pricing. Michael Dell buying the penthouse at 157 for $100.4 million. And then you talk about these larger transactions that everyone then comps to because it resets the market higher.
Hiten Samtani (14:59)
100.4
I'm glad you brought up the Michael Dell transaction because there's a transaction that happened just before that one, the previous record, which kind of is a little bit more in line with what we're going to talk about. The previous record was set by Dmitri Rybolovlev, the fertilizer magnate, and it was an $88 million purchase. But the whole idea is that he kind of wanted to overpay because there was some kind of divorce situation happening over there.
Will Krasne (15:29)
Right, that was it was gifted to his daughter. So it out of his estate at 15th Central Park West. I remember this
Hiten Samtani (15:34)
So the reason I bring that up is that because there's sometimes a secondary motive that's not just pure comps and investment in ROI.
Will Krasne (15:41)
We mentioned it at the top this actually might just be like a way to get money out of Spain and away from the tax man
Hiten Samtani (15:48)
I'm sitting in Spain right now and I can tell you that everyone is just talking about the tax man all the time. I swear I was at a real estate conference last week and they were just like, there's no money here. The only game is to get it out. That's it.
Will Krasne (16:01)
That's the reason why Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi have you pay their image rights they get their salary they're like not in Spain they're like in the Isle of Man or Jersey or something but it's the same thing here where Inditex is gonna pay I three and a half billion dollars of dividends this year which my god that's insane and buying property gets it away from the tax man and
There's so many downstream effects of just this one guy saying, you know what, like, let's try to avoid some taxes in our home country. He resets the market in Miami, Pennsylvania.
Hiten Samtani (16:41)
always love when a broker comes in after one of these deals and provides this commentary about, yeah, know, or take as a visionary who's seen this or that. They'll basically apply a narrative after the fact, a real estate narrative after the fact when often as we're talking about it's nothing to do with real estate at
Will Krasne (16:57)
And that narrative gets spread across every investment committee that invests these assets, because I'll tell you, like, how many people...
Hiten Samtani (17:03)
about
Starbucks, right? There was something happening with the Starbucks.
Will Krasne (17:06)
The Starbucks deal, do obviously much smaller transactions in that market, but how many times I've referenced it as a point for more liquidity. It was the largest single asset industrial deal in the country in 2023 in Manchester, Pennsylvania. Everything gets reset off of that. We talk about in real estate, are the vibes good? One guy like this can reset the vibes across the entire top end of the market.
Hiten Samtani (17:30)
This harkens back to the Blackstone Air Communities deal, right? And everyone was like, yeah, this gave us air cover to invest. And I was asking you a few weeks ago, why the fuck does a $10 billion deal done by Blackstone have any bearing on rinky dink deals across the spectrum?
Will Krasne (17:45)
It's all vibes. And it's just about like, can our committee get comfortable with this or that or the other? And having a guy like this splash the pot however the fuck he likes really makes a difference.
Hiten Samtani (17:56)
Stepping
away from fast fashion and into fast furniture. The other big player in the space. Have you ever been to an Ikea? The Ikea guy, you know who I'm talking about. Yeah.
Will Krasne (18:06)
Yes,
we do. The IKEA guy, they've been involved in a bunch of big New York transactions recently.
Hiten Samtani (18:10)
They
the Gary Barnett one, they're in 575th, they're buying or they're co-developing the building with Gary.
Will Krasne (18:15)
How much co are they doing beyond the wire transfer? Is the building getting assembled offsite? Do they have to push a shopping cart across Fifth Avenue to get it there and then assemble everything?
Hiten Samtani (18:29)
I think we should distinguish between deals like the Ortega deal, is very much might be what you're talking about, which is like, I got to park some money somewhere. And deals done by bottom feeders, men with deep pockets, the Namdars, Idan Ofer ⁓ in FIDA is doing something, right? Those are different. think those are like, I have money, I see an opportunity, Rubin Brothers as well, where I have money, I see an opportunity. I think there's tremendous upsides.
Will Krasne (18:53)
No, for sure. It's the difference between being opportunistic and trying to generate returns in and of itself and then having the real estate be a larger part of the larger global empire and have it make sense that way.
Hiten Samtani (19:04)
having grown up in a tax-free country, I think it's gonna take me years and years to appreciate just how big a deal tax is in every investment decision in the US. Like I get it at one level, but I don't spiritually get it. You know what I mean?
Will Krasne (19:18)
Yeah, well, you're about to get a little rant from yours truly here. I don't think that the changes in the tax bill that was passed earlier this year have fully flown through the market. I think you're going to end up seeing more and more of these taxable investors buying real estate because the difference now with 100 % bonus depreciation coming back is so stark between real estate and any other asset class. If you make an average real estate investment and the average investment in the stock market, you can be 300, 400 basis points worse in real estate and still come out ahead post-tax.
Hiten Samtani (19:47)
One of our mutuals was making this case pretty passionately recent.
Will Krasne (19:51)
full-throated defender of this thesis. And I think it's really going to change how pricing works out. One other thing that these types of buyers have in the market is that if they're all cash, they can provide certainty, move more quickly. And it's a lower cost of capital than the AUM goblers. You can see them take down really trophy assets that might otherwise have gone to a Blackstone, a KKR, and Aries.
Hiten Samtani (20:13)
Then I have a final question for you. If you're kind of used to transacting with the Ortegas of the world or the Ingvaras of the world, and then you end up having to deal with at some point with a normal buyer with normal considerations, is there a little bit of a whiplash or adjustment you have to make?
Will Krasne (20:27)
Well, I've never dealt with one of the Ingvars or the Ortegas of the world. I've had one experience sort of like that where I had an all cash buyer buy something where it was the last piece of something they needed and gotta tell you, it's like heroin. It's great.
Hiten Samtani (20:53)
We want to tell you about the Promote Insider. That is our new premium tier that's launching October 15th. And listen, if you want to go even deeper down the CRE rabbit hole, this one's for you.
Will Krasne (21:03)
you.
Hiten Samtani (21:15)
That's right, plus a whole new interview section and so much more. Founding membership start at $240 annually. That's 20 bucks a month. Go to thepromote.com slash upgrade to get started. That's thepromote.com slash upgrade.
There are three Donalds in commercial real estate. There's Trump, there's Don Sofer, RIP, and then there's the really successful one, Donald Brand.
Will Krasne (21:41)
To me, there's really only one because Donald Brand is cut above.
Hiten Samtani (21:44)
Unbelievable. I cannot think of a property owner with more juice in one single city than Donald Brun has in Irvine.
Will Krasne (21:51)
Maybe like Julius Caesar in Rome. Like that's literally what we're talking about.
Hiten Samtani (21:55)
Kind of debatable because Donald Brennan, according to Bloomberg, I think controls 75 % of Irvine's multifamily stock. And by the way, Irvine companies, which is his firm, came back with a correction that said, it's closer to
Will Krasne (22:07)
Yeah, like that's better. It's like the cartel of
Hiten Samtani (22:13)
I'm glad he brought up Caesar because I think of him almost as like the feudal lord of Irvine, which is one of the richest zip codes in the country, by the way. This is not a rinky-dink town.
Will Krasne (22:21)
No,
it's not a cow town. mean, you watch like real housewives at Orange County. It's like adjacent to that. He's routinely considered the richest guy in real estate.
Hiten Samtani (22:29)
Yeah,
I think it was like 17 billion odd is what's declared, but I'm sure there's- Which is way-
Will Krasne (22:33)
Like, as if you were to actually sell everything there, I mean, like, what is the city of Irvine worth? Like, you know, that's sort of the calculations that we're talking about.
Hiten Samtani (22:41)
You don't
get to be a Donald Bren level mogul without being a little bit unusual. Here's something his former employee said.
Every presentation needs to be in his preferred format, 10-point aerial typeface with consistent margins. According to another employee, when Bren visited a department complex at Irvine, he informed the leasing manager that he didn't like the building's exterior and he wanted the cypress trees and birds of paradise lining the front walkway arranged in a different order.
Control-free, get another level man, this guy.
Will Krasne (23:16)
mean, Control Freak about font or investment banking BP, hard to tell. I mean, he's very exacting and he set out this whole town in his image because he has been involved with this one project since the 70s and has taken it through a variety of iterations and has built all of this out over time, all with his internal capital.
Hiten Samtani (23:35)
We're gonna put a couple of articles about Irvine companies in the show notes because it's a fascinating journey, but it is not the focus of this segment here.
Will Krasne (23:42)
It is not. So his son, David Brenn, it's outside of the trees watershed area. So David has allegedly fled to Miami after bilking investors out of more than $2 million.
Hiten Samtani (23:47)
Apple fell a little bit far from the tree in this case.
That's not a massive scam, but I think the reason we wanna talk about it is we talk a lot on the show about how real estate development in the beginning for all projects is really smoke and mirrors, right? And it's about creating an illusion, building a dream, raising money for that dream, and then hopefully realizing that dream for a profit. The three things that kind of basically create comfort for investors, either a track record, I've done this before, here's how it's worked out. It could be skin in the game, I'm investing alongside you, I have as much to lose as you do.
or it could be a famous last name.
Will Krasne (24:30)
The most important thing about being a great real estate investor is to be born into a generational real estate dynasty.
Hiten Samtani (24:37)
I mean, and David Bren definitely won that battle. And so we should back up a little bit. What the fuck is the bunker? I guess the simplest way is think of Soho House and Gildezer had a love child. It would be the bunker.
Will Krasne (24:49)
man, so it's basically a club for cars.
Hiten Samtani (24:53)
It's not just a club for cars. It's an ultra luxury club. Fourteen and a half thousand dollars a month is the membership fee. Yeah. But then you get access to the high life and the fleet of cars, including Bugatti's, Ferrari's, et cetera.
Will Krasne (25:05)
Is this like the place that Harvey Specter went to in the Suits pilot?
Hiten Samtani (25:08)
Exactly that, exactly that.
Will Krasne (25:10)
Perfect. So see, this could have worked. You could have gotten Harvey.
Hiten Samtani (25:13)
And so they were trying to do this at the pretty famous hotel in Beverly Hills. It's called Mr. C's. David was supposed to buy this for 90 million odd dollars and then turn it into this frou frou members club. But there was an amazing anecdote from Chris Rising himself for real estate, Sion, ⁓ son of Nelson, pretty big legend in SoCal. And Chris Rising was looking at partnering with David Brett on this project. David, you know, had these grandiose claims about building this thing, said that he was going to have members such as
Will Krasne (25:40)
Mark Cuban, Larry Ellison.
Hiten Samtani (25:42)
and there was a basketball player as well, wasn't there?
Will Krasne (25:44)
Probably Anthony Edwards. Who knows? Poor Zingus! Even better. The Zinger.
Hiten Samtani (25:47)
Porzingis. ⁓
And even better was LA oil scion August Getty. How about you got a kick out of that one? That's great. Luckily for Chris Rising, he did not invest. There were a lot of other people who got caught up in this. There was a guy called Tony Chen, who unfortunately committed suicide about a year after his investment. So it got pretty dark here and now investors are suing David Brenn, basically saying, yeah, we were cheated out of more than two and a half million dollars.
Will Krasne (26:17)
It's about vision and sales and you can get out over your skis. This thing, I think if you thought about it for two seconds, was completely cockamamie. Very complicated development by someone who apparently hadn't done nothing never, but you can get sucked in by the patina of the name, the purple Lamborghini that he would show up in and all those things.
Hiten Samtani (26:37)
think we should contrast here. So Josh Schuster, who we've talked about before, basically presented the image of success by sharing an office with a very, very well known financial firm, right? And he basically kind of piggybacked off of that address to then create this impression with investors. Here, what David did was just basically say that he was tight with his dad. And kind of if you're tight with Donald Bren, you don't really need too much more. And now there was a line from Chris that I thought was super telling. He presented like he could have picked up the phone and called his father right away.
Anytime I questioned what his relationship was like with his dad, he was always like, it's really good and they're tight and blah, blah, blah.
Will Krasne (27:14)
I don't really know what else to say there. If you have literally the richest person in US real estate as your dad, and you say that there's a good relationship there, what more backing can you ask?
Hiten Samtani (27:29)
You use the words as your dad. When the LA Times that broke the story went to ask Donald Bren for comment about all this, he had 12 words for them. You want to read them?
Will Krasne (27:41)
honestly is like one of the darkest things I've ever read and I'm like literally getting shivers reading it. He said, we do not have a personal or business relationship with this individual. Jesus Christ.
Hiten Samtani (27:48)
It's pretty sad.
It's pretty rough.
Will Krasne (28:01)
The Wii is the darkest. Like not even I.
Hiten Samtani (28:07)
You go through your life, you build this incredibly successful company, you have esteem beyond esteem. Everyone kisses the ring.
Will Krasne (28:16)
Bill Ackman makes his entire Howard Hughes pitch about you. Basically saying, I'm going to do what he did. The guy was really successful.
Hiten Samtani (28:23)
And then you end up with a son who allegedly does shit like this. So it's pretty unfortunate situation. We're not clear where David is. I don't think he pulled a Joe low, but I do think he's in Miami according to the report. I would have picked Dubai. Honestly, Dubai is a better spot for something like this.
Will Krasne (28:38)
Yeah, I think so. But at least you've got the homestead exemption there. So maybe he buys a house. again, not to be flip about this. It's all really dark and really sad.
Hiten Samtani (28:47)
Yeah, it's dark and I think we wanted to talk about it not just because of the tabloid component, which face it is, I mean, it is a ripper of a yarn. I think we want to talk about it because real estate really is about presenting an image, right? Saying you can do something based on something in your past that allows you to do the thing. And in his past, I guess he was just born into the family.
Will Krasne (29:08)
Donald Brenn, the overlord of Irvine, the richest guy in real estate, but at the end of the day, it's all fathers and sons.
Hiten Samtani (29:16)
It's fathers and sons.
That's it for the Promote Podcast this week. The hottest emerging asset class in New York is also quite the hotbed of distress and it bears further examination. Fast fashion and fast furniture titans are pumping their earnings into the get-rich-slow business. And the prodigal son strikes again, but this time the dad's having none of it.
Will Krasne (29:44)
For exclusive content and bonus episodes of this here pod, sign up for the Promotes premium tier at thepromote.com slash upgrade. And please keep writing us those sweet reviews on Apple and sending us a little bit of behind the scenes info. We'd love to hear it. Any sour reviews though, go directly to Henten.
Hiten Samtani (30:01)
Yep,
I'll take him. And I might respond Donald Brenn Also reach out at partnerships at thepromote.com for advertising. That's partnerships at thepromote.com. William, the pleasure is always man. Thank you.
Will Krasne (30:15)
fathers and sons.
Hiten Samtani (30:17)
fathers and sons. We'll see you next week. Ciao.