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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 (00:00)
Real Estate's a game of OPM.
Will Krasne (00:02)
OPM is in other people's money, right?
Hiten Samtani (00:04)
That is correct, but now with private credit, it's also old people's money.
Will Krasne (00:13)
Welcome back to the Promote Podcast, your insider guide to the money and mania of the CRE markets. I'm Wil Krasne
Hiten Samtani (00:18)
And I'm Hiten Samtani
Here's what's on tap this week. Brookfield says mega deals are back, while Blackstone channels Malcolm Gladwell and says we're almost at the tipping point. With institutional LPs feeling less generous, the big money managers are scouring the earth and retirement accounts in middle America for new sources of capital. We then dive into the singular life of Donald Soffer developer, visionary.
Will Krasne (00:37)
in middle America.
Jottsman? Swordsman?
Hiten Samtani (00:47)
A shout out to our sponsor Vesto, which gives CRE players a single, clear point of access for all their bank accounts. More on them in a bit.
Let's start at the intersection of the highest levels of CRE. Brookfield, they deigned to make their new commercial real estate head, his name's Lowell Barron. They made him available for an interview with Bloomberg. And basically, he said, we're edging back to a more normalized rate of transactions. So translation to that is let's go.
Will Krasne (01:20)
Yeah, trying to not manipulate public markets like we're fucking ready. Let's just get back for a second because little Baron is sort of like the new ascendant Wunderkind. Like Ben Brown just he's running from the Columbia Street waterfront to Pro Field Place every day.
Hiten Samtani (01:27)
Exactly.
There's Ben Brown and then there's Connor Teskey who's like way down.
Will Krasne (01:42)
Sorry,
was confusing Konrtesky
Hiten Samtani (01:45)
like,
Connor's the guy, he's like Bruce Flatt's heir apparent. This is just the new Brian Kingston.
Will Krasne (01:50)
I know, but then Ben Brown for a long time was like the new Bruce Flat. He had massive juice.
Hiten Samtani (01:55)
He had juice. It
could be that he kind of somehow upset the robes. Because you know, Brookfield's alumni network basically controls the company.
Will Krasne (02:06)
Yeah,
they have that weird the partners thing that is like absolutely crime. ⁓ I mean, it's like the most crazy setup ever. And I don't understand how anyone gets comfortable with the equity of.
Hiten Samtani (02:11)
It's a frickin' conclave,
Yeah, they practically invented related party transactions. But Lowell Barron, who basically succeeded Brian Kingston as the guy we would care about the most, he has the CRE desk at Brookfield. So what jumped out at you from the interview?
Will Krasne (02:33)
I mean, honestly, was the fact that they're, you know, they're just talking about this sales volume. Like, look, our increase, we did 13 billion this year. We had three the year before, two the year before. Like, how many of those, I think a bunch of them were sold to themselves, I think.
Hiten Samtani (02:46)
That is correct. But that's the Brookfield way, as they say. Yeah, of course. There is one we just chopped it up on a week or so ago, and Starwood bought their triple net machine fundamental.
Will Krasne (02:56)
Yeah, fundamental. yeah, which by the way, thank you for the great feedback listeners.
Hiten Samtani (03:00)
Yeah, that was incredible. Listen, we really appreciate that. This guy came at us with like an incredibly nuanced critique of what we got wrong, which we love and appreciate.
Will Krasne (03:09)
One
thing I would say it all said is like over the last several years there's been a severe lack of liquidity in the market and there haven't been larger transactions trading like that's just not true. The only thing that's been trading or larger transactions.
Hiten Samtani (03:20)
Yeah, like Blackstone Air Communities happened a year and change ago.
Will Krasne (03:23)
Yeah,
Cotera, Lenar, like all the ones we've talked about. So it's just kind of funny. Like, again, you know, we talk a lot about the media spinning the narrative.
Hiten Samtani (03:30)
Like
this is what they do, right? Like this is the new thesis. Everyone's gonna jump on this interview. Everyone did jump on it. These guys know that just by being in front of the press, they're generating news just by saying, hey, we're gonna pick up the phone and talk to you.
Will Krasne (03:43)
What's interesting, I think too, is that they're raising, they raised 16 billion. I'd be interested to see the cadence of how previous fundraisers went because Blackstone famously is like one close. Like it's the most fucking gangster thing ever.
Hiten Samtani (03:55)
What do mean? Like in one, they'll just announce, yeah, we raised $30 billion for Brex or whatever it's called.
Will Krasne (04:00)
done. Yeah. Yeah. Boom. Whereas other groups are like, we're out in the market. It's been 18 months. We're getting like, you know, 80 million from Oregon teachers, like 35 million from South Carolina firefighters. Yeah.
Hiten Samtani (04:13)
dribble and drabble all those releases out, right?
Will Krasne (04:15)
Yeah,
and especially now people there are lot of hung fundraisers out there that have been year two years.
Hiten Samtani (04:21)
you've been talking about that right like well below their targets or just not able to raise it all and then they're looking at strategic alternatives &A in some cases right or selling themselves potentially.
Will Krasne (04:31)
Well,
the problem is, as we said before, is like if you hire for a $10 billion fund, you only raise five, like that's really bad. And if there is no carry, you know, you don't have a big enough asset base to service other people. It's tough. anyway, I, six billion is like a big close, you know, that's a big, that's a big close. But my question would be, I just was wondering how long have they been in the market? And like previously, you know, how long was like the previous three Brookfield vehicles in the market before they closed?
Hiten Samtani (04:57)
So, so Baron made an interesting point about they also like, like most other groups had a lot of reluctance from LPs to kick in money. And the point that he's making is that part of it is like, weren't returning enough money to them and now we've had these big exits and we've been able to kick money back to them, which has helped us raise the next gargantuan sum of money.
Will Krasne (05:17)
mean, it's a great point. Like there hasn't been liquidity in VC, there hasn't been liquidity in PE, and it's been harder and harder to raise money.
Hiten Samtani (05:24)
We should set the scene with a stat. So institutional real estate collectively globally raised about $177 billion in 2024, which seems like a lot, but it's 30 % below the 2021 peak. these guys always have their sights on the next big thing. They were hoping to get in that much money. They're not able to, so they have to get creative.
Will Krasne (05:43)
The other thing I say about Brookfield too, it's not like they're like, we did 13 billion, like what great success, like one, like how good were the returns, two, they've been like giving back office buildings left and right across the country.
Hiten Samtani (05:54)
Maybe the singular theme of this podcast is do returns matter?
Will Krasne (05:58)
No, like they obviously don't. mean, they meant they're binary, right?
Hiten Samtani (06:03)
talked about Carlisle, we've talked about many others.
Will Krasne (06:05)
They matter only insofar as they allow you to raise the next fund. That's the only thing that matters. And how high that is depends on like what firm you are.
Hiten Samtani (06:13)
Yeah, but he did make some other points about, he made a point about distress that I thought was interesting, which people have made before, which is like, hey, you know, we're seeing the asset level distress, but we're not necessarily seeing that distress translate into action, which means a fire sale, a take back, et cetera. Now we're seeing some of that. So he was saying that distress was kind of taking its time seeping through the system.
Will Krasne (06:36)
Wow,
what a unique point that I've never heard from anybody ever before.
Hiten Samtani (06:41)
Have you ever heard it put as eloquently as the following? This moment in time continues to be elongated. That's what he said.
Will Krasne (06:51)
Is that William Carlos Williams running Brookfield Real Estate?
Hiten Samtani (06:55)
So much depends upon a red wheeled barrow. Anyway, so it was a fun story and then a related story would be what Blackstone's up to. So you mentioned, you pinged me this morning and you said, Blackstone juicing up the media machine. So let's talk about it. What's going on?
Will Krasne (07:11)
Blackstone's like, you know, the time is now, we gotta strike while the iron's hot. We're nearly at the tipping point, like, we're gonna be Flashboys.
Hiten Samtani (07:18)
Re-acceleration was their theme of 2024, I believe.
Will Krasne (07:22)
Yeah, maybe a little bit early. That's okay. But no, it's what we talked about with with Cortland last week. Supply demand matters as much for asset allocators as it does like at the actual asset level. If there's not enough good stuff to buy, especially if you've got to put out huge chunks of capital, that means the prices of those good assets are going to go up. And you're seeing that everywhere. Like stuff with a clean story is trading tight. There's not enough stuff that they can go to their LPs with straight face and say, you know,
This is good. We're going to pay up for this. We think this is solid risk adjusted returns. And even Lowell Barron says the same thing. He's like, yeah, we're only going after like the strongest sectors. Like no shit, dude. Sorry, I'm cursing like a storm on this podcast, but.
Hiten Samtani (08:04)
promote podcasts you're okay. Piss, reek and sh-
But I think this is the thing right like they're aware of their position in the industry they're basically are speaking not only for themselves they're pretty aware they're setting the tone for the industry and the media swallows it all up. They were talking about how their CRE portfolio has shrunk a little bit Blackstone but the story had the following it said still the largest portfolio on the planet like there is a fetishization of the size of these guys.
Will Krasne (08:30)
At this point, Blackstone and Brookfield are basically just like the forward assembly line, like putting together the Model T.
Hiten Samtani (08:37)
really
nicely once you said like widgets of risk adjusted returns.
Will Krasne (08:40)
Yeah,
that's they're just making widgets right like it's the ABC Supply Co. The media though gets more and more important with the channel that they're all trying to go to now. Yes, obviously, all these folks who are allocators are like we're trying to be investors like I'm going to write a white paper or like here's our house like anyone who says like I have a house view like this is our house view like those people the media matters but they're like, we got to like come to this independent thought that everyone else
Hiten Samtani (09:06)
We're gonna have our task force and figure this out.
Will Krasne (09:09)
But when you're going to try to market to retail or through 401k is like what matters are like who has the distribution and then like marketing itself to retail and those groups
Hiten Samtani (09:20)
I mean, and by distribution, mean not only kind of mechanisms to raise capital, but also mechanisms to put the messaging out. Right. Which is why John Gray is like killing it on LinkedIn with Daniel. He sat down with the editor in chief of LinkedIn, Daniel Roth. And he talked about like the running videos, obviously, but it was more, more like it's a perfect way for him to stay in the mix with regular folk in a way.
Will Krasne (09:43)
This is not any different than like, Timothy Chalamet going on college game day to promote Complete Unknown. Like, it's the same thing. Like, John Green, look at me, like runs every day, like kind of a dad bod, just like me. Like, I should give Be Reed some money, you know? Like, that's what this is all about. It's like, you have to be everywhere all at once. You can't just show up as a talking head on CNBC anymore.
Hiten Samtani (10:05)
Zooming out, we've been talking a lot about tapping into these new pools of huge capital. We talked a couple pods ago about Grey Star cozying up to RIAs, right? And we said like, this is gonna be, if they can pull it off, you're gonna see a lot more people in this line of business where you're tapping into these pools of capital that have heretofore been not really used on by real estate.
Will Krasne (10:27)
Yeah, let me just say one thing too. Institutions, you know, if you raise a hundred million from an institution and then a hundred million from retail, the group that raises a hundred million from retail, assuming the same performance, will be significantly wealthier than the group from the institution. The institutions are going to beat you up on fees. They're going be incredibly annoying. They're going to acquire tons of back office.
Hiten Samtani (10:49)
Also they have more juice to like litigate
Will Krasne (10:52)
Yeah,
but think of it this way, like you can't run, you know, IR with like Debra sending out a scanned PDF saying like, here's a picture of a unit we renovated. They're going to want a lot more than that.
Hiten Samtani (11:04)
And this is actually hearkens back to something we talked about when we talked about Greenbrook and Carlisle. We talked about like you have to basically set up your organization to be able to cater and speak the language of these mega funds. Yeah, similar kind of thing here.
Will Krasne (11:19)
I don't think what people understand is there's these groups of companies that have been work called DSTs. So Delaware Statute Shore Trusts. So basically if you sell like a little office building and you don't want to go do a 1031 yourself and you don't think you can find a deal, you can send it to one of these companies like Pasco or Bonaventure or there's a million of them, Capital Square. And they'll aggregate all those 1031s and buy like an overpriced multi-deal. And those guys have made.
so much money. I don't think you understand.
Hiten Samtani (11:49)
I do not. mean, I think it's just the distribution is basically that 90 % of the pozoleers.
Will Krasne (11:54)
The fee load is like unbelievable. it's so high, high promotes over like a five and huge upfront fees to account for like the legal and taxes, which is like not that much. there are these groups that no one's ever heard of that have just been buying kind of like assets were all over the place for 30 years where the people are, the founders are worth like billions of dollars. The Pasco guys have like G sixes.
Hiten Samtani (12:17)
So we talked with insurance about how like Apollo with the theme and KKR with global Atlantic and Blackstone, most recently with legal in general, they've a way to, they've basically tapped into new sources of originations for their bets and private credit needs constant fuel and insurance has become a big part of it. We've talked about all that. The more recent one is even more interesting and potentially an even bigger pool of capital. We're talking 401k. $12 trillion.
Will Krasne (12:43)
Company match, baby.
Hiten Samtani (12:46)
$12 trillion is crazy.
Will Krasne (12:48)
Yeah, company match. We're coming for Vanguard, we're coming for Schwab, Fidelity, all the ETFs, private assets, we're coming for you.
Hiten Samtani (12:57)
Yeah, so let's set the scene. So the Trump administration has been a lot more open or has been making a big push to funnel retirement savings into private equity and is trying to set the stage to make that a lot easier. And seeing the writing on the wall, a big, lot of these big money guys, so Blue Owl, Blackstone, KKR, Ares have been setting up relationships with 401k managers. So when this happens, when this goes through, they're going to be able to tap that giant pool of capital.
to then fund private credit bets. And I'm assuming some of those will end up in real estate as well.
Will Krasne (13:31)
100%. mean, I tell you what, like John Gray's next running video is going to be on State Street talking to, you know, Wellington and State Street. ⁓
Hiten Samtani (13:40)
funny you mentioned Wellington the earnings call they announced a product with Wellington that's ready to go
Will Krasne (13:44)
I
know it's but that's what I'm talking about distribution to because like those folks have such the Wellington has State Street all these global 401k providers have so much distribution into all these companies It's like if you're blackstone you deal with one API, know, and go do it They do all your sales for you. I mean, I joked I remember talking with someone a couple years ago I was joking that like blackstone should buy Edward Jones and just turn them into like Blackstone sales university, you know and like that's kind of what they're doing but like a
the higher level, obviously, because if you're Blackstone, like IR for King Abdullah University is a lot different than IR for 401k providers. First of all, it's highly, highly regulated. Like if Blackstone is doing it, then you gotta be a custodian. You gotta do all this. It's a way different business. So this is really smart because I'm sure that the fee load to the 401k providers is a lot higher than if they put it into a
5-Bit ETF for whatever.
Hiten Samtani (14:47)
Yeah, to that point I'm gonna read you a quote from the excellent Bloomberg article which I'll put in the show notes. This is Raj Raj. what a great name. I don't think you know what this means but Aries's global head of wealth management is called Raj Dhanda and Dhanda means business which is perfect.
Will Krasne (15:04)
Seriously,
his is Raj Business?
Hiten Samtani (15:07)
That means trade. It's incredible. Mr. Raj says, he says the following, ⁓ the prior directive was choose the lowest fee option. You don't always get the best value for the lowest price. They're setting this up.
Will Krasne (15:24)
nonsense like how many Blackstone vehicles over first of all like the IRR is made up because again there's their duration right but like over the long term if you're kids if you're retiring don't give your money to blue owl mid-market private credit
Hiten Samtani (15:39)
People have been sounding the alarm. There was a guy at something called the Consumer Federation of America who's like, the risks are giant in this thing. They're not very well understood. And are the masses really ready to fund, you know, your Miami tower or your Boca retirement home? Who knows?
Will Krasne (15:57)
We talked about with Greystar pitching our IAs how that makes a lot of sense because if you're a taxable investor, are with the tax law changes, a lot of real benefits to investing in private real estate that can help you outperform relative to other asset classes on a tax adjusted basis. If you're investing in real estate out of a 401k where you don't pay taxes and you actually can't take advantage of the depreciation, like the fuck are you doing?
Hiten Samtani (16:24)
Empower, which is one of the 401k managers, I think in May they said they've already talked to Apollo, Franklin Templeton, which is the parent company of our Benefit Street partners, and others to provide private equity, credit, and real estate in some accounts. So I wonder what this like fully fleshed out when this is live or good to go, what the real estate product could look
Will Krasne (16:45)
like it's got to be duration, right? That to me is the benefit of doing the setup of 401k or doing super high octane stuff that generates a ton of taxable income that you can avoid. to me, like private credit, short duration private credit makes a lot of sense out of your 401k. Like if that's the way to do it, because again, you're not paying taxes on it, so you're getting the gross return. The other thing that makes sense is like going into something with building out what we're going to talk about later, like Aventura, you know.
out of your 401k where you have a super long time horizon. don't, can't literally can't get the money without paying a fee. So doing something like that, like that to me makes a lot of sense. Cause if I'm, you know, if I'm Blackstone or if I'm one of these firms, you know what's great? A 20 year project where no one really knows if it's successful or not for 20 years, but you charge fees for 20 years. I mean, also that.
Hiten Samtani (17:32)
Also called the EB5 way.
If they're able to tap into these pools of capital and become less and less reliant on institutional LPs, what the landscape is going to look like in a few years, it's going to be super interesting to track. Like $177 billion compared to the pools that are available now through insurance and RIAs and all of this, maybe not much money.
Will Krasne (17:54)
You always want to get in front of where the capital flows and there's not much more capital that's flowing downhill than in boomer retirement accounts.
Hiten Samtani (18:05)
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and tell them the promote sent you.
Will Krasne (18:40)
I believe in America. has made my fortune. And I don't think anyone believed in America anymore, that Donald Soffer, because where else could this type of life happen?
Hiten Samtani (18:50)
This is the most extraordinary American dream story, like for real. A man sees a swamp, he imagines something more, he teams up with his dad and a guy called Arthur G. Cohen. Arthur G.
Will Krasne (19:00)
Dr.
G Cohen has been like a tangential person in quite a lot of real estate stories.
Hiten Samtani (19:06)
He's one of those recurring characters who shows up like Johnny Ola. anyway, so they're in the Miami MSA somewhere and there's this massive collection of wetlands and they decide to buy them and they pay, the estimates vary because of conflicting news reports, but safe to say they paid between five and a half thousand and seven and a half thousand dollars an acre. Six million bucks for 785 acres.
Will Krasne (19:33)
Shockingly enough, Arthur Cohen did this twice. This is actually more expensive than what he paid for all the million square feet that he bought in Dumbo with David Willis.
Hiten Samtani (19:44)
he's one. Is he Willantis' guy? my God. That's like, that's my favorite trait of all time. Well done, Arthur. Anyway, so we've got, we've got our boy Don Soffer and he buys this giant, absolutely astonishingly large land in the middle of the Miami MSA. And he, he remarks to his dad, Hey, developing this thing will be an adventure.
Will Krasne (19:52)
too.
Hiten Samtani (20:12)
And I know you're not a Spanish speaker, Will, but what does adventure translate to? Well, how do you say adventure in Spanish? Exactly. So we have this giant mass of land and it's going to need a shit ton of work because obviously we're talking about swamp and environmental remediation, rezoning's up the wazoo. It's going to be a very complicated thing. Fortunately, Don Soffer had a pretty good guy in his corner. What do we know about King Kirk?
Will Krasne (20:17)
Un poquito.
Aventura.
Oof. All right. So Claude Kirk, he called it confrontation politics, which is just fantastic. And he also described himself as a quote, true son of a bitch. And it's yeah, that's just, God, we used to be a country.
Hiten Samtani (20:51)
Shaken
Yeah, for real. He once ordered his men to resist federal marshals, quote, with force. So the Kinklaw doesn't sound like the best guy, but he sounds like the best guy to have in your corner. And what Don Soffer did, as many have done since, this is what Don Soffer said. He said, we preyed on his boastfulness. He presented the plan for Aventura to the cabinet like it was his idea. And then we got all the permits we needed. That's a lot of permits. They built an astonishing 24,000 condos.
Yeah, so many condos. And malls and god knows all kinds of mixed use. Wait.
Will Krasne (21:31)
How do they preserve all this open land?
Hiten Samtani (21:34)
Do I know? ⁓ of course I know, but why don't you tell them?
Will Krasne (21:40)
what has a lot of green space and fairways.
Hiten Samtani (21:43)
Preferably you can drive from one to the other?
Will Krasne (21:46)
He got
land preserved for green space as a golf course. You know I've often thought of becoming a golf club.
Hiten Samtani (21:51)
It's like, amazing. It's just, uh, I mean, that's, that's, that's like a hall of fame move. It's kind of like, you know, when they used to put goats on who did this Trump did this a couple of Yeah. Yeah. To call it farmland. But anyway, this also the way that they were able to figure out the zoning and structure it in a way that he could, uh, don't so over could basically become the master plan developer and sell off parcels to other developers and at pretty fucking insane markup. So
Will Krasne (22:02)
See ya.
Hiten Samtani (22:19)
A couple of these parcels he was able to sell at a million dollars an acre, which I'm still confused about, I don't quite trust.
Will Krasne (22:25)
Like, think about it, like, you spend a million dollars an acre and you spend a million dollars on a house, like, you're a pretty sick house for two million dollars.
Hiten Samtani (22:32)
That's fair. he was able to do that in this. Aventura obviously became the seat of the Turnberry Empire.
Will Krasne (22:39)
The Soffer family is sort of like one of the notorious, uber wealthy developer families up there with like...
Hiten Samtani (22:46)
Tibber Hollow that skyline shaping giant giant fountain.
Will Krasne (22:50)
Yeah, who's the gil deezer like those
Hiten Samtani (22:52)
No, not even close. Not even close,
Will Krasne (22:55)
No, I would say they're more like a Lefrak or somebody like that.
Hiten Samtani (22:59)
Exactly. They're like freaking oligarchy level in Miami.
Will Krasne (23:03)
They're
out there and so they built this out and you end up having like all the super high end retail like the Aventura malls like one of the best malls in the United States. All of these homes which again the key to a big master plan is you need the underlying value of the land to compound at a super high rate and that's just.
Hiten Samtani (23:18)
And this was in the Miami MSA, like, wow.
Will Krasne (23:21)
Right?
Yeah, 100%. And so what's funny though is that this isn't the only like super successful massive thing that they built. You know, they have the Fallon blue as well, famously.
Hiten Samtani (23:31)
we talk a little bit about Don Soffer's life. The man lived. To really capture the spirit of the man, you have to go board a little yacht called Monkey Business.
Will Krasne (23:34)
⁓ did he ever.
I mean, I think it's time to have our heart to heart.
Hiten Samtani (23:46)
So, so what happened here? Monkey business was a, I think it was an 80 footer and ⁓ it became kind of the CNBC destination for Hollywood and the hoi polloi basically of America. Elizabeth Taylor was on there. My boy, Jack Nicholson showed up a couple of times. ⁓ could so see Don Sofra and Jack Nicholson getting tagged. Yeah, Irish.
Will Krasne (23:52)
a little smaller than I would have thought.
Yeah.
Lots of people were on there.
Super
getting super tan together just phenomenal so the best part about monkey business in my view is that You could rent it like so for what he was such a such a good time guy Capitalist that he's like, know what like everyone else should have this lifestyle So busy guys could rent monkey business for themselves. And so why are we keep saying this word monkey business Don Soffer took down a president
Hiten Samtani (24:36)
A potential president, yeah. Other candidates are afraid to rock the boat. Unbelievable.
Will Krasne (24:41)
One
of my hot takes is that Gary Hart like could see the future and the entire, this is like one of the most pivotal things that's happened in the history of the United States. Okay. Where Gary Hart wins the presidency. We stay out of the Iraq war. He has two terms. He invests in the internet. boy. It's like one of my biggest hot takes.
Hiten Samtani (24:59)
So you're saying monkey business was like the sliding doors moment of American politics.
Will Krasne (25:03)
It's one of them. like we have what Bill Clinton never becomes president like so anyway, Gary Hart, you know is running for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination You know this picture came out of him with Donna Rice who is one of so far's ladies Donnie What do they call him Donnie's? Donnie's girls mean what did Donnie say about that name?
Hiten Samtani (25:18)
girls.
he said that's just an expression used by jealous guys.
Will Krasne (25:24)
Sounds right. this picture comes out with Donna Rice, who Gerhard is not married to, sitting on his lap and not a little bit of compromising position. And then I think he said afterwards,
Hiten Samtani (25:36)
And
back in the day that used to matter, now it doesn't matter as
Will Krasne (25:38)
Unless you're the CEO of Astronomers. So he then, I think he issued a challenge to reporters. He's like, follow me, like I have the most boring life in the world. Like you'll never find anything. I'm not cheating on my wife or whatever. And then literally found them like a week later, like leaving a woman's apartment at like five o'clock in the morning. And that was the end of his presidential campaign.
Hiten Samtani (25:41)
Or unless you go to Coldplay concerts.
Right, so, and then he did eventually, Soffer did put the yacht up for sale, and you know why he did? To the point you made earlier. Yeah, he got a bigger one, he got a.
Will Krasne (26:06)
Got a big one.
We
talked about Turnberry. But I think it's important that there was a big split in the family. There's a schism. Always.
Hiten Samtani (26:15)
is
when you have a family of this size and stature.
Will Krasne (26:18)
Yeah, so
you had the daughters, Jackie and think that part of the family took Turnberry. Yeah. And then Jeff Suffer, another man about town, took the Fountain Blue.
Hiten Samtani (26:29)
Jeff
Soffer has been in the headlines for many things. Big developer, is able to wrangle a lot of money together for projects, but he's also in the popular press, he's known for two things. One, he was Mr. L McPherson. So he's married to the body, which is, anything you want to say about that?
And then two, he was the victim of a confidence scheme. There was a fake Saudi prince who was basically befriended so for, and they thought that, you this was going to be an investor, I believe in their projects and stuff.
Will Krasne (27:02)
It was gonna buy 30 % of the Fountain Blue for $450 million or something.
Hiten Samtani (27:07)
And you know how they found out that there was maybe something not kosher here?
Will Krasne (27:12)
How's that?
Hiten Samtani (27:13)
The man ordered prosciutto.
Will Krasne (27:15)
⁓ boy.
One of the best things about real estate is that if you have grit and determination and you buy the right plot of land, you can manifest destiny yourself. And so this guy created not just a neighborhood, not just even really like a town. He created the city and the whole lifestyle around it. when you think of like the Aventura mall, when you think of Aventura, when you think of the Fountain.
Hiten Samtani (27:34)
Chicken City,
Aventura
has like cultural resonance in that almost like the valley has in California Aventura has a there's a type there's an archetype of an Aventura lady or
Will Krasne (27:50)
absolutely is and that is because of Donald's Hofer and you know monkey business aside it's one of the most incredible things like Eventer is gonna be here 100 years from now and it's all thanks to this guy who paid 7600 bucks per acre you know when there was nothing there but a swamp and con a governor and giving a lot of permits and that's what's great about real estate is like you can just you can do magic and Donald's Hofer had the magic.
Hiten Samtani (28:18)
Don Soffer was one of the last cowboys and he was a cowboy of the level that, you know, would befit a John Ford film. That's how cool he was.
Will Krasne (28:25)
Well said.
Hiten Samtani (28:32)
That's it for the Promote Podcast this week. A shout out again to our sponsor for this episode, Vesto. See how its service gives CRA players a single, clear point of access for all their bank accounts by going to Vesto.com. That's V-E-S-T-O dot com.
Will Krasne (28:46)
like, share, subscribe, send to your friends. Send us constructive criticism to Haten, not to me. If we got stuff wrong or you have a different take, let us know. We want to hear it. The engagement with all you guys is part of what makes this great.
Hiten Samtani (28:50)
more reviews guys let's go
Tell us about Walt.
When we drop a new pod, like I know the next day we're going to get some spicy LinkedIn messages and emails. It really means a lot. And then, you know, we get shouted out at the Toronto open by a random Canadian dude. those, those things really make it worth it. And also we've, we've said this before. We know you guys, most of you just hang out with more people like you. They're all going to like this podcast. Tell them about it. That was fun, man. I wish we can get into some monkey business together soon.
Will Krasne (29:30)
I'm married with a kid,
Hiten Samtani (29:32)
So am I, so am I. Alright, I'll talk to you next week, See ya.
Ciao!