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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 (00:05)
If October 14, 1940 had been a cloudy day in Seattle, Manfred Selig would have floated down the coast to San Francisco in his flight from the Holocaust.
Will Krasne (00:14)
But on that fine fall morning, the sun was shining, the birds were chirping, and so a man got off a ship and made the Emerald City his home.
Hiten Samtani (00:25)
He came to America with only a few gold coins in the hollowed out heels of his shoes. His son Martin, who was just four at the time, later recalled, it was a pretty auspicious decision because Manfred, well, he built a pretty good life for himself and his family in Seattle. And his son Martin went on to become the most dominant developer in the city's history, a man in full if there ever was one.
Will Krasne (00:47)
ceiling built a skyscraper empire of epic proportions with no partners except for God's good humor and every time he was in jam he would unit his way out
until he couldn't.
Hiten Samtani (01:01)
until he couldn't.
Welcome back to the Promote Podcast, your insider guide to the money and mania of the CRE markets. I'm Hiten Samtani
Will Krasne (01:17)
and I'm Will Krasne.
Hiten Samtani (01:19)
Hope you guys had a happy Thanksgiving. We have a really, really fun post-holiday episode here for you.
Will Krasne (01:24)
Not fun if you're a member of the Selig family. It could run for a long time.
Hiten Samtani (01:26)
This is true.
A fantastic run for pretty damn long. We're gonna dive deep into the rise, rise and fall of Martin Selig, an extraordinary character with an extraordinary appetite for risk, who shaped a city to his will and became a billionaire in the process. He had it all, hubris, pluck, chutzpah, tenacity, and a pretty damn masterful understanding of the dark arts of development. But as our man Rocky says in Creed,
Will Krasne (01:54)
⁓ As of this summer, Sealy has lost 19 of his buildings. The fact that he has 19 buildings to lose is kind of incredible. Either to third party managers or his lenders. And he's been unable to make good on over $800 million worth of-
Hiten Samtani (02:11)
A man who once owned 37 % of Seattle's downtown skyline may not be left with very much by the time this is all said and done. It's kind of a unique combo of horrible market and a very quirky way that Selig chose to build his empire. We're gonna get into all of it.
Will Krasne (02:28)
But first, if you haven't read the Stone Cold Banger on 8.45 third that dropped on the Promote Insider last Wednesday and it was excellent, thank you. Hit pause, go sign up and read it right this minute. It's a deep dive into a live deal on a Manhattan cap stack and it's pretty, pretty good content.
Hiten Samtani (02:48)
You know, we were hit with both the OM and the lender model that doesn't happen very often. It's a pretty rare
Will Krasne (02:53)
Let me guess, the number is tied perfectly.
Hiten Samtani (02:56)
It's too empty. You can sign up now at thepromote.com slash upgrade and check it out. Annual memberships are $275 or you can do month to month for 30 bucks. Also brands, hit us up at partnerships at thepromote.com to reach the most devoted audience in CRE. Lenders, builders, brokers, nationally, they're all tuning in. We are
Will Krasne (03:14)
series water cooler and you want to be in the discussion.
All right, let's talk Martin Selig and let's go back, back to the beginning, as Hillary Duff would say. ⁓
Hiten Samtani (03:25)
I was going to say James Lipton. Did you know he was a pimp in the former life before he became an interviewer? He ran a bordello in Paris.
Will Krasne (03:31)
believe that. Keep my damn name out.
Hiten Samtani (03:34)
All right, I think we have been accused, rightly so, of not paying attention to certain markets. But man, Seattle's got some tales. This dude is... When we talk of a man in full, Tom Cousins, Steve Ross, like, I would put this guy way up in the conversation, man.
Will Krasne (03:50)
We talked about the cowboys who don't really exist anymore and this guy was a cowboy for all the cowboys. I take a lot of risk, calculated risk of course, but some of this in here reading these articles, I got the shakes.
Hiten Samtani (04:03)
extraordinary
series of things that Selig did. So let's start in the beginning. We talked about his father, Holocaust survivor, Manfred Selig, comes to Seattle, sets up a shop, by all accounts is a successful businessman, but like, you know, just making a living. And then his son really ramps it up. In the 60s, he gets into shopping center development.
Will Krasne (04:23)
Even before that, when he was still in college, I think he bought his first deal as a collegiate student and he borrowed
Hiten Samtani (04:29)
Isn't
this like a pre-wreck at this point for a Titan?
Will Krasne (04:31)
I
borrowed the down payment from everyone so 100 % leverage sold it in a year for a handsome profit. I love all those stories too when it just sort of like yada yada is how we actually did it. It's like oh he sold in a year for a handsome profit. I mean he probably paid like $4,000 and sold it for $4,700 but still.
Hiten Samtani (04:46)
It's the principle in the takeaway, right? Take risk, get reward. I think that's what applies throughout.
Will Krasne (04:51)
You gotta start early. The sickness comes early.
Hiten Samtani (04:55)
So he's in shopping centers, does that for a decade or so. And in the seventies, he really gets, in earnest, he gets into office development in a city that's coming into its own Seattle.
Will Krasne (05:06)
He really does it from the outside in. starts with sort of suburban shopping centers, suburban office, so ugly, kind like the low slung type things that you see in any business park. And then he builds a Darth Vader. We're getting ahead of ourselves a little bit, he in, I think in one of the ways that developers really make their bones is you find a little arbitrage or a little
cheat code. His cheat code was the building code in Seattle in 1970s, which allowed for this crazy amount of density.
Hiten Samtani (05:41)
Remember Al Pacino's character in Glengarry Glen Ross?
Will Krasne (05:45)
Ricky Roma, number one sales guy in the office.
Hiten Samtani (05:47)
He had a line, it's an opportunity. An opportunity. To what?
Will Krasne (05:51)
Money? Perhaps.
Hiten Samtani (05:54)
And that's what Selig said here too. He said that of the building code that was enforced in the late 1970s. I wanted to build a maximum building that I could build. It kind of rhymes with what happened with 15 CPW and the, you know, the townhouse and the building structure.
Will Krasne (06:07)
buildings
to maximize their density. But yeah, what I would also say too is that I don't think there are a lot of people looking to build 1.5 million square foot towers in Seattle, like pre-Microsoft. And it's sort of like replacement cost that sometimes it doesn't matter because if no one wants to replace it, what does it matter what the replacement cost is? It's like no one really wanted to build this much square footage. That was really unknown territory at that time.
Hiten Samtani (06:31)
Yeah,
Seattle was like a decidedly tier two city.
Will Krasne (06:33)
You
had Nordstrom, Microsoft, Amazon, Craig McCall, like McCall Seller, who's like the richest guy in the United States for 10 minutes in the tech boom. So you have all of this commerce, but when he's doing this in the 1970s, I mean, it's like pre-Frasier. Frazier still lived in Boston. Everybody wang chong tonight.
Hiten Samtani (06:55)
This reminds me of like when a product is so completely out of whack with the Skyline, this is never going to be built. So I'm just saying it for fun, but you know that Oklahoma super tall they're talking about?
Will Krasne (07:04)
you will fit.
Hiten Samtani (07:07)
Anyway, so the risk appetite that was needed here is kind of a theme that recurs throughout Martin's career. Do want to talk a little bit about the loan that he took to develop the Columbia Center?
Will Krasne (07:16)
Jesus Christ, yeah. So to develop Columbia Center, the project that really put him on the map, he has some line about how the space needle let people know where Seattle is and like the Columbia Center let them know what it's about. He took a $200 million construction loan, which is a big loan today.
Hiten Samtani (07:32)
Yeah, it is. Even now it's big, right? ⁓
Will Krasne (07:34)
15 % interest on spec. First of all, who wrote this loan?
Hiten Samtani (07:39)
It's children's investment fund, wasn't it?
Will Krasne (07:41)
Yeah,
so he has a line, and not about this product, but later, when someone asks him in an interview, how do you sleep? And he goes, a lot better than my bankers.
Hiten Samtani (07:50)
Again, Madden Foll, and just to bring up another Madden Foll, because this is the recurring theme that makes these characters so memorable for us, there's an iconic line from probably the quintessential Madden Foll, Big Bill Zeckendorf.
Will Krasne (08:03)
he famously said, I'd rather be alive at 18 % than dead at the prime rate. Can I just say, like, I never understand that, because, it's always better to be alive than dead.
Hiten Samtani (08:14)
Sometimes you go with the vibe, not accurate enough. So in 1984, completes Columbia Seaford Center, 76 stories, it's the city's tallest tower. This tells the rest of the world that something's going on here is what Selig said of his project. But four years later, he's out. He sells the building for just 350 million. What's up with that?
Will Krasne (08:32)
I just 350. I mean he cashed out a hundred million dollars to keep everything else afloat. I think that's a pretty big success
Hiten Samtani (08:39)
You don't build something like that to get out.
Will Krasne (08:42)
You do if you're an institution, but no, this guy, this was gonna be, frankly I'm surprised he didn't call it the ceiling center. But he kept everything else afloat because he was in big trouble elsewhere, which sort of becomes a recurring theme.
Hiten Samtani (08:54)
What's the farce he's saying? Your eyes are bigger than your stomach. Writing checks your body can't cash. Exactly. But again, this is a start of a pattern for Selig. He's a survivor. Unlike a lot of other developers kind of get sentimental about their holdings, he does what he needs to do to move on, right? He will cut deals with tenants. He will load them up with TIs and concessions, et cetera. He will do what he needs to do. He's not precious about the operations as much as he is precious about kind of just
Will Krasne (08:57)
Or is it saying Top Gun? Your ego is right.
Hiten Samtani (09:23)
getting up and showing up to fight the next day.
Will Krasne (09:26)
He also doesn't have committees to have more committees about having committees about what type of tenant we should have. He was calling people directly. In all of these stories they talk about there's no brochures, he has voicemail.
Hiten Samtani (09:39)
And he was showing up at people's offices. Again, there is some myth building involved in these things, right, over the years. Of course. Right? But let's say we take them at somewhat face value. He was his own primary leasing broker. He was the Steve Durels to his own Mark Holliday, let's say.
Will Krasne (09:53)
Yeah, a lot of the people who are great developers often are notoriously terrible asset managers. So the ones that come to mind are the Reichmans who built Battery Park City. There's a tower in Toronto where they really made their bones. I remember reading the books about them and they're like notoriously terrible asset managers.
Hiten Samtani (10:03)
Mary Wharf, Brookfield Plays.
put them on the holiday gift guy. They're so good. They're just that timeless books. Yeah.
Will Krasne (10:16)
See like understood he's like I need people in these buildings to pay me money to build more buildings Yeah, he was willing to undercut people on rents to get him in he wasn't working this thing to like maximize his IRR He just needed to stay alive. It's binary. He's dead or alive gonna do whatever he had to do He's gonna sell his soul into Horcruxes like Voldemort to stay alive, which a lot of people wouldn't do a great example It's like 60 guilders with Carlisle
in Soho on their retail that stayed vacant forever because they paid such a high price that they had to get a massive rent. They couldn't just backfill. It's not like they never had any interest. They just never had any interest at nine thousand dollars a foot. No, but for Selig, it's just if I can get people in here and survive, I believe in the market and I believe that the dynamism of Seattle, which has proven out with all the huge companies that were fostered there, I'll be OK. And a lot of times you built stuff spec. You didn't prelease it, but
Hiten Samtani (10:51)
adventure did not go so well.
Will Krasne (11:10)
got leased three years later after a bunch of rent growth, was able to do better.
Hiten Samtani (11:14)
and also some pretty interesting tactics which we'll get into in a second. But to your point, just to kind of sum it up, it's like, I'm gonna be very tactical and trench warfare-y about the micro and hope that the macro will kind of come in and save me when the time's right.
Will Krasne (11:28)
For sure, if you're in a gateway market, generally the stuff goes up and to the right. It may not go in a straight line, but it generally does that. And if you were to say, hey, I'm going to be developing in a city that's going to have two of the four biggest companies in the world headquartered there, generally it'd be OK.
Hiten Samtani (11:46)
about this though, a lot of these developers that we talk about tend to tie up with other institutions. The guy had zero outside partners for such immensely massive projects. Think of how crazy that is. We've talked about in previous episode about related de-risking of Hudson Yards in contrast, right? Every step of the way, every time they develop something, they bring in the National Pension Service of Korea.
Will Krasne (12:00)
It's totally nuts.
Hiten Samtani (12:12)
They bring in Heinz, they bring in XYZ, and pretty soon they've taken enough trips off the table that they can keep going. Decidedly not the case here.
Will Krasne (12:19)
Right,
it's just him and he made enough money early on that he was able to do these projects himself and then size gets size and he gets a $200 million construction loan. I don't know what it costs to, I don't know how much equity he put into Columbia Seaforth Center.
Hiten Samtani (12:33)
Back to the myth building here, at some point he establishes that max 60 % LTV is his rule and he says the following...
Will Krasne (12:39)
most
bullshit thing I've
Hiten Samtani (12:42)
nonsense
but he says that leaves you a lot of room to maneuver.
Will Krasne (12:45)
Don't
mean to cash dispersions on people but there's you know a group out there that says we like to invest like the old Families in real estate and then I remember talking to one of the families. That's like we were max leverage Max I oh 100 % LTV as much as we can get before the SNL crisis always max
Hiten Samtani (13:03)
There's
almost a mantra in real estate, right? Never go full Reichman. There's a reason that exists.
Will Krasne (13:07)
The last thing would say about the 60 % LTV is that I think a lot of these existing loans, people would say, yeah, we're really protected. That V is always fungible. Always remember that. The V is fungible. It can go down.
Hiten Samtani (13:20)
there's a quirk of DNA, you have this unbelievable ability to take risk. We've talked about Gary Barnett and having it. What's interesting about Gary Barnett though, the chutzpah and the audacity shown in the business is not at all visible in the real life, right? He lives somewhere in Queens, in a single family house, very, very nondescript life. This guy though, this guy fucking lived, dude. He was a daredevil skier who smoked stogies.
had this exotic art collection on display. And this reminds me, remember when we talked about Tom Cousins, he was a pilot as well, and he would just like Maverick style, zoom in and out of style. It's kind of like this guy. Like people who have just innate risk taking can apply it to their businesses, I guess.
Will Krasne (14:01)
You're born with this gene or you aren't. And I think it extended to all aspects of his life. Though it's very funny that he was very private about his family life. I mean, he never spoke about that. He also never spoke about his debt. That was the two things that were off limits, apparently.
Hiten Samtani (14:17)
And the family life is a factor later on. yeah, imagine when the city's vacancy rate was 15%, which is pretty damn scary. It's higher than that now. Mr. Selig said he does not expect any problems filling the new building because quote, we've never had any trouble before. Confirmation bias, baby. ⁓
Will Krasne (14:34)
What's that thing about the turkeys where they're like 364 days a year? It's a great day to be a turkey
Hiten Samtani (14:39)
Good Thanksgiving timing here. So he spends much of the 90s kind of going through the usual shit. Let's talk a little bit about that. Foreclosures, bankruptcies, cut rate deals with tenants, receivership, lawsuits.
Will Krasne (14:46)
Who among us?
He didn't pay his power bill?
Hiten Samtani (14:55)
I think the bill was about $600k or so.
Will Krasne (14:58)
This is sort of emblematic of a guy versus an institution because an institution knows another loan docs like, well, you got to pay your power bill. Like you got to do all these things. And this guy's just like, I mean, he's like, I don't have the money. What are you going to do?
Hiten Samtani (15:12)
Shit.
Let's go to the animal kingdom for a second. Real estate developers like to think of themselves as tigers or lions, right? Hunting, etc. I think the most successful real estate developers are often cockroaches.
Will Krasne (15:28)
can't kill him.
Hiten Samtani (15:29)
You can't kill them, you just stick around. They show up cycle after cycle. They reinvent themselves, they do their thing.
Will Krasne (15:35)
Most of them survive off of fees and they're put in their own capital. This guy is the exact opposite. Yeah.
Hiten Samtani (15:41)
But by 2010, he's once again looking like a king. think vacancy rates are what, in those single digits?
Will Krasne (15:47)
Single digits for him and ⁓ double digits for everybody else. Champagne for my real friends, real pain for my sham friends.
Hiten Samtani (15:54)
We should talk specifically about this deal, the one with the GSA.
Will Krasne (16:00)
We talked
about how he would really hustle to get tenants. And so for one of his buildings, he wanted to get the EPA. Exactly. And so they decided to stay put. A lesser man might have said, gosh darn it, lost out on that one. What are going to
Hiten Samtani (16:06)
Environmental Protection Agency,
I missed out on the government tenant. We'll catch him on the next round.
Will Krasne (16:19)
He
sued and claimed that the agency didn't give other bids for space affairs shake because again Know that he is the one-man committee. He doesn't need to make a 19 IRR He can just needs to stay alive And so he offered much cheaper rent that they overlooked and so the EPA ended up not coming They did stay put how? The federal government decided you know what we need more space for other departments at this very cheap rent And so the government services agency came
Hiten Samtani (16:39)
however.
Not just came to this building they took the freaking angle they took two-thirds of the building
Will Krasne (16:52)
It came out in public filings that the rent that he offered the GSA was like meaningfully lower than what they're paying elsewhere. He just needs to be alive. And it's sort of, you know, like Hannah Horvath in Girls, you know, it's a Wednesday night baby and I'm alive. He also did another Reichman thing. He would take over someone else's lease. So he'd go to your building and say, you know what, I'll pay your rent there if you come to my building.
Hiten Samtani (17:13)
Some of those don't work out too well for him in the end. what is the end is the question, right?
Will Krasne (17:16)
It depends if someone's boy-
What does the end? It can be a good move because if it allows you to get something financed and you get way more money out of it, what do you care about this other thing? And then by the way, like let that landlord, if you default, that landlord come after you. What are they gonna do?
Hiten Samtani (17:31)
This is true. think this is something I'm still learning about the real estate business. It's like, can't evaluate things in a straight line. There's always perverse hidden incentives for so much of this. We've talked a lot about like how many of the fund manager decisions or allocator decisions are all about saving face, right? It's got nothing to do with the actual investment in front of you at the time. I'm getting a deeper appreciation for these side objectives.
Will Krasne (17:54)
there's the game and then there's like levels to it. And for a guy like that, if you say, is insane, why would you agree to pay 3 million a year taking over this guy's office lease? Well, because over here, that's the last piece of the jigsaw to get this thing financed. And then cash out this much money and like, what do I care about this lease? It's things like that where you look at the deal on the field, you might say, this doesn't make any sense. But if you zoom out across the global perspective, makes all sense in the world.
Hiten Samtani (18:21)
So we're talking global perspective, let's talk about the Black Swan, Macro Shock, what have you. The ⁓ pandemic hits, Seattle's hit really, really, really badly and honestly has not come back. Martin Selig caught right in the middle of
Will Krasne (18:27)
you
Yeah, he delivered two buildings right into the teeth of it, which were empty. Rough. And remain mostly empty years later. Basically every single thing that could go wrong did. So it was Murphy's law where the new stuff he was delivering didn't lease. And then because Class A stuff was so vacant, Seattle was one of the last markets to come back from work from home. All of the Class A stuff is dropping their rents then the value proposition goes away.
Hiten Samtani (19:07)
class B, which is decidedly Martin Selig's buildings were decidedly off in class B buildings.
Will Krasne (19:12)
Well, you know, we've just talked about this guy. This guy's 88 years old or whatever he is. He's building one building a year for 50 years.
Hiten Samtani (19:19)
We didn't highlight that level of prolificness. It's unbelievable. One tower a year is insane.
Will Krasne (19:25)
I mean, he basically had Irish twins for 40 years.
Hiten Samtani (19:29)
So things are going downhill pretty fast. He loses seven buildings in a credit bid, one go. He loses another chunk. But you can see that there is a bit of a reality distortion field around Selig. Again, when you're a man of this stature and there's very few of this stature, you're kind of not used to being challenged in this way. COVID comes along, 2023 gives an interview to the Seattle Times. And he says the following, by the end of next year, you'll see five days a week. Boom, he just...
assumed that this was going to happen for all those buildings wasn't the case.
And again, this is all happening. The capital markets are getting impatient.
Will Krasne (20:07)
You can turn out your debt all you want, but if these things take three, four, five years, you end up running into the maturity date. And we talk about the wall maturities and how it's been overblown and it's just nonsense and everyone's talking about it. It's not nonsense if you own a huge chunk of Seattle Class B office.
Hiten Samtani (20:22)
That's correct. And as of 2023, his vacancy rate was 19%. And it just kind of kept going. Every second headline on Selig is a bad headline.
Will Krasne (20:31)
And again, this is one guy, it's his balance sheet. And so yeah, there's a ton of equity in these buildings. It's not always that easy to get. But if you have a CNBS loan on a property and you think, you know, it's 65 % LTV, that 35, you can't just go turn it into cash. You got to sell the building or you got to refinance it, in which in this case, the buildings are worth significantly less.
Hiten Samtani (20:38)
Stay Moron.
This is a really good comp for context. Have you heard of Trumble Property Fund?
Will Krasne (20:56)
yeah, that was the UBS ⁓ vehicle.
Hiten Samtani (21:00)
They had a 630,000 square foot tower in Century Square, again, same kind of sea-lig location. The bids that are coming in are at 65 a foot. 65 a foot. Yeah, it's really, really rough. Do you want to take a shot at the valuation that they were banding about just a few years ago? 700. They were valuing this at 700 a foot just a couple of years ago. And now it's at 65 a
Will Krasne (21:17)
⁓ I don't know the- Jesus Christ.
The V is fungible.
Hiten Samtani (21:29)
The V is punchable. So as of this summer, Selig's lost 19 buildings. So either outside management turned over to lenders and we're talking about close to $900 million in loans that he couldn't make good on.
Will Krasne (21:41)
This is just his balance sheet. So you have two buildings that are vacant, which is what happened. They cost between construction interest. You're still paying property taxes. You're still paying insurance. You're still paying utilities. Can't turn the heat off though, much as he tried in 90s. So you're losing tens of millions of dollars a year. This whole portfolio, five million square feet, let's call it, right? What's the NOI per foot? I don't know, 10 bucks? No.
Hiten Samtani (21:56)
Yeah.
50 million a year pulling in.
Will Krasne (22:10)
Let's be generous. Let's call it 20. So it's 100 million a year, right? That's NOI, not free cash flow. You still got leasing commissions, TI's, capex, and interest expense. So realistically, he was taking home 20. No, it's not nothing, but if you have two vacant office buildings that cost you more than that, then yeah, it's something.
Hiten Samtani (22:25)
It's not nothing.
If you had to visualize this or create a metaphor for the way that he's running his business over these years, I think of related for example, is continuously taking chips off the table while betting other chips.
Will Krasne (22:41)
You want to say like House of Cards is like too reductive, but he made it through so many downturns. mean, three basically before. So I understand going into this one why he would say I can do this because he's done it. But the difference here is that there's like a structural shift. Yeah. And that wasn't the case before. Those were capital markets issues. Correct. This is like a structural shift in what are people going to go to the office?
Hiten Samtani (23:04)
Exactly. The existential question of the asset that he's basically spent most of his life and career on, there's a big question mark on the viability of that asset in this market, Class B giant office building, right? And as of September, 37 % of office space in Seattle's CBD was either vacant or available on the sublease market, according to Cushman. Gives you a sense of how gigantic this problem is.
Will Krasne (23:28)
We talked about how he would really hustle and work as an asset manager, but you also have to be a portfolio manager because think of it this way, all the buildings he built at one point were Class A. Yeah.
Hiten Samtani (23:38)
They were? CapEx, renovations, you got to spruce them up, yeah.
Will Krasne (23:42)
30 years later, they're not. And instead of saying, you know what, let's take advantage of really tight cap rates, I'm sure there was a point in time where he could have printed a number here. I mean, he could have printed four billion, three billion, something like that.
Hiten Samtani (23:55)
You're saying he could have gone to like a Blackstone and said, take me out. Yeah. I'm in my eighties, I'm ready to go.
Will Krasne (24:01)
I mean, there are guys, we talk about Ned Speaker on the West Coast, like all of these different little, like there are guys like this in Boston, there are guys like Chicago.
Hiten Samtani (24:08)
say more about net I'm not sure all our listeners will be familiar
Will Krasne (24:11)
Speaker
properties sold, I think, to EOP and he negotiated a tax protection agreement. EOP goes, we're the biggest, baddest guy in the jungle. We're like Taruk Makhto from Avatar. why would he ever look up? It's like, no one's ever going to buy us. So like, why, we can just give on this tax protection agreement. like, whoops. Yeah, along came Blackstone and speakers like, yo, I need nine figures of. You'll have to. Custro.
Hiten Samtani (24:18)
This is fantastic.
Along came Blackstone.
A hundred million to cover
my... But again, this is one of the things when we talk about the legacy of Titans, one of the things that pops up for the Absolute Goats, the Sam's Elves, et cetera, is top ticking, right? Top ticking is such a... Part of it is luck, part of it is instinct. A lot of it is luck, more than they might admit, but top ticking is such a fundamental part of the lore of these people, right?
Will Krasne (24:59)
Yeah, every day you're not selling, you're buying. And so this guy was buying Class B Seattle office basically every day for the last 40 years. And that turned out to be a decent bet until five years ago.
Hiten Samtani (25:08)
He's well into his 90s. His daughter was supposed to be a successor. She left the firm in kind of murky circumstances, I want to say last year or early this
Will Krasne (25:17)
Who knows what those lone docs say? mean, there are reasons for all of this. That would be my guess, but again...
Hiten Samtani (25:22)
There, we haven't seen anything or I don't know if it's come out or anything. There's no PG type of situations here unless he's calling hard money lender.
Will Krasne (25:30)
Well, mean CNBS is definitionally non-recourse, so he's fine there. He's just, you know, losing the buildings and there's no equity. But yeah, it doesn't seem to be PG. I would be stunned if there weren't.
Hiten Samtani (25:44)
He sold a couple of personal properties, by the way. I don't know if it's related to his financial troubles or just him being in his 90s.
Will Krasne (25:51)
Or is it like Ron Perlman saying I want to live a less leveraged life? Talking about bad boy carve-outs, like, sometimes you have to have a net worth covenant or something in there, which he definitely triggered. Again, this is all speculation, but there are ways in which he could be in real serious trouble that it may make sense for his daughter to leave.
Hiten Samtani (26:08)
Trouble is a relative term, right? The man's in his 90s. What are you going to do? mean, he's hopefully lives till 100 and even more, like he's had his run.
Will Krasne (26:17)
It's like Jimmy Kane when Bear Stearns stock went in the toilet. Someone asked him, you you've lost so much money. And he goes, well, it doesn't really impact my life at all. Only people impact are my heirs.
Hiten Samtani (26:27)
So what are your takeaways here? it hubris? Is it confirmation bias? Is it just a gangster life?
Will Krasne (26:33)
It's a sickness. This guy kept going at any point had he just stopped and either printed a sale or had he pruned his portfolio over time or God forbid he had been like an angel investor in Starbucks. I don't want to plug other podcasts on here, but like there's a incredible episode of acquired about Starbucks where Howard Schultz is running around trying to buy Starbucks and he's raising checks and he goes to all the Titans of Seattle business. Like I'm sure Martin Selig got a call.
Hiten Samtani (27:00)
Yeah, just like we talked about with Tom Cousins, if you're a wealthy guy and wanted to do something of note in Atlanta, you would go see Mr. Tom Cousins. Selig was probably in the mix with all this stuff. He probably had many, many, many opportunities to make a lot of money outside of this portfolio or sell his portfolio and move on to something else. It comes back to something that he said when this whole 37 % stat came up. He said with a chuckle, it's like, it's more than that. I think he liked the idea of owning the city. I think that was the drug.
Will Krasne (27:29)
In one of the articles, the Seattle property owner was quoted as saying something like, Seattle used to be a local real estate group. You could walk down 4th Avenue and you'd run into the guys who owned all the buildings. That's not the case anymore, except for Martin.
Hiten Samtani (27:42)
That's so cool. I'm just, I love that.
That's it for the Promote Podcast this week. It's rare that you get to see the full arc of a glittering skyscraper king career like this, so really enjoyed this one, and I hope you guys did too. I would normally say the following. We'll be back next week with more CRE Insider goodness.
Will Krasne (28:06)
But in this case, we've got a little bit of a special treat for you in a horrific piece of judgment. Tim let me record by myself and our mailbag episode drops on Friday and I had fun.
Hiten Samtani (28:20)
You did great. You were wonderful. Except that I should say listeners, he calls A.B. Rosen, Abai Rosen, which in this business is like a capital punishment worthy crime. listen, besides that, he did wonderful.
Will Krasne (28:32)
This is a true piece of feedback that I got from a 10. Great tape, except we can absolutely not polish a huge piece of it because I think there are going be legal ramifications for you.
Hiten Samtani (28:44)
Yes, it's true. So we're not going to publish that part, but I hold it in my heart. Remember, brands, we're at partnerships at thepromote.com for advertising. And for those who want to go deeper down the CRE rabbit hole, check out the promote.com slash upgrade for the Promote Insider. That's our premium tier.
Will Krasne (28:59)
At $30 a month, that's a quarter of my Celsius budget. Actually, no, it's not. I get the 12 pack of Celsius. It's $22 at Fresh Market in Rehoboth. So it's $44. So 75 % of my Celsius budget. Great deal.
Hiten Samtani (29:13)
Still a great deal.
I'll see you back next week, dude. Thanks so much. Take care.
Will Krasne (29:18)
Take care, thank you.
Hiten Samtani (29:20)
Why'd you do that? I thank you was creepy.
Will Krasne (29:22)
I don't know.
No, thank you. was fun. Hopefully we still have a podcast after the mailbag hairs.
Hiten Samtani (29:31)
Ciao!