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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 (00:00.416)
I almost don't want to do a preamble with this one. This story is so extraordinary. It's crazy.
Don't.
Hiten Samtani (00:09.42)
Welcome back to the Promote Podcast, your insider guide to the money and mania of the CRE markets. I'm Hiten Samtani, Will Krasne is here as usual. What's up? Listen, the Promote is fascinated by commercial real estate's netherworld characters. Those that operate in the shadows of money and power. They seem to show up over and over in the rooms that matter and no one really knows how they got there. One such character was Jona Rechnitz. Big guy in New York real estate, unbelievable amount of juice. That is until he got caught up in a major corruption scandal.
and had to flee New York for a new life in You just gotta go west. Controversy, however, followed in there. Today, we chop it up on Jona Rechnitz, developer, family man, diamond dealer, Floyd Mayweather whisperer, scapegoat, witness, and a hell of a lot more.
Have to go west young man.
Will Krasne (00:55.702)
All of this is alleged, we have no inside information.
And finally, we dive into a case that shows how super tall living ain't really what it's cracked up to be. Pun intended. A shout out to Air Garage, our sponsor for this episode. Air Garage is the modern parking solution for real estate owners. You'll hear more about them in a bit.
Hiten Samtani (01:17.122)
Listen, we just gotta start with Jona. It's rare that an article hits me this hard. The Atavist, do you remember them? Yeah. They put out something great. This is by the way, a From Source of mine sent me the article and they said, have you seen this? And I was riveted. I was enthralled. I spent the next maybe 90 minutes just reading straight through.
had some time went through it yesterday and boy, like it is just phenomenal on so many levels.
Our audience is probably confused. Why the hell are these guys geeking out about this magazine article? Well, it was about a guy called Jona Rechnitz. And if you're in New York real estate, that name is going to be familiar.
or if you're from Borough Park or if you're related to the New York police or if you know diamonds.
Or if you said, court-sided Knicks games or Lakers games. This guy was one of those characters that had an outsized influence. As a developer, wanna say mid-sized charitably, not even. He didn't really do anything. But when it comes to juice, when it comes to influence in the right rooms, he used to work for Lev Levive, Africa Israel, diamond billionaire, you know the guy. He used to work for his real estate company.
Will Krasne (02:13.048)
He didn't even really do anything.
Hiten Samtani (02:28.224)
At some point when Lev flew into town, Jona Rechnitz got him a police escort right from his private plane. Like that's the kind of juice he had.
It's hard to even like get into this article because there's so many places to start. But I think your point about being in the right room, all of these levels in real estate, fashion, entertainment, whatever, they are really small. And if you get in, once you're in, one really asks how you got in. And so he's here.
I always thought he was like an heir or scion of some sort. Turns out he's really not.
His dad is one of the nebulously wealthy. He's wealthy enough to where his dad could vouch for him a lot of times. Sure. And by the way, like, I have a son now and let me just say if he committed this much fraud at some point, we'd have an issue.
Listen, we're new dads. I don't think we can say it yet, but I would venture to guess that if my son, who is now 10 weeks old, took some jewelry on consignment and never returned it, I would stick up for it. He's my son. What are you gonna do?
Will Krasne (03:31.758)
Anyway, so we're way off topic. I want to bring it back. So why is, why did we want to talk about this? Because it touches on a lot of the things that are behind the real estate industry, particularly in places like New York, LA, and not even just New York and LA, like the diamond district in LA and Tarangelos in Los Angeles. Like all of the places that aren't necessarily institutional. It's not John Gray. It's not Steve Ross, but there's big money.
big personalities and questionable legality.
there's always been a nexus between the diamond world and the real estate world. There's a lot of commonality, not only the players. I mean, we spent an entire hour gushing about one of most famous, Gary Barnett, who came from the diamond world. But there's something about the way that you're operating. You're operating a lot of times on good faith. You're pooling money from a bunch of different people to buy the gemstones or buy the dirt. You're operating often without sufficient documentation. You're kind of going by gut. And then you have to take
what is a rough diamond and turn it into a polished gemstone, which is very similar to development in some ways.
Totally, I just, everything that is in the built world right now exists because some crazy person said, I'm gonna put that together, and it's the same in the diamond world. These things are worthless, you can't use them for nothing. Yeah. And someone's like, you know what, I can get a guy to pay this much for a wedding ring. Well, less so now. It's a little tough out there for diamond cartel.
Hiten Samtani (05:04.706)
Think about wedding rings, think about KG, Kevin Garnett, let me get the fucking opal
Yeah, it's got its huge risk tolerance, hard assets, not a lot of liquidity. So there's a lot of overlap. And so we talk about this guy and it's sort of beggars belief at times that he's not in prison or dead. But what's interesting in real estate is that one, he's affiliated with like Lev Lvoviev. Two, he rents his house in LA when he moves there from a pretty big developer, England Off.
And then he somehow gets Floyd Mayweather, he probably cost Floyd Mayweather more money than he stole and fraud by getting him to invest in New York City real estate. But all of this stuff is just about the vibes of the hugely wealthy non-institutional crowd and how much crypto money has been wandered through real estate. He's involved with that, he's got a crypto scam.
One of his creditors is the guy who owned that insane site in Beverly Hills, the mountain.
The mountain, the mountain in Beverly Hills, which again, each of these, when I was trying to summarize this piece for the promote last week, I was falling into each rabbit hole and I'm like, I can't go there. So with the mountain, there is an accusation that the money that put that together came via the Kuwaiti Royal Family. And now the Kuwaitis are mad at that developer Victor Noval.
Will Krasne (06:29.644)
Yeah, that's a lot to digest.
It's hard, I'm thinking of our poor audience here. Where are these guys going with this? But okay, so what happens here initially is that Rechnitz is working for Africa Israel, major holding company with big interest in real estate in the US. At some point, he notices someone in a circle who has sheriff on his license plate, right? And he notices that you can basically, it's carte blanche to do whatever you want. He figures out how to get that for himself. And the way he gets it is through this guy called Jeremy Reichberg, who is a
go between between the Orthodox community of New York and Borough Park and the NYPD. He's like the official liaison for them.
And let me just say there's a lot of money to be made being the liaison between the Orthodox Jewish community of Borough Park and variety of different things. David Werner, Jeff Sutton, there's lots of money there that doesn't necessarily love a 60-40 stock bond portfolio.
Yeah, there's a big reward in New York real estate, think, particularly if you're the person who can speak to the sheets and the streets, right? And these are the guys who can do it very well. And Jona Rehman's found himself in that world. He starts juicing, I'd imagine, like a patrolman to begin with and then moves up the ranks. Pretty soon he's having bi-weekly meals with the chief of police, which is the highest uniformed officer in the NYPD,
Will Krasne (07:56.43)
Frankly, like I'm just impressed. I'm not even mad.
That's I am too. mean, like, you gotta admire the pluck of this guy. He took it too far, but still, you know?
I mean, that's what's so funny about a lot of these types of guys is that they're all really talented. Like, he's a really talented guy. maybe uses it for ill, but you can't say that he doesn't have it. I mean, because the line between this and guys who are Gary Barnett is not like that wide.
Somehow I don't see Gary Barnett sitting courtside trying to find the next wealthy person to juice.
but he does it in his own way, but he still does it. Yeah. And we all do.
Hiten Samtani (08:36.044)
And I think your point stands, which is like, he has figured out where the money is, where the action is. He's put himself in those rooms, figuring out how to be around the money and being part of the it crowd. Even if you're not like made of the same money, if you're in the mix, you can get access to that kind of opportunity.
Yeah, and it's all about selling and creating an image I mean I saw this great clip of Ken Griffin the other day talking about he spoke at Harvard and He just said that Everything is sales and he's talked about how he was when he was raising money for Citadel in the 90s And you he was just getting crapped on left and right but he's like you're selling all the time to everyone you have to get it be comfortable hearing no and you have to learn how to Convince other people of your view of the world to have to
You have to convince employees to come work for you. have to convince vendors to work with you. have to convince your clients to invest with you. And it's the same thing here. And say what you want about Jona Recknitz. My is a little bit challenged relative to you. But he was able to convince all these people to part with gargantuan sums of money for the craziest of schemes. mean, he got what this guy, what's his name, Bob Engwannach?
My name's Robert, I don't know if, you can call him Bob.
Okay, Bob, Bobby E. He got Ming-Geng off to put up $2 million against the pay-per-view for the Floyd Mayweather-Jake Paul fight, and then he rolls it like four fights in a row.
Hiten Samtani (10:00.014)
He's like, Hey, no, no, no, we've there's the new fight that we're going to, you know, stick your influencer versus another fighter into. what I think that Jona does that maybe is something to be appreciated is that he takes advantage of the fact that even when these things are legal, they're often done like this. They're often done word of mouth. I know a guy in the entourage who knows a guy, et cetera. Right. The economy here, the gray economy is really how this works. And he mastered how to get into that.
The great economy is how development in real estate investing writ large works because if you're a developer, you don't know necessarily how to like lay sheet metal. I don't know what gypsum is. I do like saying it, but you need to have a guy for everything. You don't need to know how to do it. You need to know someone who knows how to do it. so again, the reason why we wanted to talk about this, even though it's not necessarily like directly real estate is because
except you like saying it.
Will Krasne (10:55.662)
You see these things and this is what powers a lot of flows into New York real estate. So the reason why 157 sells so well is because of guys like this and the money flows in from here. And so all of this stuff has such a big impacts on what gets built because then, you know, there's 111 West 57 get built. If diamond money doesn't go into 157 does 432 park does Miami.
have the boom that it's having if crypto does.
What you're saying here is that the catalyst for many things that we do see is often the source of the money is often these kind of fuzzy gray areas like this. That's what you're saying. So while he's collecting real estate cloud, he's also importantly collecting political cloud. He's in with de Blasio, he's in that inner circle, and then he gets wrapped up in this massive corruption scandal, the NYPD, right? And then there's a very dramatic scene in the Atavist story where he's
100%.
Hiten Samtani (11:55.19)
walking around with like a luxury bag full of cash, like $60,000 in cash. And that's kind of when it's the beginning of the end for him in New York.
somewhat unclear as to how literally everyone involved except him went to prison. And I guess he turned states.
To that point, Will, there is an amazing, amazing quote from one of the lawyers whose client is suing him. says the following quote, Jona's pretty much judgment-proof. He's the Jewish John Gotti.
I would have said he's like the Jewish, what's his name from Boston, Whitey Bolger, who's, I mean, it's the same thing. No, didn't. But it's incredible. And a lesser man might have been chastened when he moved to L.A.
didn't end up too well.
Hiten Samtani (12:40.472)
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Hiten Samtani (13:09.952)
One thing we should have probably said when we talk about him leaving New York is, I want to probably read this quote. So, Jona Rechnitz, he gets busted in New York and he turns witness, right? He turns witness in what became probably one of the biggest NYPD corruption cases in the modern era. A US attorney called him the following quote, one of the single most important and prolific white collar cooperating witnesses in the recent history of the Southern District of New York. That's a big fucking statement.
And somehow he avoids prison time on some kind of random technicality. Somehow they prove that one of the judges in the case had a conflict of interest of some.
Forget exactly what it was.
Will Krasne (13:48.111)
I think I always wonder here, this is maybe just something I've thought about too much, but who pays for all the lawyers here?
I have the same question at all times. You'll see like guys who are supposed to be destitute with like the fricking Ben Raffman type.
Someone who's like, I'm getting sued, or I'm suing over this money and I'm hiring Fried Frank at $1,400 an hour. You can't get a will done for less than $5,000 from a decent attorney. These lawyer bills can be mid-six figures in a second.
Anyway, we come back to LA and in LA...
He rents a $17,000 a month house in Beverly Wood for his six kids. starts a jewelry business. And I think one of my favorite pieces of the story is when he walks into the other famous jeweler's office and he goes, people tell me that you're my number one competition. I figured we might as well just work together. And the guy's like, who the fuck are you?
Hiten Samtani (14:23.841)
As one does.
Hiten Samtani (14:40.494)
Again, the chutzpah that it takes to put a New York real estate deal together translates perfectly into putting these diamond deals together. And so pretty soon this guy is like the celeb magnet. He's got Kimi K, he's got Kim Kardashian wearing one of his pieces. He's got Floyd, obviously, kind of pimping a lot of his jewelry as well. He's become the designer to the stars.
because it's iconic.
Will Krasne (15:03.372)
He's got Josh Altman from Million Dollar Listing Los Angeles. He's got all this stuff. The deals are apparently working. But again, all this stuff is done on faith. And it turns out he wasn't actually selling diamonds, unsurprisingly.
In these patterns of shady money, disputes with partners, etc., proliferate. There have been at least, according to the Atavist, at least 13 lawsuits filed against Rechnitz or his companies since he's moved back to LA. And there's only been a judgment against him on two of them. So again, Teflon man here.
kept taking out loans again. So he would get these drools on consignment and he would take out these loans.
not sure if all our listeners will be aware of what consignment is. It's a very standard way of doing business in the jewelry business.
Yeah. So basically you would go up and say, want, I think I can sell for these things, these big diamonds and they'll give them to you and you take the risk. if you make us, if you can sell it for more than you took them on consignment for, you make the spread. And if you don't, you have some very scary people who want to come after you.
Hiten Samtani (16:10.062)
Did I tell you my dad was a gold jeweler back in Dubai back in the day? It's like one of the most interesting things about him. So even now when we go buy a jewelry or something is like eyes light up. He's got the old trade in him.
You did not.
Will Krasne (16:23.005)
So Jona, what he would do is go get loans against those and I know what you're thinking, you oh gosh, like it's a whole Michael Wegel line of credit or whatever. Maybe he's paying a crazy interest rate. Maybe he's playing like 14%. No, he was paying like 8 % a month. I mean it's a useless.
That's like a loan shark rate. Sorry. You know what's interesting? Those kinds of rates where else you see them is in these, they're called, are you familiar with the concept of show capital?
yeah, if you have the show, proof of funds, yeah.
Correct, so this has been happening a lot and a tangent that's important here, this has been happening a ton in New York real estate, particularly in sub-institutional New York real estate where if a buyer needs to show that they have a certain level of assets to do a deal, they're going to some of these deeper pocketed guys and they're getting the money in their account for a small period of time and then they're paying that kind of interest on it.
Everything's done like a little bit with a wing and a prayer here. So Jona, our good friend as of now, is still not in prison and not dead. So good for him. And again, this is not typical necessarily for the promo, but I think what's great about Aten, because he brought this to our attention, is just real estate touches everything. Real estate is every trend that's in the world, real estate is involved somehow.
Will Krasne (17:41.152)
and this guy is just in the middle of all of it and it all flows.
And he is an object of serious fascination, I can tell you by the numbers. our audience is generally developers, lenders, brokers, hedge funds, blah, blah. The article that I embedded in the Promote the Out of Us article was clicked through more than 300 times from last week's newsletter. So people are obsessed with this guy. They're probably connected to this guy. He probably owes them money in some cases. But Jona Rechnitz, one of one guy, New York real estate, Los Angeles real estate, and diamonds.
fascinating character touches upon so many of the things that I guess human nature is just drawn to right? Shady money, grey areas, political power, celebrity and diamonds.
He's just like a Shakespearean character.
Hiten Samtani (18:27.02)
I feel like developers only care about one thing, which is sales velocity. Once you've sold enough units to make your promote, like, who cares what else happens?
I they care about fees and the fees come before the promote. But in condo sales, yes, these things are built not to last necessarily they're built to sell. sometimes you can as the buyer people have told in the bag, mean, caveat emptor is a thing for a
And I think the point you made about not being built to last necessarily is kind of at the center of the story we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about a major lawsuit at 432 Park Avenue filed against the developer CIM Group and nominally developer Harry Macklowe But what's interesting here is the kind of the life cycle of billionaires row. We talked about Gary Barnett a couple of weeks ago kind of birthing this corridor, 57th Street, now one of the most famous real estate kind of mini markets in the world.
but it's only about 15-ish years old. So all the product that came online, all the crazy amounts of money that were spent building the stuff, lending on the stuff, and then buying the stuff, we're only now starting to see what it actually kind of, when there's a little bit of wear and tear on it, what does it look like? And that's why I thought the story was so interesting. This is like finding it at a moment where there's, start to see a little cracks in the facade, so to speak.
And it's not even just that, it's also just the taste. 157 people thought it was, you know, had a different view of it architecturally than they do now for sure. Question I have is like, has anyone made any money on 57th Street?
Hiten Samtani (20:05.432)
What do mean? Like I think Gary Barnett did very well on 157. They sold out enough to make their nut, I'm sure. mean, Vornado said they cleared a billion dollars in profits on 220.
they still have sponsor units.
Will Krasne (20:17.27)
No, it's true. And I guess that over again, they started that land some time many years ago. And again, this stuff's all super hard and these people are incredibly impressive and not trying to demean anybody. like Harry, for instance, paid what? $400 and something million for the Drake hotel site here that was vaporized. And, you know, this thing got built. I actually think it's quite track. Yeah, maybe I'm in the minority.
You're a fan of 432? It's a pretty building. It's inspired by a trash can, but it's quite aesthetically pleasing.
I think so. What's interesting though is that these projects take a while to sell out, especially at this high price point. And if you're a developer, you're on to the next one. Harry MacLeod was on to one Wall Street. CIM is one of the most active real estate firms around. You need to pay back the loan. That's the first key. so can developers care about payment? Whoa.
Yeah, but they did. mean, they took a construction loan from Children's Investment Fund. They got the hedge fund out. I will say that they crossed, so they launched sales in 2013. They crossed the $2 billion sales mark in 2018. My gut is that they made money here, even though they might have had some units kind of stolen in the pipeline.
Right. No, fair enough. But again, I think the most important number you said there's 2013. Yeah. So that was 12 years ago. Jesus. Yeah. So this thing is starting to age a little bit. It's not quite dog years, but in skyscraper years, it's getting up there. so there have been famously a couple of articles about
Hiten Samtani (21:44.558)
Yeah, the New York Times had this front page story, I think it was called Life at a Super Tall, and they were talking about how when you throw the trash down the chute, it sounds like a bomb's going off.
because it wasn't angled and so it just went straight down. It kind of amazing.
straight down.
Well, the Russian oligarchs are paying to not live there. Fair. But, you know, these things aren't necessarily made to be livable. Like, that's not the point. The point is the view. Everything's constructed around the views. They're not constructed around, like, modern life. I mean, how long do you spend in the elevator if you're on the 88th floor? Correct. I mean, I know they have super fast elevators, but it's like minutes.
Right, and even the amenities that we talk a lot of, even in the rental market, I'm sure this happens where you walk and you tour a place that has a billiards room.
Will Krasne (22:34.55)
I just was talking about this the other day. was touring something and like the pool is only important for the leasing tour. Yeah. The gym is only important for the leasing tour. Yeah. You know, no one uses this stuff, but you have to have them. It's like an amenities arms race.
whatever the amenities arms race is when you're paying 7,000, 8,000, $9,000 a square foot changes, right? And in this case, you have stuff like a private restaurant that's supposed to be free for residents, but is no longer free, right? Because the reality of managing a property like this catches up.
Yeah. And you say whatever you do to get these things sold. And then it's like, yeah, actually like your HAA fees are going up like a thousand percent because it's really expensive to keep up a building like this. And so what's actually happening here is these aren't, you know, lifestyle issues. These are actual like structural defects.
Yeah, yeah, we should. That's a good point. Well, I'm glad you made it. We should distinguish between the stuff that people are saying, which is like this building is a frickin' disaster as a live in. The garbage sounds like this or that. And the lawsuit now, the new one, which is $165 million dollar legal action, which says the developers were aware of structural defects and yet continue to like fuck.
Yeah, I mean the condo boards basically saying that the developers were aware that there were signs of like cracks in the facade Yeah, and kept going again. There are laws about how long developers liable for construction defects You know, Florida just changed it. They extended theirs. I think last year from seven to ten years You were I'm not sure off the top my head. Yeah, but it's a real problem like and I'm not again all this is alleged we have no
Will Krasne (24:11.906)
inside information, but if they have proof that Macklowe, who was quote, not a concrete expert, argued that the invisible sealant was good enough for his yacht and therefore was good enough for the building, that's not awesome.
The vibes of this thing is like, oh yeah, unfurled, my yacht that I sail away with my French wife, it works there. It's probably gonna work on this 1400 foot tall tower that has a lot of people living in it. It's so dumb, it's brilliant. It's just dumb.
Yeah. And again, to differentiate, like there's this thing called VE, right? Like you can literally see in an Excel spreadsheet for a construction budget, there'll be like a VE line. And that means value engineer. And what that means is like, Hey, that really nice like bathroom tub we were going to have, it's going to come from a Home Depot.
So the travertine marble is replaced with something that you can buy down the street.
Exactly. So it's basically, if you go over budget areas, you know, you can cut and still like deliver a building that's livable, but maybe not at the level that you thought. Like that's everywhere. Every developer does that. That's not specific to this building that is everywhere. this is not.
Hiten Samtani (25:23.672)
So this is the point they're making in this new lawsuit, which is why it kind of elevates the seriousness of it. What they're saying is Rafael Vinoly the late star architect to design this, his firm flagged some of these issues. The structural engineer flagged some of these issues and the developers just went ahead anyway. And that's what makes this a pretty explosive law.
Right and again we're not it's sort of not clear the severity right because you know they're not saying the building is gonna fall over the building is gonna collapse or anything like that but obviously anytime you have cracks in a facade of something that's 1400 feet tall like it's a problem
Yeah. And also we should obviously say for the record that CIM, which is the primary developer on this thing, controls the purse strings, has vehemently denied the claims in this lawsuit, is going to move to dismiss it obviously. But I think there's a couple of broader points here. know, whichever way this lawsuit goes, we're kind of seeing what the long-term vision of living in one of these things looks like, what it actually means for the well-heeled residents who chose to buy in that. And I think that's really interesting. And the other part is, in any other asset class, right?
once you do a thing, you learn from it and you can kind of do it and do it and, you know, kind of over and over again. There was an elevator consultant who told New York magazine made a great point. He said, for these kind of like skinny supertalls, once you get over 40 stories, every one of these towers is a prototype. So learnings from one may not necessarily apply to another because every different shape and these are all these come in all like Matchbox 432 park, you've got Steinway's whole different thing.
220 is whole different thing. And he said each one kind of has its own personality. And once you go above a certain height, all bets are off. I thought that was super interesting.
Will Krasne (27:07.744)
No, that's exactly right. mean, we only got good at building by building over and over again. And we've only built what? A half dozen of these types of buildings. Ever. I mean, there's a reason that like Hilton Garden Inn's don't really have this issue. You know, like you build a lot of them are similar to garden apartments. I mean, not to say that those all don't have issues, specific issues, but we know how to do it and you can almost like do it right. Yeah.
And I mean, first of all, to go to the other side of the equation, also just brings home like how staggering in an achievement it is for any of these that ever get built.
The fact that these are around is just.
really staggering. you know, all credit to everyone who has the guts, the capital, and the ability to do this because it is truly something.
Yeah, and you know, I've been binging the B1M, a former partner of the Promote as well on a couple of things, but the level of intricate engineering and design and financing, all the stuff that has to come together to even put one of these things up is pretty astonishing. But there is something here that is being said, which is that developers are passing the buck when it comes to for sale condor projects. They're passing the buck on to a buyer who may not be as sophisticated, may not understand what's going on. So there was a structural engineer and kind of...
Hiten Samtani (28:30.674)
really hit this home and he said that what's going on in these supertalls is quote structural corruption. It's the way development operates in New York. The people who put up the buildings are not accountable for their quality. As long as problems don't crop up before they unload the property, they can do whatever they want.
And the last thing I'll say too is that if you've ever bought a home of any kind and you do your home inspection, you have your guy in there for 90 minutes and he looks at the, you know, the radiator, he looks at the, make sure the toilet flushes, make sure the lights go on and off. You can't reasonably do diligence on any of these buildings before you buy it. It's just impossible. so you're just essentially like giving a ton of trust to the developer that the thing was built well and correctly. And again,
These things are so complicated. can happen in layers and layers and layers below the developer. but just no one can really diligence it. If you're buying into any of these supertals, I mean, are you, how do you know that like the EFIS was installed correctly? Like, how do you know if the foundation is done correctly? mean, we have famously, what is it? One seaport that's tilting. This stuff happens. It's so hard. So again, we don't mean to like highlight this article to demean anybody, but.
procedure.
Will Krasne (29:47.838)
It's, you know, we've created something that like we almost can't.
control. Can I cook on the media side for a second? So what happens in these things I've always found interesting is when a luxury project of this stature comes up, is there's like this intense period, I want to say it's like a 12 month, 18 month period where the PR people are basically the paid double. They're all over it, right? That they just come at you with all these articles. One day it'll be a profile of the Starkitect who was inspired by like the sacred geometry of the whole thing.
Go for it.
Hiten Samtani (30:22.306)
the next day they'll give you access to the developer, which is quite rare. The next day they'll kind of get wonky about the design. And there's this whole strategy of all the publications you want to hit. The net result of something like this is that you have this web of coverage that creates this impression that this is the building you got to be in, right? And that impression is super important for sales velocity. And once that passes, then people start asking the questions, that cocoon is so strong.
And it's so, it's kind of addictive. it's really a, it's an art.
It's almost like launching a movie. Like you got to open. Yeah. Because if you don't sell right away, that's when you're going to get most of your sales. So what we're seeing now is that the skyscraper dreams that got these things built or waking up at the end of it, because it's now 10, 15 years later. And we're figuring out exactly the results of the science experiment and engineering experiment that we did on 57th street. And we may not like what we found.
We're not singling out this building, even though we'll see how this plays out in court. But I think the lawsuit here at 432 Park Avenue brings up a broader issue, is like, these buildings are now, you know, they've, they've gone enough time has passed that we can ask the question, are they going to stand the test of time? Right? There's enough wear and tear. There's a little bit of hair on these buildings now. They're no longer the shiny at buildings. They were maybe five, 10 years ago. And what happens with these kinds of things might
kind of bring up broader questions for new developments of this kind, super tall luxury projects. There might be more skepticism, there might be more examination, and there might be stricter standards. And that's why I thought this was a great story to talk
Will Krasne (32:05.23)
Absolutely, and I think you're gonna see it not just in New York. You're gonna see it Miami. You're gonna see it in other markets in Florida. Oh Yeah
Miami, God. Have you ever been in Toronto? Those buildings are fucking disasters. Like the facade just falls off. It's terrible.
Hiten Samtani (32:25.228)
That's it for the Promote Podcast this week. Sketchy diamond dealers slash developers. And then super tall luxury towers with literal cracks, allegedly, in them. Thanks again to our sponsor, Air Garage. You can see how their full service parking management solution benefits you by going to airgarage.com/promote. That's airgarage.com/promote
like, share, subscribe, five star reviews only. And please write us at podcast at thepromote.com. We'd love to hear from you. Tell us what you like, what you don't like. Just tell Hathen what you don't like.
He just needs the praise, he's still a little fragile from the last couple of weeks. But listen, our listeners, this is our 10th episode. A lot of podcasts don't make it this far. We intend to keep going. We're really having a great time. So thank you to our listeners. We really, really appreciate. I really appreciate you, Matt. Appreciate you.
Yes, thank you. I love you, dude. Love you, bro, Montana. I love you.
Hiten Samtani (33:24.782)
Ciao.