Editor’s note: Turning the page on a turbulent year
Stuart Elliott
Covering real estate is never about the bricks and mortar — it’s about the personalities at the center of the wheeling and dealing.
The beginning of the year is an opportune time to look back at what readers liked best in 2022. The stories that drew the most new subscribers were those that pulled back the curtain on the industry’s biggest players — whether uncovering the history of such “quiet giants” as Joseph Chetrit or analyzing the strategies of splashier characters like Grant Cardone.
If you think of real estate moguls as the new robber barons, The Real Deal is telling stories of American enterprise, warts and all.
Articles like these, along with our proprietary rankings, fleshed out our top 10 stories. Here’s the full list:
1. “Joseph Chetrit: The man from Morocco,” by Adam Piore (June issue)
2. “How Grant Cardone built a real estate empire with other people’s money,” by Francisco Alvarado (September)
3. “Ben Ashkenazy goes on the offensive,” by Rich Bockmann (July)
4. “Joel Schreiber, WeWork’s first investor, under fire on multiple fronts,” by Keith Larsen (November)
5. “Age of empires: Rubie Schron’s Cammeby’s makes national push,” by Keith Larsen (July)
6. “Ranking Manhattan’s top residential brokers,” by Sasha Jones, Harrison Connery and the TRD research team (April)
7. “Private equity firms are betting big on New York apartments,” by Rich Bockmann (September)
8. “Madison Realty Capital comes of age,” by Keith Larsen and Joe Lovinger (March)
9. “Battle of the builders: Ranking New York’s top general contractors,” by Joe Lovinger with research by Matthew Elo (May)
10. “Resi royalty: Ranking Manhattan’s top residential brokerages,” by Sasha Jones and the research team (March)
First on the list is our profile of Joseph Chetrit, a fabled name in New York City real estate partly thanks of the mystery surrounding him. Chetrit’s properties have included the Sony Building, the Hotel Chelsea, the old Daily News Building, what will be Brooklyn’s tallest skyscraper, the Sears (now Willis) Tower in Chicago and a billion-dollar development in Miami. But nobody knew his backstory until we tracked down one of his relatives.
At the opposite end of the spectrum is our profile of Grant Cardone, the energetic sales trainer and emerging real estate mogul who has 10 million social media followers. Less visible than his brand is the nature of his investments. He claims to have amassed a $5 billion apartment portfolio funded by money from 10,000 devotees. It’s an unusual approach to dealmaking that’s drawn doubters.
Check out the stories on this list if you’ve missed them.
Meanwhile, on to the new year! Our Closing interview (we’ll see if it lands on next year’s top story list) is with Thad Wong of @properties. Wong and his partner, Mike Golden, built the firm into Chicago’s largest independent residential brokerage, steered it through the Great Recession and fought off such competitors as Compass, which made a big foray into the Windy City.
Now, it’s @properties that’s expanding. The company brokered about $24 billion in deals last year and bought the real estate arm of luxury auction house Christie’s. It also inked a deal to partner with star broker Aaron Kirman in Los Angeles.
While things are looking up for Wong, it was a rough year for the resi brokerage world.
As Hiten Samtani writes, a giddy 2021 where almost everyone made fat profits was followed by a sobering 2022. Surging interest rates hobbled the housing market. Tanking brokerage stocks forced executives to forget about growth and focus on expenses.
Even high-flying Miami, which bucked national trends during Covid, is seeing a slowdown.
“A lot of my colleagues are very doom and gloom,” one broker told us.
Still, Miami-Dade’s top 20 residential teams managed to close more than $5.7 billion in deals. See our ranking here.
For more on the year that was — and what might lie ahead — check out our end-of-year package on page 56.
Enjoy the issue and Happy New Year!
