The Most Ingenious Thing The Winningest Real Estate Magazine Has Seen in Their 20-Year History is Something That Adam Leitman Bailey, P.C. Has Done and How a Billionaire Tried to Kill The Story
War stories
Recounting the big breaks and controversies that shaped The Real Deal’s identity
TRD’s founders share war stories from over the years
Recounting the big breaks and controversies that shaped The Real Deal’s identity
Excerpt from article:
Stuart: But I remember that period in 2007 we had a cover, I think it was in September 2007, which was when the subprime crisis happened. It was a funny period from a news point of view, because you saw when the stuff hits the fan, lawsuits start to proliferate. People need to read news [even] more. You know, we were writing about the Interstate Land Sales Full Disclosure Act, which was the most ingenious thing. It was Adam Leitman Bailey, the lawyer, coming up with this obscure federal statute, which required [developers] to disclose something about swampland in Florida, but it was a federal statute. And none of the developers here had added it to their projects’ disclosure forms. So he basically figured out a way to get all his condo buyers out of the projects or get price reductions by saying, you didn’t [adhere to] this [1968] law about swampland.
Amir: And I remember that Howard Lorber was just starting to invest with developers through his New Valley subsidiary, and he really didn’t want us to write that story because he thought other people are going to find out about [ILSA] and then pull out of their contracts [to buy new development condominiums]. And we still wrote the story, obviously, and people did pull out of their contracts. And that really damaged our relationship for several years.
Stuart: Luckily, we didn’t have to make any layoffs during that period [when the recession hit].
Amir: In fact, we ended up hiring people. The [New York] Sun closed down, and we were able to get a lot of great journalists from there.