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Braden Keil, Post real estate columnist, dies

Braden Keil (right) with wife Jennifer Gould Keil (Photo credit: New York Social Diary)

Veteran real estate writer Braden Keil has passed away after a battle with cancer.

Keil, 53, was best known as the author of the "Gimme Shelter" celebrity real estate column in the Post. He died on Tuesday, according to an e-mail that was circulated to Post staffers.

In 2007, Keil wrote in the Post about being diagnosed with melanoma, a potentially fatal form of skin cancer.

His last column, which he wrote with the help of his writer wife, Jennifer Gould Keil, was published March 5.  In it he wrote about Matthew Bronfman's 9,000-square-foot Westchester mansion, which the Seagram heir had listed as a rental for $28,500 per month.

Keil, who began writing his column in 2000, played a major role in chronicling the stratospheric rise of Manhattan real estate in the early part of the 21st century, said Steven Gaines, author of "The Sky's the Limit: Passion and Property in Manhattan."

"He was able to write about real estate in a way that made it exciting for everybody, whether you could afford the real estate he was writing about or not," Gaines said when first told of the news by The Real Deal. "There was nobody in the business like him. He's irreplaceable."

Post colleague Lois Weiss, author of the "Between the Bricks" commercial real estate column said, "Braden fine-tuned the art of celebrity residential real estate reporting. This is a terrible, untimely tragedy for his family and for all of us who knew him and looked forward to reading his musings."

Keil leaves behind his wife, who has freelanced for The Real Deal, and his children, Kaitlin, 3, Braden, 5, and Kourtney, 21.

Services will be held Friday at 11:30 a.m. at the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel at 1076 Madison Avenue at 81st Street, according to funeral home staff.