Instructed by God, Moses led his people to the promised land. The commandments of God were shared on tablets of stone that Moses brought down from the mountain.
Fast-forward two millennia, and you’ll find a cast of similarly named characters in a very different setting.
You’ve got Moses Kagan (@moseskagan) and The Real Estate God (@TheRealEstateG6). Instead of stone tablets, there is X, formerly known as Twitter. Most importantly, you’ve got the hashtag #RETwit, used to spread gossip, news and insight about commercial real estate in a brand-new way.
Kagan is one of the founding fathers of #RETwit, and The Real Estate God is its most notable anonymous account (because God is unknowable, I guess), with 114,000 followers.
Commercial real estate has been a bunch of dullards when it comes to social media. Many still see social media as “new,” even though it’s been popular for 20 years.
The panache that residential brokers — some of whom are reality TV stars, to be fair — bring to Instagram was lacking in this part of the industry. Most of what comes out of the commercial real estate world has been canned press releases, self-serving opinion columns or dry market reports.
That is starting to change, thankfully.
Broker Bob Knakal broke news of his firing from JLL on X recently. StripMallGuy (the most well-known account in the community) shares inside dirt on problematic tenant types. Others write about shifts in the market the press might not have picked up on yet (hard to believe, since we know everything … ), post gripes about NIMBYs or offer career advice.
#RETwit is informal and a breath of fresh air and has continued to grow in size and influence since the hashtag was born.
It’s informal and a breath of fresh air and has continued to grow in size and influence since the hashtag was born three years ago. Maybe not quite as revelatory as biblical days, but important to the industry. Check out our story on the stars of #RETwit.
Our cover story this month deals with slightly darker subject matter — think Judas-type betrayal, if you want to continue the biblical analogies.
In “Real Estate’s Rasputin,” senior reporter Keith Larsen chronicles the unraveling of developer Nir Meir, who is now behind bars at Rikers Island, awaiting trial for allegedly masterminding a multiyear $86 million fraud.
Meir was sitting atop a condo empire with Ziel Feldman, as half of the duo leading the development firm HFZ. But the pair lost their flagship $2 billion condo development on the High Line, the XI, in the biggest developer implosion of the Covid era.
It would be several years before Meir’s alleged scheme would come to light, part of a pattern of obfuscation and lies that Larsen experienced first-hand in covering him. In the meantime, Meir was seen everywhere, partying in Miami, his home base before being extradited to New York in February. He owned Porsches, an Aston Martin and multiple Mercedes. One month, he spent over $200,000 on wine.
It went beyond the usual real estate fraud, observers allege.
“To hear Feldman tell it, Meir is not just a bad guy — he’s a sociopath. His act at the office all those years wasn’t just real estate swagger. Meir could read emotions and put people under a spell,” Larsen writes. Those caught in his web, including his wife, who has filed for divorce, felt fooled and betrayed and “are now trying to understand how he played it, and why.” Here’s the fascinating story.
Next, anyone with a savior complex should read our stories about social housing and 3D-printed homes. Both, their supporters maintain, can save the (real estate) world. Social housing’s premise is that the government shouldn’t just legislate or incentivize badly needed housing — it should just build the homes itself. The company Icon, a VC darling, thinks its machines can solve the housing crisis with 3D-printed homes.
Last but not least, there is our look at the winners and losers in the historic NAR commission settlement last month. And our annual ranking of the top New York resi brokers has new No. 1s this year.
Enjoy the issue, and Godspeed.