What is the American dream, anyway?
The answer is in a mall in New Jersey.
Our cover story this month looks at the Ghermezians, the developers of North America’s largest shopping centers, including the massive American Dream mall in New Jersey.
As reporter Elizabeth Cryan writes, the family’s company, Triple Five Group, rescued American Dream from near-failure and bankruptcy, and despite plenty of skepticism, the immigrant Persian-Jewish family “supersized everything: the roller coasters, the two-story Hermès store, the enclosed surfing wave pool, the topiaries in the luxury wing, the entry fees.” (There’s also an indoor ski slope.)
Even after the Ghermezians finally got the place open in 2019, Covid closures, financial problems and lawsuits haunted the shopping and entertainment behemoth, which is the second biggest mall in the U.S. (after the Mall of America in Minneapolis, which the Ghermezians also own). But bills are coming due, and sales probably need to accelerate for one of the most dramatic bets in retail to pay off.
Elsewhere, we are continuing to ask the broader question of what the American Dream under the presidency of Donald Trump looks like, and how this vision will affect real estate.
For all of Trump’s populist bluster, this seems like a time when a lot of (rich) people are going to get a lot richer. Trump might not care a lot about what liberals or Europeans think, but the response from Wall Street and the stock market is still guiding his presidency.
For all of Trump’s populist bluster, this seems like a time when a lot of (rich) people are going to get a lot richer.
We take a look at the Opportunity Zone program, which was rolled out during the first Trump administration and is set to be renewed; it was one of the more consequential Trump policies for real estate — one developer called it Trump’s “baby.” We spoke to developers to find out which parts of the program they liked and what they’d update in the 2.0 version.
We’re also, of course, keeping a tally on everything else Trump-related (it’s hard to believe it’s only been a little over a month): There’s the announced cancellation of the EB-5 visa program and a new “gold card” for the wealthy that would replace it; a list of federal buildings that could go up for sale and of government leases to be shed by the Elon Musk-led DOGE; real estate data that has apparently gone missing from government sites; real estate figures like Steve Witkoff and Howard Lutnick who are leaving day-to-day business to their young sons while they attend to their jobs in D.C. (including one-on-one meetings with Putin in the case of Witkoff); discussion of privatization of government agencies involved in housing; looming job cuts at HUD and other agencies; and possible impacts to Section 8 housing. We’ll see how many of these are trial balloons thrown by Trump that disappear by the next news cycle, and how much of it actually happens.
Meanwhile, there has been a surge in home sales in Palm Beach since the Trump inauguration, part of the so-called Trump Bump. We rank the top residential real estate brokers doing business in the shadow of Mar-a-Lago.
Elsewhere, while “office space” has been a bad word in real estate following Covid and the work-from-home trend, there are green shoots appearing, but only on the high end. As senior reporter Rich Bockmann writes, “developers are suddenly ramping up to build the glitzy, high-end offices that deep-pocketed tenants are clamoring for, though by the time their demands get met, it could be 2030.”
Still, there is a lot of real estate distress out there. We take a look at Greg Corbin’s unique approach to “manifesting” positive outcomes as the top bankruptcy brokerage in New York (he talks about happy bankruptcies where “everyone holds hands and marches into court”).
And money is still not that plentiful these days for borrowers. But as banks have retreated, it’s been a “golden age” for some niche lenders. In “See Ran Run,” we take a look at Ran Eliasaf’s Northwind Group, a firm that’s emerged as the go-to lender for complicated New York City real estate deals.
Enjoy the issue.