It’s hard to track the moment when the world accepted private property, but the 17th century was pivotal for the concept. It’s not that you couldn’t claim land as yours before, just that rights more often came with inheritance or maybe a certain kind of communal ownership. But after philosopher John Locke argued that if you own your body, you own your labor, it caught on that if you worked a piece of land and made it productive, it could — or maybe should — belong to you.
Whether they know it or not, the industry titans on our inaugural Top 100 embody this history lesson, having worked their dirt into condo towers, malls, hotels and office buildings that shape the skylines across five of the biggest markets in the country.
Who’s on our list and how did we pick them? The Real Deal’s reporters and editors asked themselves who runs real estate. We looked at data, reread our coverage, insisted sources steelman our nominations and held internal debates. The result is a group of dealmakers in every sector of the industry. It’s not just literal builders either. We’ve got an assortment of power players, from lenders and brokers to politicians and lobbying leaders.
As we shaped our list, we noticed patterns, so we patched together a playful yet trenchant working method for becoming an icon. Of course it’s impossible to write a complete how-to in this industry, but we can pull lessons from others’ success.
You can read full entries about all the main characters, at TheRealDeal.com/Top100.
The pages in the issue have a range of features beyond the Top 100, including Lidia Dinkova’s story on how the federal program to update public housing complexes has seeded a gold rush for developers in South Florida, a dispatch on the defense teams’ strategy in the ongoing Alexander brothers’ trial and the real estate sagas emerging from the latest release of the Epstein files.
Elsewhere, Elizabeth Cryan has Lauren Hochfelder, who allocates $78 billion of investor capital to real estate (and related asset classes) for Morgan Stanley, opening up about her sweet tooth and ballet background in this month’s Closing interview.
Francisco Alvarado tells a David-and-Goliath tale about the residents of El Portal, a small Miami-Dade village, who are trying to resist Adam Neumann’s plans to build a school and apartments in their neighborhood.
From Chicagoland, we have a look at the wealth transforming lakefront properties, using new-construction mansions as our window, as well as the answer to why everyone in local real estate is obsessed with the Cook County property assessor’s primary race. Bureau chief Sam Lounsberry’s ranking of general contractors shows the impact of even just one megaproject, in this case a casino.
Meanwhile, Kate Hinsche keeps on the thread of wealth and power in Palm Beach with its “pull on America’s billionaires and centimillionaires,” as she writes in her piece accompanying the rankings of top brokers in the area.
And Jess Hardin takes us behind the scenes at Harwood International and inside the world of the colorful Gabriel Barbier-Mueller, a Swiss immigrant to Texas whose artistic nature helped create the powerhouse office neighborhood of Uptown in Dallas (now attracting finance tenants from New York) but left him subject to bad deals: Harwood gave up eight deeds to its buildings, carefully curated into the Harwood District over four decades, in just 12 months.
Spend some time with the 100s — and don’t miss our other stories. Enjoy the issue!