Editor’s note: The Real Deal this month introduces a new feature called “How it feels…,” chronicling the professional triumphs and tribulations of New York real estate from a first-person point of view.
…to get a six-figure commission check
Linda Stein, Prudential Douglas Elliman broker
As told to Emma Johnson
I’ve gotten several six-figure checks. I can’t remember my first one. When you get a big check, it’s not glee you feel — it’s a relief you scored. You can show someone 75 apartments and have a board turn-down. Deals fall apart much more than they come together.
I had an enormous deal in Long Island I can’t really discuss. I was on the phone five times a day, six days a week for five weeks straight. The deal was signed in the summer, but they didn’t want to close until mid-January. It’s like being pregnant — and getting that check is like having a baby. I celebrated by opening two bottles of that rose champagne.
I managed the Ramones for seven years. If one week we had an audience of 40 people and the next week we had 700 people, that’s immediate gratification. If you have an encore or hear your song on the radio, that’s gratification. There’s no gratification in real estate except for getting a check.
If a person of a certain age with an education like mine — a master’s degree from Columbia — had a job, I certainly would be making six figures, so it’s not completely out of whack that I get paid what I do.
And we earn these checks. It costs a lot of money to show these days — the cost of taxis is so high, I can spend $100 a day on taxis and not get paid. You don’t show $9 million apartments and take the subway.
But we don’t get checks every week — it’s not like clipping coupons. And sometimes the check is spent by the time you get it. The reality of it is that a lot of it goes to Uncle Sam. Real estate brokers are independent contractors and are responsible for all our deductions. But I did forget to deduct that rose champagne.
…to stand atop a recently constructed skyscraper
Tom Elghanayan, Rockrose Development president
As told to Emma Johnson
I think that building skyscrapers also must be a very sexual thing to do — erecting buildings. I think it appeals to people’s sensibilities on many levels.
Most of what we do here is complete dog shit. It’s tedious, it’s tiring. But 5 percent of it is satisfaction in seeing the reality of what you’ve built — even if I don’t make any money, even though a byproduct of all this is that you usually make a large sum of money.
To tell the truth, I get that satisfaction less and less because the gestation period of building a building — especially in New York City — is so long. The amount of obstacles you have to overcome is overwhelming: buying the site, taking possession, getting tenants out and the legal problems with that, zoning, dealing with community groups, and on and on and on. It takes forever. By the time you get a shovel in the ground, you’re dealing with the unions. So many things can screw you up.
I really like going to the topping-out parties. They’re essentially for the construction workers and these guys are very union, very patriotic kind of guys, so there is a lot of flag waving, and with that comes a real sort of camaraderie and team spirit because everyone knows what a difficult process it is. The whole team really lets its hair down and celebrates.
We’re now working on Queens West in Long Island City. We’re building a whole community of 3,500 units, and it’s taking years and years of remediation and negotiation. But I can’t wait to get up there when it’s all done.