Trading cabanas for co-op boards, author Steven Gaines has followed up on his national bestselling book about Hamptons mansions and millionaires, Philistines at the Hedgerow, with a new book on Manhattan real estate.
The Sky’s the Limit (288 pages; Little, Brown and Company) provides plenty of revealing glimpses of Upper East Side high society and the dynamics of celebrity purchases, but it’s the profiles of top Manhattan real estate brokers that have drawn the most praise from some reviewers. Dolly Lenz dubbed “Jaws” by former Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski gets a lot of print in particular, as does her former Elliman cohort Michael Shvo. Some excerpts:
Michael Shvo and Dolly Lenz met in the summer of 2001. Dolly was famous in the business by then, and she had exclusives on some of the best apartments in the city. Shvo was ambitious and wanted to work with her. “Dolly had an exclusive that I wanted to share,” he said, “so I went to meet her in the lobby of the building. The first time I saw her she was dressed like a slob, chewing gum, talking on the cell phone. I said to myself, ‘No way this is Dolly Lenz. I wouldn’t let her clean my apartment.'” Shvo claimed he asked, “You’re Dolly Lenz?” His incredulity quickly dissipated after spending a few minutes listening to her talk about the real estate market and realizing how smart she was. Shvo gave her his guarantee that if she would share the exclusive on the apartment he would sell it for her. “She said to herself, ‘Okay, who’s this little pisher that’s coming in?'” Shvo said. “I showed the apartment only five times before I sold it, and Dolly ended up screwing me on the deal.” Shvo said he was on his way to the airport to catch a plane for Israel when he found out that Lenz had claimed the apartment was already in contract for a higher price with her own client and there would be no commission for Shvo. He canceled his flight to Israel and took a taxi to Lenz’s office, where he sat down uninvited in a chair next to her desk and refused to budge. No matter how many times she asked him to leave, he stayed where he was and kept talking. According to Shvo, by the end of the day Lenz so admired his gumption that she finally agreed to close the deal with his buyers. After that, they were new best friends.
Paul Purcell, who was then president of Douglas Elliman, remembered when Lenz and Shvo paired up.
“They were joined at the hip,” he said. “They never went anywhere without each other. It was perverse, to be honest with you.”
“We became very good friends,” Shvo admitted, a tinge of wistfulness creeping into his voice. “We were partners for quite a while. We were very close–very close. We used to talk seventeen times a day. We were as close as two people who were not married could be. Or probably closer than two people that are married. She made a great contribution to my knowledge in real estate. Obviously, I learned a lot of good stuff from her and I learned a lot of bad things. But I loved her to death at the time. I was closer to her than her husband. Her children came to me for advice. Many weekends I flew out by helicopter to her house in the Hamptons.”
Shvo savored another sip of his dessert wine. “Recently, though, our relationship was terminated. We don’t speak.” What caused so much animosity between them? “If you ask about the end of the relationship, you could write your next book about it,” he said. He contemplated the loss of his friendship for a moment, searching for the right words. “The truth is,” he said finally, “I broke her heart.”
If Michael Shvo broke Dolly Lenz’s heart, it was by claiming that he made more money than she did. “Broke my heart?” Lenz repeated, nearly apoplectic, her eyes wide behind oval eyeglasses. “Close to my children? Helicopter? He never took a helicopter to the Hamptons to my knowledge.” She was talking faster than ever; there was color in her cheeks and blood in her eye.