April 2003, Prospect Heights: Amir Korangy, a small-time investor in Brooklyn brownstones, had a revelation: There was nothing for him to read.Nothing on the big deals and dealmakers, nothing focused on the kind of news that people in the industry could use, nothing where developers, brokers, architects and other real estate professionals were characters in their own right.\xa0

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The only thing around at the time were trade publications that basically reprinted press releases and Sunday real estate sections in the local newspapers. So you could choose between stenography or lifestyle coverage.\xa0

Amir took it upon himself to change that.He had charisma and a clear vision, and I wrote as a freelancer for that first issue. The magazine had a cool sensibility and layout, but there was room for improvement — my name was misspelled and there was a typo in the headline. I suggested to Amir that he could probably use an editor. Then we got our first advertising salesperson in Yoav Barilan, and the rest is history.\xa0

Today, we are the largest and most-respected real estate-focused publication in the U.S., following the money in a \\$60 trillion dollar industry.Spreading out from our roots in New York, we’ve got a staff of 100 people and cover the market from coast to coast.\xa0 We’ve won more than 50 journalism awards. We’ve written books (our most recent, “The New Kings of New York,” was named one of the best books of 2022 by the New York Post) and produced documentaries for PBS.\xa0

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I’m most proud that we’ve helped develop editorial talent, and we’ve sent countless reporters and editors to the most respected publications. It’s a two-way street — our staff now also hails from some of the most prominent news outlets around.

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Leading up to this 20th anniversary, though, I really didn’t want to think about any of it. The passage of time and all that. I was too busy. \xa0

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And there is always the nagging feeling that we should have done more.For an industry this size, we are still pretty small. We’ve made every mistake along the way, from bad hires to (arguably) not taking financing to grow. And no Pulitzers yet.

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If I slice it another way, though,that feeling of “it’s never enough” keeps driving us forward.It’s the same impulse that pushes real estate developers to build further up to the heavens each year, that causes brokerages to want to expand nationally and that compels investors to keep amassing bigger fortunes. It’s the ambition of our big cities and of the real estate industry. And it has served us well. \xa0

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With time, I’ve gotten (a bit) better at realizing the main thing about what we do:It’s fun.It’s fun to get scoops, to think big-picture and write long, juicy yarns or books. It’s fun to chronicle how money and power work through the lens of real estate. The characters are outsized and (often) shameless and therefore fun to write about.\xa0

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There's all that and more in this issue.There is a\xa0package of stories\xa0about our two decades recapping the crazy world of real estate. And oh yeah, there was a banking crisis this past month that has major ramifications for real estate — see “Nine Days in Hell.”\xa0

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Plus,there’s our annual ranking of\xa0NYC’s top residential brokers, the new type of\xa0sprawl growing in Texas\xa0and the quiet rise of billionaire\xa0Michael Dell’s MSD Capital\xa0to become one of the biggest real estate players nationwide, leveraging his already substantial tech fortune into more money. Because it’s never enough.\xa0

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Enjoy the issue!And thank you for these first two decades.\xa0

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A ringside seat to the ultimate blood sport

Looking back at some of the industry-defining stories from 20 years of TRD:Top of the Standard, height of the real estate boom. The cavernous space is overflowing with the industry’s who’s who, rubbing shoulders, double-dipping smoked salmon canapés, fending off lesser mortals trying to muscle into their photos. It’s the kind of Manhattan party you could only throw when deals are coming fast and money is cheap. Grabbing a drink at the bar (the line’s five deep), we spot two young strivers, shiny-suited, shiny-eyed, gazing around in wonder.

The policy shifts that reshaped real estate over the last decade

A few years ago, the real estate industry decried sweeping changes to New York’s rent stabilization law as a “horror show” that would destroy the city’s rental market and drive landlords — and their money — to other states.\xa0

Inside the Trump brothers’ plans for California’s largest-ever warehouse project

Few people outside of Southern California have ever heard of Moreno Valley, a small city 60 miles east of Downtown Los Angeles. It’s certainly not the type of place where you’d expect to find luxury developers from Miami.

Building leverage: The influential labor groups that shape NYC’s skyline

One might expect a union representing New York construction workers to broadly support a plan to add 800,000 homes in the state. But when it comes to Gov. Kathy Hochul’s proposal to do just that, one of the city’s largest construction unions is more concerned about its leverage — or lack thereof.

Will LA’s new transfer tax kill its famous spec home market?

Richard Weintraub was sitting in a chic Italian cafe in Palisades Village, an upscale Westside L.A. shopping center, when he mentioned that he’s pregnant.\xa0

Sultans of sprawl: Texas’ volume builders

American cities are in a crisis of growth. Some don’t have enough of it — places like San Francisco and Chicago desperately need investment and tax dollars to keep from spiraling into decline. Others, like New York and Miami, have plenty of people but appear incapable or uninterested in building enough housing to keep rents out of the stratosphere.

Two decades of wisdom and war stories from real estate titans.

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In hindsight, asking Sam Zell when he planned to ride off into the sunset (on one of his Ducati motorbikes, perhaps) may have been misguided. Real estate titans don’t retire; they typically get carried out in a body bag. It’s the one commonality across nearly 200 interviews with the biggest names in the business. If you’re thinking of packing it in, if you’re not having fun at the highest level, you’re probably a ways from the highest level.Read full story here →

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