Mystery agents, tightrope walkers, and corruption monitors | The Real Estate Rundown

THE RUNDOWN

?? Meet the record-setting mystery broker to billionaires in Palm Beach?

??Find out about the man behind Chicago’s LaSalle Street renaissance, Michael Reschke, in this month’s magazine

?? Hollywood will head to San Marcos, Texas – despite protests from environmentalists

??The formerly mobbed-up New York City carpenters’ union is one step closer to autonomy

?? “I’ve never had so much inventory in my life”: Multifamily sales make a comeback in San Francisco?

??As LA’s hot market cools off, we ranked the top resi agents in the City of Angels

THE DETAILS

?? If you’re a billionaire in Palm Beach looking to buy or sell some your properties, Lawrence Moens is your guy. He’s serviced the likes of Donald Trump and Ken Griffin, but deftly dodged the South Florida real estate spotlight. The “About” page on his website may return an Error 404, but when asked what the deal is with Moens, most people have the same answer.

??When one bidder wanted to tear down the poorly insulated Thompson Center in Chicago, Michael Reschke swooped in with what he thought was a better idea. The risk-taking developer wants to turn it into an office building — at a time when vacancy is at an all-time high. Our profile lays out his thinking and his vision for LaSalle Street.?

?? Hollywood, meet Hill Country: the San Marcos, TX City Council overruled locals and environmentalists to greenlight a film studio atop the Edwards Aquifer Recharge Zone. The development’s nickname, “Project Dark Monday”, sounds like the sequel to Zero Dark Thirty, but opponents say it’s more like Erin Brockovich. It still got the go-ahead and a 5 year tax rebate.?

?? Since the mid-’90s, the largest carpenters’ union in New York City has been under government oversight with an ankle bracelet in the form of a “corruption monitor.” Could the court-appointed micromanaging have finally come to an end? Well, that depends on your definition of “as needed basis.”

?? We may not be at pre-pandemic numbers yet, but San Francisco has been seeing a steady flow of prospective renters coming back to the city. Rents are high, which has been great for multifamily sales… even though interest rates keep creeping up.

?? It’s no simple task to sell homes to the stars, but the top LA agents make it look easy. Now, with tumbling stocks, crypto crashes, and spiking interest rates, that challenge could get trickier. But the agents on our annual ranking wouldn’t let us see them sweat. Not yet, at least.