Hot Property

by Michele Kleier

  “OMG, what are these little angels?” asks her mother as she walks over.

  “A little gift. From the countess.” Isabel signs for the “package” so the messenger can leave, and takes out the frantic puppies, who lick her face, her ears, her neck.

  “Oh, give one to me!” says Elizabeth, and then to the puppy, “You’re so delicious, you could be Dixie’s sister! Oh, look,” she says, “there’s a note.”

  Dear Isabel, I know you are a lover of these small dogs and I thought your Dixie might enjoy having a little companion. Of course, when I found the right one, I had to buy two! They are very good-tempered and their breeding is, of course, impeccable. With affection, Delphine.

  Chapter Twelve

  Elizabeth

  Prime Chelsea Loft

  Artist’s loft; private keyed elevator leads to this large live/work space, open and light with north and south exposures, oversize windows, 14-ft ceilings. Bring your architect. $2.15 million.

  Elizabeth is in a taxi on her way to meet Bart Schneider at a loft that he’s bidding on in Chelsea, against her better judgment and despite her repeated advice that he look elsewhere for something more suitable. It’s mid-November now, and some of the windows and trees with lights are just beginning to show the twinkling mood of Christmas. The city looks so alive again.

  After irritating Elizabeth for months with his indecision and almost daily phone calls, the exasperating Bart Schneider has finally opted to buy a loft a convenient three blocks from his art gallery. Elizabeth has—after trying her best to convince him that this property is just too problematic—very reluctantly helped the sale along. As far as she’s concerned, the only thing the property has going for it is “proximity,” something she’d strongly suggested early on and which Bart had flatly dismissed. Like many buyers, he’d begun his search with a strong idea of what he wanted in his dream apartment—something that would reflect his success and his world-class lifestyle—only to see that idea change over and over again. When he first began looking, he was sure he wanted a duplex (he claimed to love climbing a flight of stairs to get to his bedroom), then decided a duplex didn’t matter, but the apartment must be not only completely renovated and in totally move-in condition, but furnished as well (a near impossibility in New York). Then it was a town house with a parlor floor that had at least twelve-foot ceilings to display his artwork, and then a town house became too hard to tend to, a simple apartment, facing any direction but south (would fade his art collection), unfurnished (someone else’s taste would never match his), until, alas, he settled on a loft he found on StreetEasy.com and forwarded to Elizabeth saying, “This is the one.” It had been renovated in the 1980s and had glass brick dividers, two bathrooms, and two bedrooms carved out on either side of the rectangular space. The place was in shabby condition at best; it would need at least half a million in work, she guessed. Bart, always looking for a challenge, decided that he wanted to take on yet another project. This decision of his to move forward proved an old saying of hers: “Buyers are liars.”

  He is, unfortunately, Elizabeth reflects, one of those overachievers who believes that everything he does, every decision he makes, can’t come easy. Despite the fact that his gallery is a tremendously successful one and that he employs ample staff to help him, he insists on working nonstop and micromanaging everyone and everything. Elizabeth has to admit to herself that there were a few times when his incessant phone calls and demands of her time made her seriously consider giving him to another broker in her office. But there was something about Bart that kept Elizabeth working with him. He was kind, unlike Lance Roberts who, as Elizabeth expected, was discouraged from making an offer by the co-op board of 860 UN Plaza, who’d heard about his bad behavior and refused to allow him or any of his relatives to live in the building. The good news about that was that she never heard from Lance Roberts again.

  Bart’s offer of $1.7 million on a $2.1 million asking price had been presented and, much to her surprise, accepted rather quickly and easily at $1.8 after only two rounds of negotiations. But of course Bart had contingencies. He insisted on a building inspection (fair enough), but then wanted time for an architect to study the space, drawing up plans so that Bart himself could determine if the space actually could be reconfigured to suit his idiosyncratic needs. But he was all cash, and that was appealing, and it seemed as though he was the one lone offer in the apartment’s nearly two years on the market. The only hiccup—the sellers put a three-week deadline for the contingencies to be met.

  As her cab turns down 25th Street, Elizabeth’s cell rings again, this time with a number she doesn’t recognize. A not particularly friendly voice says, “Elizabeth? It’s Roberta Green from LEX.”

  Elizabeth tenses for a moment when she hears LEX. The most recent development with Teddy is that his once competitive, edgy relationship with Christopher McKinnon has evolved into an exceptionally close friendship. The two brokers lunch together at least once a week, usually at Del Frisco’s or Fred’s at Barneys—although this, in and of itself, isn’t anything out of the ordinary. Elizabeth and her best broker friend, Barbara Fox, have regularly lunched together for years, but their friendship goes way, way back and stems from multiple things in common, like a love of animals—Barbara has her own charity called Woof and a brood of at least ten rescue dogs at any given moment; they both sit on the Real Estate Board of New York’s ethics committee, and they both love a good glass of champagne or a frozen margarita! Elizabeth and Tom also frequently double-date with Barbara and her divine husband, Jimmy Freund, a Horace Mann alumnus and a real Renaissance man. Teddy Wingo and Christopher McKinnon, on the other hand, had been enemies until about a minute ago, and the only time Teddy referred to him was to talk about Christopher and the “trashy” women he dated. And so Elizabeth finds herself utterly bewildered by the recent turn of events.

  “I’m calling because I have somebody very interested in your listing at 33 East 70th,” Roberta begins, referring to a $9.5 million four-bedroom, three-bath co-op that Elizabeth has had an exclusive on for nearly two years, before she herself found a buyer with the right financials.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, but we actually just have a signed contract,” she informs Roberta, wondering who gave out her cell number and why—she never gives it to brokers unless she is doing a deal with them, or has booked a showing.

  “I understand that you sold it yourself,” Roberta says, her voice now tinged with a bit of contempt. Her inference is that because Elizabeth is representing both seller and buyer, there might be a conflict of interest.

  Elizabeth chooses to ignore this—it is none of Roberta’s business.

  “Well, I’d like to show it if the contract isn’t fully signed.”

  If the contract were fully executed, Elizabeth would no longer engage this broker, but the truth is, the buyers have signed but the seller has not, so she says vaguely, “If anything changes, I’ll let you know, or you can follow up with one of my daughters tomorrow.” She suddenly gets a peculiar feeling that Roberta knows more than she should about this particular deal.

  “But has the seller signed?”

  Now Elizabeth feels certain that Roberta somehow knows that her seller has yet to sign the contract. “He’s returning from Paris. And then coming into Manhattan to sign the documents.”

  “Well, if he hasn’t yet signed, I’d like to arrange a showing. My buyers are intimately familiar with the building. They used to live there in a larger apartment and then moved farther downtown.”

  “How long ago?” Elizabeth asks. “When did they move?”

  “Oh, probably ten years ago or a little more. They’re very keen to return. So who knows, maybe they’ll pay more than your buyers.”

  The empty apartment had been listed at $9.5 million in March 2008, just before the financial crisis. Even though New York City real estate saw some fluctuating prices, Elizabeth’s seller, Maxwell Glenn, the
n eighty-six years old, wanted to maintain his price. An exceedingly wealthy inventor of a certain kind of pulmonary respirator, he’d made a fortune licensing it to a French medical conglomerate. Maxwell Glenn also happens to be one of the most handsome octogenarians Elizabeth has ever seen. He met Ondine, his most recent, much younger French wife, on one of his business trips to Paris. Ondine’s an elegant Parisian who insists they spend at least four months a year in her enormous flat on the Ile Saint-Louis. Not a fan of Manhattan, she convinced her husband to buy a mansion in Bedford, picked through his furniture, discarded half of it, and left his apartment on East 70th completely empty. Beyond this, the couple refused to stage the empty apartment with furniture and artwork that would highlight its features, which might be a reason why the apartment has seen very little activity. But then six weeks ago, Elizabeth got a call from a nuclear radiologist named Ai-Ling Chua; her husband is a business consultant for the Chinese government. They saw her ad for the apartment in Avenue magazine, made an appointment to see it, and negotiated the price down to $9.23 million. (Though the Chases don’t do much print advertising anymore, Elizabeth and Tom are longtime friends of the president and publisher, Julie Dannenberg, whose magazine goes only to the finest buildings and hotels.)

  “So when would you have time to meet us over there?” Roberta persists, knowing that until Maxwell Glenn signs the contract, Elizabeth is obligated to bring him any offer that’s presented.

  “Let me look at my schedule.” Elizabeth opens her Day-at-a-Glance—the big black old-fashioned book where she keeps all of her appointments, client notes, phone numbers, etc.—and peruses a list of appointments and apartment showings until she sees an opening at 5:00 p.m.

  “Five o’clock isn’t optimum because of the light, but I guess it will have to do,” Roberta tells her.

  “That’s the earliest I can show it,” Elizabeth says, trying to sound cordial.

  There is a long, awkward pause, and then Roberta says, “My buyers saw the apartment two floors below when it came on the market a few years ago. And decided not to buy it. How about if I told you now—and they’ve instructed me to do so—that they’ll pay $200,000 more than your outstanding contract? All I need to do is see the contract, and then they’ll make their offer.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Elizabeth tells her. “I can’t show you the contract. You know that’s not done. In all the years I’ve been in the business, no one has ever asked to see a contract in order to outbid it.”

  “Well, the business is changing, what can I tell you?”

  “You’re welcome to see the place at five o’clock, and if your buyers are still interested, make me an offer tonight. I’ll call my client in Paris. And if your offer happens to be higher than the one I have, then I’m sure he’ll seriously consider it.”

  “Fine,” Roberta says. “We’ll see you there at five.”

  When Elizabeth calls Tom to tell him, he agrees that Roberta Green probably was given private information, and that Teddy is without a doubt the source—presumably for some kind of kickback. Although Elizabeth doesn’t remember telling Teddy the agreed-upon selling price of the East 70th Street apartment, he must have looked at their deal sheet. Elizabeth has the disturbing feeling that Roberta already knows the price agreed on between Ai-Ling Chua and Maxwell Glenn.

  “When is Barrington’s announcing they’ve selected us as their New York City brokerage house?” Tom asks her.

  “Violeta wrote to them, and they said probably next week.”

  “I think we need to look into Teddy’s correspondence,” Tom says, referring to Jonathan’s offer to try and hack into Teddy’s e-mail.

  “I know I said we needed to wait until the Luxury Estates announcement is made, but now I’m thinking that maybe we should have tried to look into his e-mail a long time ago,” Elizabeth says. “I just worry that he could sue us for breach of privacy.”

  “Well, at this point I think we need to take the risk, and I think we should do it now,” Tom tells her.

  Just as Elizabeth is getting out of the cab to meet Bart, her phone rings again. It’s her friend Carol Goodman, the board president at 860 UN Plaza, the building where Lance Roberts wanted to buy an apartment.

  “Are you sitting down?” Carol says.

  “Just going to meet a client. What’s going on?”

  “Guess who sent a letter to the board threatening a lawsuit for discrimination?”

  “Oh, no, he didn’t!”

  “Oh, indeed he did.”

  “Oh, I never should have gotten involved with him,” Elizabeth says. “He has no case, he never even applied to your building.”

  “I know, but we got a letter from Nixon, Kerin & Tainiter, which is a pretty big sign.”

  “Oh, please,” Elizabeth says. “He probably has a friend there who did him a favor. Don’t worry, I’ll call Lance. The only way he’d have a prayer of a case is if he’d actually gone through the application process.”

  “Well, let me know what he says.”

  The nerve! Elizabeth thinks when she gets off the phone. She is reeling, between this, the call on 33 East 70th, and Teddy. And to think that she’s on her way to deal with yet another lunatic!

  With his architect, interior decorator, a contractor, and a “paint consultant,” Bart Schneider is pacing the apartment frantically when Elizabeth walks out of the elevator into the 2,200-square-foot loft space. Southern light is streaming through a bank of windows, and she can see how dirty the place is. It reminds her of a gigantic version of a railroad flat in the East Village, or a football field with banks of windows on either end of a long, windowless space that has been minimally divided.

  “Thank God!” Bart says when she walks in the door. Though Jewish, he’s one of those tall, lanky, very patrician-looking blue-eyed men who could easily be confused with a high-born WASP. He went to St. Paul’s and then Princeton, and then Princeton again for graduate school in art history. He’s superbly educated, with an overactive brain that doesn’t stop thinking. Elizabeth can tell he’s very upset, and wishes he was not so insistent about buying this apartment that she just knows is wrong for him. The irony is that all he seeks is her approval, and he’s not listening to her now.

  “I’m so glad you’re here, Elizabeth.”

  Bart’s consultants are standing together in a group behind him, watching the exchange.

  “There are big structural problems here,” Bart announces and goes on to explain that several wall joists are bad and that one of the walls in the apartment is actually in danger of collapsing. The hired engineer comes forward and makes his case with diagrams and drawings.

  “Okay, anything else?” Elizabeth asks calmly.

  Pointing to the ceiling, where there’s water damage, Bart says, “It’s not cosmetic. The ceiling is rotted all the way through.”

  Elizabeth turns to the contractor, introduces herself, and asks what it will cost to repair the structural problems. The man hands her an itemized list with the figure $132,000 at the bottom.

  “So you’d like me to call the listing broker and tell them that you want to reduce your offer?” Elizabeth says to Bart. She purposely doesn’t mention the figure.

  Bart says, “That’s right, by a hundred and thirty-two thousand dollars.”

  Elizabeth shakes her head. “You already got an amazing deal on this place, Bart. They’ll probably get their own expert in here for a second opinion.”

  “They can if they want,” Bart says.

  “Look, Bart, as you know, I think this is the wrong apartment for you—but for the first time in our relationship, you’re not listening to me, so I have to protect you from yourself. The broker told me the other day that there’s somebody else who wants to buy this apartment, and has indicated that they’ll pay more than you.”

  Unsurprisingly, Bart looks miffed. “Then let them do that,” he says, though
without real conviction.

  Looking around the run-down loft, whose renovation Elizabeth knows will end up costing more than what the consultants estimate, she says, “I told you not to buy this apartment, Bart. When you buy a place like this, something that hasn’t been updated in years, you expect to spend a lot of money on renovating it. The seller might, might split the difference with you, but I wouldn’t even begin to assume—”

  “Well, then, I guess we won’t have a deal,” Bart interrupts, with a bit too much confidence, Elizabeth thinks.

  She shoots him an unhappy look, reflecting on all the time he’s wasted by calling her nearly every day. Bart is the sort of person who probably would begin a litigation just to have one. He’s one of those people who has everything but never believes that what he has is enough. Elizabeth is seeing a different side to him, and she doesn’t like it.

  His face is bright red; he’s clearly very agitated.

  “Listen, I have another appointment,” Elizabeth says as she looks at her watch. “So I’ll call the broker and let you know what the sellers say.”

  Bart’s mood suddenly changes. “Can you just stay a few minutes and see what my architect’s come up with? It’s really wonderful.”

  “Bart, why don’t we wait and see if we can keep the deal together? There’s a very good chance that we can’t.”

  “I don’t agree. I think they’ll come to their senses,” he says.

  “Well, I’m glad you’re so optimistic. I’ll let you know when I know.” Bart moves closer to her, as though wanting some kind of hug or handshake. “I’ve got to go. I have another appointment,” Elizabeth tells him for the second time.