This story was submitted by Chuck Lanyard, President, The Goldstein Group, New Jersey
We all have our favorite real estate stories and mine occurred nearly fifteen years ago. I was contacted by two elderly brothers in their 80s who asked me to sell their dilapidated grocery store. I explained to them that although the property was not in good shape, it had a desirable location. I convinced them to sign an exclusive listing with me for six months to lease the property, rather than sell it.
Thus began my first “Grand Slam” of my career. Within three months, I was able to lease the space to a national drug company who proceeded to improve the property with over $750,000 of improvements and they signed a multi-million dollar lease for 20 years. I then was able to secure for the owners a $1.5 million mortgage on the property, which of course, was tax deferred income.
Three years after the drug store opened, the national drug chain I put in place was bought out by an even larger national drug chain. The new drug chain decided that due to the fact they already had a successful store nearby, they did not have use for this location, and I negotiated a buy-out of the balance of the lease term for nearly ¾ of a million dollars. Within three months of finalizing the buy-out, I then sold the property to a medical group for nearly $1 million. As a result of these transactions, my two elderly landlords reaped multi-million dollar profits.
Upon completion of all the transactions, my landlords asked me to come to their offices because they wanted to show their appreciation one last time. Although I had received commissions for the transactions, they wanted to do a little bit more for me. I had already alerted my Broker that I would probably receive additional compensation, so that everything would be on the up and up prior to my meeting with them, and not put my license in jeopardy.
These two brothers owned a produce company which had large refrigerator rooms at their place of business. When I arrived, one of the brothers asked me to follow him into one of the large coolers at the back of the facility where he wanted to “take care of me”. All I could think of, was the irony that, I was about to receive a “cold cash bonus”
He then proceeded to reach onto the back shelf and grabbed a large flat cardboard box. Much to my chagrin, my package ended up being a box of large strawberries! Just to keep things copacetic I gave half the box of strawberries to my Broker.
To this day, I still laugh at this thoughtful gift because, otherwise, I would not have such a great story to tell.
