First Post

Welcome to the first entry in my new blog.

After selling real estate in Manhattan for the last twenty-five years, I took a break. 

I started to write stories related to real estate, not about specific buyers or sellers or other brokers, but incidents, properties, and friendship. Because real estate, at least in this city, grabs hold and settles deep. If you love it the way I do, the memories become part of who you are:

That kitchen, those views, this tin ceiling.

The man who opened his door to my sari-clad buyer and me while he was buck naked and at full mast. My buyer said, “Liz, you never told me this apartment came furnished.”

The young woman who threatened to jump out of a window unless I found her an affordable apartment with a view of the East River. I told her I preferred the Hudson.

I was still a fairly inexperienced broker when a young woman with some money asked me to show her loft spaces in the meatpacking district. Back then, there were few lofts for sale and plenty of meatpackers. I remember slippery streets, hoses to wash them down, and butchers wearing blood spattered aprons standing on loading docks. On hot summer days there was a distinctive odor, made stronger with a breeze off the river, as luggers lifted forequarters and hindquarters laden with fat.

I loved that New York.

I miss that New York.

Back then there weren’t many lofts for sale on those few blocks, but there were some. A large hook hung from the ceiling in one of them, and handcuffs were hammered onto a wall. This loft had good light. This loft my buyer could afford.

“I’ll take it,” she said. “It’s perfect.”