Page 61 - How To Get Rich

property carefully for decades, waiting for my moment, and knew what the
other side was thinking.

Be Reasonable and Flexible

A good negotiator must be flexible to be successful.
When I bought 40 Wall Street, it was virtually vacant. I told the
existing leasing broker, a friend of mine, that I was going to renovate the
building and get tenants. I offered him the chance to be my exclusive
rental agent. The broker had been the agent for the previous owners of the
building, who had been having big problems getting tenants. He was so
sure I would fail that he said he would take the job only if I would pay him

a retainer of $60,000 per month, starting immediately. He said he would
deduct his future commission from that guaranteed fee.
His offer was impossible for me to accept. I owned a vacant building
with existing losses, and the broker, who had been unable to produce in the
past, was asking me to pay cash up front. I told the broker that his offer
showed a total lack of faith in my ability to be successful—a broker

getting paid without producing a tenant was unheard of.
The broker remained inflexible in his position. We parted company.
I hired another high-quality broker, who willingly accepted the
opportunity on the usual terms—no lease, no commission. I renovated the
building. The broker made millions in commissions in the next two years.
The original broker’s inflexibility cost him a small fortune, plus he lost
any future business from me.

Trust Your Instincts
When I took over 40 Wall Street, my associate Abe Wallach, who
orchestrated the purchase, was certain that the only viable solution was to
convert the building to a residential cooperative apartment house. His

reasoning made sense, given the depressed market for office tenants and
the incentives the city was giving for residential development downtown.
All of the real estate brokers shared his view that leasing to office tenants
wasn’t feasible. They said the floor sizes were either too small or too large
for renting. They complained that the lobby, elevators, and building
systems required extensive renovations with questionable results.