
Benjamin Tapper, Eastern Consolidated
What was your most notable project, deal, transaction or professional achievement in 2015?
Selling the Lee Estate Portfolio, consisting of 18 lots and mixed-use properties in Williamsburg and East New York for which we received benchmark pricing of $107 million. This was a complicated deal with many moving parts. We were selling for an heir who lived in Denmark, and were seeking a buyer with a large reserve of cash ($75 million to $100 million) to close quickly before federal and state taxes were due in June. Additionally, after we began marketing the portfolio in late November, we discovered that there were many missing documents and financials that we had to find. In spite of the challenges, we received about a dozen bids in January and closed the deal in March.