Real-estate billionaire Sam Zell, who ran a mobile-home empire and bluntly criticized remote work, dead at 81
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Sam Zell — the legendary, outspoken real-estate tycoon and self-made billionaire who founded a property empire — has died, his company announced on Thursday.
Zell was 81.
Through his firm Equity Group Investments and various other companies, Zell was the largest owner of mobile-home parks in the US. He also invested in apartment buildings and office towers, as well as manufacturing, healthcare, and agriculture.
His net worth was $5.2 billion as of Thursday, according to Forbes.
The mogul was born in Chicago in 1941, just four months after his Jewish-refugee parents escaped persecution after the German invasion of Poland, according to the announcement of his death from Equity Group Investments.
His real-estate career kicked off in college when he managed student housing apartments at the University of Michigan, the announcement said.
Zell was also known for his direct and blunt commentary on the real-estate industry and other topics. His 2017 book "Am I Being Too Subtle?" was a glimpse into his sometimes irreverent and candid outlook.
"This is the guy who started wearing jeans to work in the 1960s, when offices were a sea of gray suits," the book-jacket blurb reads. "He's the guy who told The Wall Street Journal in 1985, 'If it ain't fun, we don't do it.' He rides motorcycles with his friends, the Zell's Angels, around the world and he keeps ducks on the deck outside his office."
Zell's rise to the top
Zell was part of a crop of real-estate executives who turned distress in the sector in the early 1990s into lucrative property empires by the end of the decade. He embraced the term "grave dancer" because of his success buying troubled properties on the cheap, then turning them around for big profits.
"'Grave dancer' referred to getting properties that were basically dead and needed to be restructured," said Mike Fascitelli, a real-estate executive who remembered competing against Zell for major distressed assets, such as Rockefeller Center, in that era. "Sam picked up the crumbs."
Zell is best known in the real-estate business for combining four investment funds he managed into the country's largest publicly owned office landlord in 1997, then spectacularly selling that company, called Equity Office, to the Blackstone Group in 2007 for a record $39 billion, including debt.
The blockbuster deal, considered one of commercial real estate's biggest transactions of all time, was completed just before the financial downturn that began in 2008, when commercial property values cratered.
This story is developing. Please check back for updates.
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Friday, May 19, 2023
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