More than 200 real estate brokers and lawyers, many of them among the most ambitious in the Manhattan real estate world, filed into an Off Broadway theater last month for three hours.
The subject of the gathering was not art, but money: specifically, how to sell multimillion-dollar properties to clients from Russia and other parts of Eastern Europe.
While the brokers sipped wine and nibbled cheese, a panel of lawyers and a banker reviewed some of the biggest sales made to Russians, including the $188 million spent on properties in Florida and New York by trusts linked to Dmitry Rybolovlev, who made billions from potash fertilizer; the $48 million that a composer, Igor Krutoy, paid for an apartment at the Plaza Hotel; and the $37 million spent by Andrei Vavilov, a former deputy finance minister, on a penthouse at the Time Warner Center.
Full Story: Time to Sell Penthouse. The Russians Have Cash.