A big-shot studio head has been a long-time client of ours. We sold him a house that listed at $35 million to start but had slowly dropped in price during the year and a half it was on the market. It came all the way down to $19 million. We ended up getting it to him for $14.5 million, a smoking deal since we were able to negotiate $5.5 million off of the asking price. He bought the house and it’s super-exclusive.

The studio head is all about privacy, like many of our clients are now. Often we sign NDAs. About a week after he closed, it came out in the media that he bought it. In our business nowadays, there’s no way to block that; one contractor comes up, tells a friend, and it’s news. So, he calls us up and he was pissed. I know this not just from his voice, but because he said “I’m pissed! People know, and I didn’t want anyone to know that I bought this thing! Sell it!”

The privacy thing wasn’t our fault. We never talk on our clients when doing a deal. We can’t. We won’t. Maybe he was driving up to the property and the paparazzi were following him and put the two together. The guy’s gracious and he knows how Hollywood is. He didn’t blame us, but we still caught the brunt. In real estate, no matter what, the agents are always to blame first.

Now, the kicker is when we feel a deal is good, we always tell our clients “This is a great deal, if you ever want to re-sell it, you’re gonna make money on this.” You know it’s part of the sale, so when you say things like that you have to honor it, but it’s a little harder to do only one week later.

“Alright, then,” he says, “you said I’d make money off of it, resell it.” We had to back up our word or potentially lose a big-dog client and a great guy. Matt and I were like, “Shit. Now not only do we have to resell a property that we already sold and everyone in the world will want to know what’s wrong with it, but also we have to sell it for more money than we just sold it for so he doesn’t lose money.” We had to pause on this one, just for a second though.

Fortunately, the Altman Brothers have reach. We priced it at the previous MLS asking price and put it back on the market. We called a list of clients. We showed three people right away and thank God, the third person who came in paid $16.5 million. We ended up making him, after our commissions, about $2 million on it. It was a tough one, but it ended up being a win-win.

We set ourselves up by negotiating so strong on the buy-side that we protected our client and ourselves on the sale-side. We were prepared. We had to adjust, adapt, and overcome. We had to open, work, and close the same property twice in a 90-day period by the time escrow closed. We did it. It’s part of the game. And we’re the best.