Bonfire of the Vanities

(Editor’s note: This is a special edition of The Promote, exploring a single topic. If you’re new here and want to get a sense of what the publication generally looks like, check out Wednesday’s ed. here or visit the archives here. This edition includes graphic details that may be disturbing to some readers - HS)

Bonfire of the Vanities

“Your self…is other people, all the people you’re tied to, and it’s only a thread.”- Tom Wolfe, The Bonfire of the Vanities

A real estate developer is the wealthiest person you’ll meet who’s perpetually broke. Signing up for the job means getting comfortable with always feeling overextended, out of time, in debt to someone or something. Uncertainty is the default state: you’re corralling a team of people – investors, lenders, lawyers, contractors, brokers – whose incentives are not always aligned, and the product of your work lies out there for everyone to see, everyone to judge.

Succeed, and the rewards are outsized. Not only do you make money, you earn a reputation as a craftsman, someone who can combine an aesthete’s vision with the blue-collar realities of building. You earn a place in society, on the circuit of doggie galas 🐩 and art exhibitions 👩‍🎨 , or whatever version of that is culturally relevant to you. On that circuit, you encounter people with money money, people whose net worths make yours look like a rounding error and whose lifestyles you try your best to emulate. It’s a world in which your wife is getting $800 facials every week, in which your third-grader’s Ramaz tuition is $40K, in which your peers are routinely donating $500K to get their names inscribed on the museum or the yeshiva.

Maintaining that lifestyle can be hard enough when things are good. When things are bad though, the pressure can be so extreme that you may choose to insulate your family from it. You insulate them so completely that when the music stops, they may keep dancing.

Brandon Miller was 43 when he took his life this summer. Artem Tepler was 41 when he took his life last winter. Nir Meir was in his late 40s when he allegedly spun an elaborate web of fraud that took in investors, lenders and the government, a scheme for which he’s now on Rikers awaiting trial. In all 3 cases, though very different in specifics, there is the suffocating sense of isolation, that no one else could understand their situation, and that only they could get themselves out of it. When that turned out not to be the case, things got dark.

Developers (cont.)

Brandon Miller was the platonic ideal of a New York developer. Quarterback-handsome, Ivy League-educated, dad in the business. He joined the NYC-focused family firm, and lived the life: Tribeca penthouse, Southampton home, trophy wife, 2 daughters. The social set was intimidating – Miller’s sister-in-law married into the Crespi financier family (patriarch is a Stevie Cohen buddy) – and the bills flowed as strongly as the vibes. The Times has a harrowing read on how this Insta-perfect life unraveled, and this detail about the bubble the family was in really hits.

She [Miller’s wife] had visited his office only once, and she met his business partner just three times — including, most recently, beside her husband’s grave.

Miller specialized in sewing up ground leases and getting projects shovel-ready before flipping them to other developers. When his dad died in ‘16, he inherited an overlevered firm that was beset with lawsuits. He kept things moving best he could, but the pandemic compounded the problems. In ‘21, finding himself in a pinch, Miller sold the Tribeca pad for $9M and moved the family into a $47K/month UES rental. He stopped paying maintenance and docking fees on the VanDutch boat, and took out multiple loans on the Hamptons home. Still, the show went on: in January, his wife discussed her routine of weekly $800 facials w/ the paper of record. Miller kept borrowing money, from increasingly pressure-cooker sources. Last year, his friends arranged an intervention, right before which one learned that a Miller project he had invested $1M in and helped raise further funds for was controlled by someone else altogether. Confronted about the deal, Miller broke down. He couldn’t stop, however: he borrowed $1.5M against a High Line ground lease deal, but simultaneously fell behind on his $2M annual lease payments.

On June 30, having sent his wife and kids to the Amalfi coast, Miller rigged his Porsche Carrera to poison himself. He died July 3. Almost immediately after the funeral, per TRD, a lender sued his wife for $800K in missed payments and interest.

It’s a saga that has rocked that genteel cohort: one source told me that all the stay-at-home-mom wives in his group “decided to learn about our businesses” since the news of Miller’s death broke. “Had he come clean, there were people still there for him,” the source added.

***
Artem Tepler was cut from very different cloth. An immigrant from Siberia who bought distressed properties in NJ and Florida before moving out west, Tepler became a prominent figure on LA’s sub-institutional development scene, working both for-fee and on his own projects. Tepler (who I knew and liked) was not a fancy guy – you’d mostly find him sporting a hoodie, BJJ’d cauliflower ears poking out while preaching the gospel of tough-love entrepreneurship gurus like Alex Hormozi and Patrick Bet-David. Rather than glossy spreads, Tepler’s status came from his large online audience, where he shared his from-the-trenches developer insights with tens of thousands of hopefuls. Meanwhile, he was facing the specter of total financial ruin: he had signed millions of dollars in personal guarantees on land deals on which he was vastly overleveraged. It’s hard enough to admit to your close people that you’ve failed; to do so to a flock of people that look up to you might be even harder.

In November, Tepler hanged himself, leaving behind a fiancée and a 3-year-old daughter.
 
***
Nir Meir was an unlikely candidate to be the king of Manhattan. As I wrote after his February arrest in South Beach: “Think of Adam Sandler’s Howie in ‘Uncut Gems,’ crank up the sketch, and you get close to the feeling.” Such a blatant outsider – thick accent, lack of polish, loud dresser – found acceptance through brute-force spending: money is not a perfect substitute for social currency, but it works for a time. Meir would get the best table in the best restaurant, hosted private omakase 🍣 dinners at his (or not his) $43M beachfront Hamptons mansion, and in a single month spent $200K on wine. When exiled from his development firm HFZ, Meir moved to Miami (as one does) and kept the charade going: E11EVEN, ZZ’s, a $150K/month Miami Beach rental. The end, when it came, was brutal: authorities picked him up at the 1 Hotel South Beach, and his estranged wife was instructed to come pick up the kids. A week prior to the arrest, Meir had declared bankruptcy, saying he had $30M in liabilities and just $50 in cash. This is a guy who was once overseeing a $10B pipeline of projects in NYC’s toniest neighborhoods.

****
We hear about this stuff when things go to the extreme, when people end their lives or commit operatic crimes – the allegations against Meir, for example, include faking wire transfer codes and hiring people to fake Korean accents. But far less headline-grabbing cases of this stuff are playing out all the time. People in the business are often fighting demons, some market-dependent, some of their own making. There’s always someone richer and more successful than you, someone with a better-looking existence. Knowing when you’re in real trouble – the kind of trouble your razzle-dazzle and hustle can’t get you out of – is complicated. Asking for help is always an option, but you may not be able to see it.

If you are having thoughts of suicide, call/ text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline in the US, or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources. Go here for resources outside the US.

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