Page 436 - WhyAsInY

Why (as in yaverbaum)
my surprise, I, a verbal type, discovered that I was really good with and liked the numbers (my father’s influence?) and that I was therefore very good at protecting and improving my clients’ transactions.
But to do so was to practice real real estate, and for that I had to turn to Flora Schnall, a real real estate attorney. After a few prelimi- nary moments of incomprehensibility with her, much like my “joint makers” first conversation with Max (for example, “We’re taking sub- ject to some C&Rs, as to which there’ll be affirmative coverage, and we will be looking for a bridge loan”4), I found that she gave me a very important entrée into the real world of sophisticated, down and dirty, commercial New York real estate (no more arguments about which party should be responsible for respackling the ceiling after the dining room fixture had been taken down by the seller; just unemotional stuff about real money). In fact, Flora, who had trained with the best in the real estate department of Milbank Tweed Hadley & McCloy (where my first “courtesy” interview had occurred), counsel to The Chase Manhattan Bank, N.A. (be sure not to forget the “The”), at a time when very few attorneys, much less partners, were women, and who had left Milbank to be an assistant to one of its most important clients, Nelson Rockefeller (governor of New York and, later, vice president of the United States), escorted me into real real estate with a vengeance, dressing things up, as she usual did, in the most benign of fashions.
Late one afternoon, Flora called me, told me that I would be going to my first commercial closing—and told me that I would be going alone. My job, she said, would be a simple one. An important client of the firm, Carl Glick, had facilitated the settlement of litigations between two warring parties concerning a twenty-eight-acre apartment complex
4. “C&Rs” are covenants and restrictions: words, usually in deeds, that bind properties with promises and limitations, and thereby find their way onto title reports. “Affirmative coverage” is (usually free) extra insurance coverage from the title insurance company, which only seasoned veterans know to ask for; the company insures that the covenant or restriction has not been vio- lated or that, even if it has, no ouster from the property would be possible. A “bridge loan” is a short-term loan that is meant to be temporary while the borrower awaits a new and better loan. More often than not, a bridge loan is not temporary; it is a bridge to nowhere.
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