Palace Coup

This is the second book I read about the Helmsleys, and I found it to be both interesting and informative. It gives us a very good picture of Harry Helmsley, his career and accomplishments, and his life prior to his marriage to Leona. For the most part, it paints him as a very personable, but savvy and astute investor specializing in commercial properties. The portrait heads south when he begins investing in residential properties and shows a clear disdain for the human element involved. It heads further south when he gets involved with Leona. She was fixated on wealthy men and targeted the wealthiest ones in her orbit. Given his vast wealth and obvious intelligence, she was a freight train he easily could have avoided. As for Leona, the book paints a sordid picture of a woman clawing her way up and stepping on everyone below her once she gets to the top. She comes across as calculating, mercurial, greedy, and vain. Overall it was a good book, and I read it in maybe two days. It was tough to put down. I would have given the book a higher rating, but I also read Queen of Mean, which is a little more complete. This book is pretty thorough and stronger in its portrait of Harry, but Queen of Mean contained interviews with Harry's first wife and both of Leona's husbands, so the picture there is a little fuller, so to speak.

One of my favorite sections in Palace Coup was: "Between 1967 and 1969 he (Harry Helmsley) bought the following: two shopping centers-The Fairview Shopping Center in Decatur, Illinois, and the Southgate in Fort Wayne, Indiana; the Carlton House, a luxurious residential hotel in Manhattan, from the British branch of the Astor family; the Insurance Exchange Building, Chicago's largest office building, with more than two million square feet of floor space for 330 life insurance and casualty tenants, in a deal that Schneider negotiated and then managed, adding it to his Helmsley-Spear chores in the Mid-west; the twenty story Boatmen's Bank Building in At. Lewis, where Wein already owned the 691-unit Georgetown apartments; 857 units of garden apartments on Inwood Street in Houston, 1,223 apartments in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania; and more in his own neighborhood: twenty buildings of apartments totaling 1,828 units in Queens, New York. Other deals took him into Philadelphia and Milwaukee, and Helmsley-Spear set up eighteen branches throughout the country." This is true Harry Helmsley, master of the real estate game. As you can imagine, this is by no means an easy task. Think about the complications involved on all the different levels. First you have the fact that he is finding deals all over the country in a time with no internet. Then he is funding the down payment, mostly through syndications. Then he's arranging financing. Last and by no means least comes the trickiest task of all, managing the growing portfolio of properties. Another quote from the book: "Leon Spear would become somewhat baffled at the frenzy of his partner-in-name. "We can't keep track of him, with all his projects and acquisitions," Spear once said, somewhat with tongue-in-cheek. "I say, For God's sake, when are you going to stop? What do you need this one for?" And Harry would say, "Don't spoil my fun-when I get into a deal and it's full of machinations and complications to work out, it's like you having a grandchild." The book brings you through his start as a rent collector in the Hells Kitchen section of Manhattan through his phenomenal growth as a deal making legend. Read this book for inspiration, insight, information, intrigue and of course entertainment! By Kevin Kingston author of, "A 20,000% Gain in Real Estate" http://www.bloglines.com/blog/KevinKingston