Broker Noble Black may have sold the highest-priced co-op in the history of New York City — a $54 million penthouse at 785 Fifth Ave. to music mogul David Geffen — but residential real estate was not exactly the first job he had in mind.
“I thought I’d be a lawyer for a while, then go back home and run for public office,” says Black, a Jackson, Miss. native. “But things changed along the way.”
That “way ” included law school at the University of Virginia before a 3 ¹/₂ year stint as an attorney in NYC. While his time in securities law certainly held prestige, Black concedes the lifestyle — and working conditions — hardly felt luxurious. “I never slept,” he says, “I was working crazy hours — the last week of every month I’d be in the office until two or three in the morning.”
Black’s fate abruptly changed course one morning in 2004, when he saw a sign advertising for “The Apprentice.” He may have had zero background in TV, but his ambition and open-mindedness led him to think “why not?” He didn’t get cast, but Black was offered a short-term consulting deal with the show’s producers, which allowed him to leave his law firm behind for the world he wanted to pursue — real estate.
For Black to succeed, he knew he couldn’t merely enter the marketplace with a whimper. “I felt like I had to be very good, very quickly or realize real estate wasn’t for me,” he says. While the deals did materialize, Black says at first he lacked key connections and success was not immediate. Still, the career-shift clearly had advantages: After those long nights at his law firm, real estate offered freedom and fulfillment: “I was so unhappy chained to a desk 16 hours a day,” he says, “that I was willing to even take a pay cut.”
Turns out, Black didn’t have to. Since entering the real estate scene nearly a decade ago, Black has sold more than half a billion of property, including the mega-watt Geffen duplex penthouse deal. “That put me on the map,” says Black, who was recently named by Details magazine as one of America’s new “Rock Stars of Real Estate.”
“I think I’m good at what I do,” he says, “and clients recognize that I truly have their interests at heart.” But Black — a natural collaborator — doesn’t do it alone. “I like to attract people who are talented and let them run things,” he says. “I like the give and take of bouncing ideas of other people.”
The coach: “Scott Durkin has been in the business for nearly 25 years. He’s the senior managing director of Corcoran’s Chelsea/Flatiron office. He’s been great at helping me recognize the type of business to go after, how to position myself and get in front of the right people. I had a strong business before I started working with him; my business doubled once I did. He’s a very good coach, and therapist.”
The business manager: “Jenna DeMare oversees my office; she’s my instrument panel. If I need to check in while I’m out, she’s the one who has her finger on the pulse of everything. Jenna is great at improvising and smoothing over any friction that can happen during deals. She has a very unflappable personality; she can make a lot of decisions in my absence and keep things running smoothly.”
The lawyer: “Sam Eber specializes in real estate; he’s very much a ‘deal’ attorney. A friend says, ‘Time kills all deals,’ and I think that’s true. You get certain attorneys who are inattentive, who don’t get back to you — but Sam is on top of things and he keeps things moving along. He doesn’t have an ego; even if he has a difficult attorney on the other side [of the deal], he’s going to do whatever needs to get done to get the deal going.”
The designer: “John Bjornen did my apartment in Chelsea and he’s doing my house in Sag Harbor. He’s very down-to-earth and approachable, whether it’s a small touch-up of a space to a total renovation of a penthouse. He can do the very big, high-end stuff but he’s happy to work on smaller things. He’s got a great aesthetic, even if you’re not immediately going to get ‘his’ look — he’s very good at helping people understand what’s attractive to them.”
The confidant: “I came to New York to intern at a very old, prestigious law firm in 2000. My partner-mentor was incredibly scary, and Tom Amico, who was also a new partner then, was great about helping me with a project I was working on. I ended up going to work at the firm, and we worked together for several years. Today, he’s a good friend — we can goof off together — but he helps me see the big picture; helping me recognize not just two or three steps down the road but a full eight or nine.”
As told to Lisa Keys