![]() ![]() (In a 2008 interview with The Real Deal, Jane said “I think we all have regrets about that period. When Lillian died in 2002, her estate (including cash and properties worth $374 million) was divided nearly equally among her children, according to court documents obtained by FORBES. That was later challenged by her children, though after a five-year long legal battle, it ultimately stuck. They attempted to reconcile and in 1984 they signed a formal agreement, which won Lillian 33% of his estate. After being separated, Lillian filed for divorce in 1983. The saga starts with Sol and Lillian’s tenuous marriage. Forbes untangled the story from thousands of legal documents packed in boxes pulled from the court archive. The long legal battle became the largest trust case in New York’s history. The estate soon went to New York’s surrogate's court as Sol’s estranged wife fought with her four kids over what to do with the massive portfolio. When Sol died in 1987, he was New York’s largest private landlord. A year later, the legendary investor said "Every time I sell, I'm sorry." The main point is not to sell anything," Sol told FORBES in 1985, when his net worth was estimated at $450 million. "In this business, you make money slowly. That is still true today: Solil currently has debt-to-equity estimated at an unusually low 3%. ![]() Once Sol was fully on his own, he decided to eschew debt he paid all cash for most of the land he bought. Alex died that same year and his sons literally flipped coins with Sol, playing heads or tails to divvy up the rest of the portfolio. That included the prized Chrysler Building, which they gave up in 1975. ![]() He and his partner Alex DiLorenzo borrowed heavily to build up their portfolio, only to see it all come falling down in the 1973-1974 real estate crash.ĭuring the devastating downturn, Sol and Alex had to dump nearly 40% of their properties to pay off debtors. The son of a Brooklyn grocer, Sol quit Brooklyn College to run his father’s shop in 1935, and started by buying up foreclosed properties at low prices in the 1950s. Their three first cousins, led by Sol’s nephew Lloyd, control their own more modest and leveraged real estate empire through BLDG Management FORBES estimates that branch of the family is worth at least $1.5 billion. Together his four children are worth at least $12.2 billion, or $3.05 billion apiece. Solil Management, a portmanteau of “Sol” and “Lillian,” still doesn’t have a company website featuring trophy properties like most investors use, but a bit of digging - through the lawsuits detailing the family feud and hundreds of land records - shows that Sol’s heirs own at least 400 New York City properties including high-end apartments on the Upper East Side, the block of land in Midtown Manhattan that includes the Olympic Tower and the Cartier Mansion, and the landmark Peninsula Hotel. Or go downtown to the courtroom and dig through thousands of pages of legal documents detailing the bitter battle between his wife, Lillian, and their four children over Sol’s estate after his 1987 death. You can see it in the city’s skyline (particularly over on Madison Avenue between 37th and 84th streets, large parts of which his heirs still own). Once New York’s biggest landlord, Sol Goldman’s legacy lives on. ![]()
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