The Palm Beach Post
page2live

Real estate’s P.T. Barnum

Posted by Jose Lambiet | Cribs |
Tags: ,
| Wednesday 26 September 2007 7:00 pm Print This Post

To some, it’s a clever marketing ploy in a desperate real estate market.

To others, it’s obnoxious and makes homes look unsafe.

But no matter, everyone’s talking about it.

Palm Beach Gardens real estate broker Mike Thomas, a computer whiz, has taken to posting video tours of the luxury homes he sells on YouTube.

Nothing new about that.

Except if you stay long enough to watch the 30-second bits, Thomas then gets his Jackass streak going.

In one $3 million home for sale in BallenIsles, PBG, he pretends to be electrocuted in the kitchen after having shown the palatial digs’ salt-water aquarium.
In a $560,000 home at Ibis Country Club, in West Palm Beach, Thomas pretends to be burned on a stove.
And in a $750,000 place at Jupiter’s Egret Landing, he ends the tour by falling into the pool — fully clothed.

The pool fall actually receives the heaviest traffic.

“I go to comedy clubs all the time,” Thomas said. “I guess it shows.”

Thomas says the real estate process in general is so boring that he wanted to make it a little lighter.

“The clips have created tremendous traffic for my Web site,” he said. “As a result, the BallenIsles home got more showings than any other $3 million home in that development.”

Maybe, but not everyone thinks it’s funny. Especially the Illinois-based owner of the BallenIsles home, businessman Harvey Rosenfeld.

“I didn’t know he was doing this until someone called me,” Rosenfeld said. “First, he needs to take the video of my house down because he no longer has the listing (which Thomas did Wednesday afternoon). Second, what’s the message here: that my home is unsafe and has electrical problems?

“And I’d hate for a kid to watch his fall in the pool and do the same thing. It’s dangerous.”

Replied Thomas: “It’s not because I’m watching someone jump from a roof onto a trampoline on America’s Funniest Home Videos that I’m going to do the same thing.”

Wayne’s mea culpa

Posted by Jose Lambiet | Cash, Etc. |
Tags: , ,
| Wednesday 19 September 2007 7:00 pm Print This Post

Think the Dolphins getting stampeded by the Dallas Cowboys was the only thing that brought fans down?

The grumblings about QB Trent Green’s interceptions were barely audible in comparison to the rants about seat prices doubling - to a hair-raising $400 a game.

And some longtime Fins diehards swear this Miami Dolphins season is their last.

So, team owner H. Wayne Huizenga told Page 2.1 he wished he had done things differently.

In an unusually candid conversation, the garbage-hauler-turned-video-rental-mogul- turned-high-volume-car-salesman said he now thinks he should have waited a year before hiking tickets.

“We should have extended everybody’s seats for a year” at the old prices, he said Sunday as he surveyed the breathtaking 40,000-square-foot AC’ed addition to the 20-year-old stadium. The $213 million chi-chifying project is supposed to be partly funded with the increases.

“We should have let people see the improvements to the facility. Once people see this, they may understand.”

And Huizenga, who shed 15 pounds on a summer no-carb diet, expects the bubble-like expansion to become a league standard of sorts.

“We have folks from the Houston Texans here today looking at the new additions,” said Huizenga, who was greeted by fans like a movie star as he signed T-shirts and hats and game tickets. “And Jerry Jones (owner of the Cowboys) seems impressed.”

One nice touch, in addition to Miami Beach-fancy bars, giant plasma TVs that make you want to watch the action on a couch with some of that new section’s French bakery stuff instead of in your seat: game images projected onto waterfalls.

The ruler of Wayne’s World, meanwhile, took care of some remodeling that most fans never see, the luxury suites.

Jupiter Island suite-owner Joe Farish, a local lawyer, says his 12-seat box overlooking the 40-yard-line was repainted, received new (dark green) carpets and new seats upholstered with fine Italian leather.

That, too, came at a price.

“I just signed a 10-year-lease for $115,000 per season,” said Farish, who puts many of his seats up for charity auctions in Palm Beach County.

“With food and booze and everything, and of course they charge $50 for a $22 bottle of gin, we’re talking about $1,100 per seat per game.

“But forget that. Wayne shot himself in the foot. Playing in a palace is useless until he puts a goddamn team on the field.”

LEWINSKY PROSECUTOR JOINS DEFENSE OF CLINTON CRONY

For the allegedly teen girl-loving Palm Beach moneybags Jeffrey Epstein, it’s all become academic.

With a felony prostitution charge pending in Palm Beach County for a year and a half and the feds breathing down the billionaire’s neck, a source inside Epstein’s camp said Whitewater special prosecutor and Pepperdine professor Ken Starr secretly private-jetted to Palm Beach last week to help four other lawyers map out Epstein’s defense.

Along with Harvard legal brain Alan Dershowitz, Roy Black from Miami and Gerald Lefcourt from New York backing up local legal eagle Jack Goldberger, the group dissected the case’s minutiae for most of the day. (I’d hate to get that bill, knowing that Dershowitz alone gets a thousand bucks an hour, plus expenses!)

Dershowitz and Starr, polar opposites in life and politics, politely went at it when the focus turned to whether the FBI should even be investigating Epstein’s alleged sexual activity at his Palm Beach manse with girls as young as 14 brought over by a PBCC student.

“I can’t discuss the details,” Dershowitz tells Page 2.1 from his office at Harvard. “But it’s clear that there are some serious constitutional issues in this case.”

Most remember Starr, who didn’t return calls left at his office and his home in Malibu, Calif., as the special prosecutor who went after then-Prez Bill Clinton for allegedly lying about the sex he had, or didn’t have, with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

But when it comes to staying out of jail, the 55-year-old famed Wall Street financier Epstein and his personal friend Dershowitz — both big Bill Clinton fans — didn’t let a little blue dress stand in the way.

“I proposed to bring in Ken Starr because Jeffrey deserves the best representation possible,” Dershowitz said. “Ken Starr happens to be an excellent constitutional lawyer. This isn’t about politics.”

No doubt that last week’s show of force was also designed to psych out State Attorney Barry Krischer. His office is supposed to prosecute Epstein, but the case has been stalled. A source at the state attorney’s office, who asked to remain anonymous, said prosecutors are waiting for the FBI to end its probe.

Palm Beach Police originally came up with a box-load of evidence against Epstein after an 11-month surveillance. PB Chief Michael Reiter referred the matter to the FBI last summer after slamming Krischer for not pursuing a charge harsher than prostitution. Word is the FBI is looking into whether Epstein flew some of the Palm Beach County girls to his New York home.