George’s 98th Birthday Party

by | Feb 17, 2026 | Uncategorized

George's 98th Birthday Party-Commercial Real Estate Investing


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George’s 98th Birthday Party

Welcome to the Real Estate Espresso Podcast, your morning shot of what’s new in the world of real estate investing. I’m your host, Victor Menasce.

Today’s show is dedicated to my friend and advisor, George Ross. Now, if you’ve been listening to the show for a while, you’ll know that George has been a frequent guest on the show. I’ve known George for 16 years, and we’ve been spending time together monthly since then.

I’d like to invite you to a virtual online birthday party for George. I’m hoping for a huge turnout and for all of you to get some firsthand wisdom from George in that session. George is 98 years young. His actual birthday was earlier last week, but the get-together this month is going to be a surprise for George.

Now, let me tell you a little bit about George and why you might want to drop in on his online birthday party.

George got his start as a young man. He planned to go into engineering, but his father died when he was only 16, actually similar to what I experienced when my mother died when I was only 18 years old. George had aspirations of attending MIT. Once his father was gone, there was no way his family could afford to send him to university, so he enlisted in the US Army at age 17.

The education benefits in the Army sent him to Clemson University, and when he finished his active duty in the Army, he pivoted to law school and earned a degree in law from Brooklyn College, using his benefits that were available under the GI Bill.

George got an early job working in the real estate department of a major law firm. At first, he started working on leases and things of that nature. One of the pivotal cases early in George’s career involved a commercial lease in which George inserted a clause that the tenant’s obligation to pay rent was contingent upon the elevator functioning in the building.

Wouldn’t you know it, that elevator broke down and the tenant stopped paying the rent. It took a long time for the elevator to get fixed and the tenant refused to pay the rent during that entire term. The case went to court and, as you would expect, George prevailed.

The plaintiff in the case was Saul Goldman of Goldman and DiLorenzo. Around that same time, George was told there was no realistic path for him to become a partner at Dreier and Traub where he was working, so he began considering leaving the firm. In the wake of the case, George was later hired by his adversary in that case, this case Saul Goldman, with the belief that if George was clever enough to steal a year’s worth of rent from him, he would find a way to steal it back from somebody else.

George ultimately went on to work for Goldman and DiLorenzo as their in-house counsel, and during the next 10 years, George took Goldman from 18 properties to 720. And George wrote every single one of those contracts and negotiated them all himself.

George had also done some work for Fred Trump, Donald’s father. Fred Trump had built a name for himself building workforce housing in the outer boroughs of New York, like Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx. Now Donald had ambitions of doing projects in Manhattan, and his first idea was to revamp the derelict Commodore Hotel on the corner of 42nd Street and Lexington. It’s right next to Grand Central Station.

The hotel was owned by the Pennsylvania Railway and it was in receivership. They owed millions in back taxes to the City of New York. The hotel was technically vacant, but otherwise filled with homeless people, prostitutes, and drug dealers.

George came in at Fred’s request to help Donald get his very first deal done when Donald was only 26 years of age. That first deal became the Grand Hyatt Hotel, which started as a 50-50 partnership with Hyatt with the Pritzker family, and Donald was eventually bought out of his share for 85 million dollars. Not bad for a first deal.

That first deal became the start of a 47-year relationship in which George worked for Donald for much of that period. There was about a 10-year period in the middle there where George did not work for Donald, and it was during that time that Donald purchased the Eastern Airline Shuttle and went on to his failed casino foray in Atlantic City. I personally credit George with saving the Trump Organization from collapse more than once.

George is the author of two best-selling books on real estate negotiation. He taught negotiation at the law school at NYU for over 20 years.

Now, I first met George at an event in New York City back in 2010. At that particular event, the organizer had the idea of starting a monthly conference call with George, and it was called the Oracle Call. The idea is that people would join the call and ask George questions. After a short time, the organizer got bored with running it, so I took it over. And I’ve been meeting monthly now with George for 16 years.

Over that time, we built a relationship and he’s spoken at several events for me up here in Ottawa, Canada, and Dallas, and New York. And I’ve been to his house and met his wife Billie and his granddaughter. And in the lead-up to an event that I hosted with George in the Grand Hyatt, I actually ended up meeting with some students who had been in George’s negotiation class at NYU, and they just had amazing things to say about George. He’s touched so many lives in so many ways. I’m truly blessed to have this relationship with George.

So we’re going to be wishing George happy birthday on the 21st of January, 6 p.m. Eastern Time. It’s going to be a Zoom meeting. Would love to have you attend in person and wish George happy birthday, then hang around and listen to him flowing with wisdom on all aspects of commercial real estate, negotiation, business, and how to navigate the world in today’s uncertain times.

Now, if you can’t make it to the Zoom session and you just want to wish George happy birthday, then send an email to podcast@victorjm.com. Put George in the subject line, and I’ll make sure he gets the message. But I really want you to attend the Zoom session. Click on the link that is in the show notes and we’ll get you registered for the session.

We’ll have a grand old time with George on the 21st of January, 6 p.m. We’ll talk to you soon. In the meantime, have an awesome rest of your day. Go make some great things happen. We’ll talk to you again tomorrow.

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