Most everyone who understands real estate knows who Sam Zell is. He’s worth an estimated $4.7 billion, which ranks him at #349 on the Forbes World’s Billionaires list.
Much of Zell's net worth was created in commercial real estate – specifically in portfolios that include healthcare, hospitality, energy, finance, and communications holdings.
In 2007, he sold Equity Office Properties Trust to Blackstone Group (BX) for $39 billion. At the time, that was history’s largest LBO (leverage buyout).
As it turned out, his timing was practically impeccable considering how most of those properties were