About Lori
They say, “If you want something done, ask a busy person!” And they say, “If you are seeking a top broker with absolute integrity, ask for Lori Shabtai.”
During her nearly 20 years in the real estate industry, Lori Shabtai has earned much merited success by implementing her formula: PickingBest, an acronym based upon her unique take on how to live a life and build a career filled with success and joy beyond your wildest expectations.
Core Values
PickingBest has not only been her credo but the key to a theory she has been invited to present at seminars with different groups within the real estate industry, as well as to up and coming young future “leaders” in many different fields. The key words to PickingBest are the following:
Passion, Integrity, Commitment, Knowledge with understanding, Intuitiveness, Gratitude, Balance, Elevation, Sharing, and Truth.
Lori is much admired for creating and maintaining long lasting relationships with many of the world’s most brilliant real estate developers, corporate heads, landlords, architects, iconic chefs, restaurateurs, hospitality groups, hotel brands and others, regardless of their area of expertise or where they are in their career. Through her extensive travels throughout Europe, Asia and the Middle East, she is aware of global trends and has contacts throughout the world.
Career
She is the rare broker who can move seamlessly from retail leasing, investment sales, new developments, office leasing, technology space and residential sales. Her long friendships and business associates includes real estate investors and top brokers or heads of real estate brokerage firms, due to the care, commitment, integrity and ingenuity she brings to the table.
Prior to returning to her own licensed company in May of 2018, (CEO of LHWS LLC), Lori was with TOWN Commercial (although sometimes making residential deals as well). Her own sales in 2017-2018 were more than $1.45 billion in off-market “confidential” buildings, and her deals featured over 50,000 square feet of office and retail leasing, including specialization in the needs of tech space, including placing Double Verify, 32,000 square feet at One SoHo, the crossroads of Spring Street and Avenue of the Americas.
Additionally, she has closed multi-million dollar luxury residential transactions in both Manhattan and the Hamptons, selling tens of millions of dollars of residential real estate, including co-ops, condos, and Hamptons country homes.
In April 2018, the illustrious deal she structured placed world-class Michelin-starred chef Daniel Boulud and his company, the Dinex Group, in SL Green’s supertall One Vanderbilt Avenue. Now open to the public as Le Pavillon, this deal was a finalist for The Real Estate Board of New York’s “Most Ingenious Deal of the Year.”
Lori Shabtai is also licensed by the State of California and plans shortly to announce her expansion into the Los Angeles region, while continuing to serve her New York clientele.
Lori has long been known for her sharp focus on investment sales, retail brokerage (tenant and owner representation), international and national hotel, hospitality, and brand advisory services, as well as sales of residential and retail condos. Lori always seeks the highest and best use, whether leasing space, marketing property, or consulting on ground up construction.
Lori Shabtai offers unique and encyclopedic expertise in every domain of the industry, crossing boundaries with her creative, out-of-the-box thinking, marketing skills and unique ability to understand each of her client’s needs and budgets. Her customers are some of New York’s, and the worlds, most visionary developers. She’s an expert at locating sites, as well as off-market properties, with a fierce commitment to confidentiality and trust, and to her own stellar reputation. . Due to her tremendous understanding of branding and marketing, she often employs a team of global experts geared to reach her target audiences, in areas including research, technology, and creative videography. Above all, she prides herself upon seeing her team flourish.
Background
Prior to achieving success as a broker, Lori Shabtai was a veteran of some of Manhattan’s most luxurious retail brands. Lori co-launched the elegant Di Modolo jewelry line and its Madison Avenue flagship boutique where she oversaw marketing, retail, and special events, as well as collaborating on design for the highly esteemed international jeweler.
She grew up the daughter of the esteemed and innovative Long Island supermarket chain owner, Melvin Weitz, proprietor of 17 MelMarkets Foodtowns, which were much admired for both high quality and fair pricing. Family vacations were often spent visiting other supermarkets across the country, learning how to always be ahead of the curve. And Lori is always ahead of the curve. Retail is part of her DNA.
She began her career in fashion and retail, working from ages 14-18 at Lonnie’s, Long Island’s then chicest shop. While studying at New York University and the Fashion Institute of Technology, she entered the sales floor of a popular fashion boutique, Riding High, and quickly emerged as a buyer and executive. She left that field to pursue an interest in jewelry, working in the diamond and colored stone industry prior to the launch of Di Modolo.
While she loved the beauty and creativity of the world of jewelry, other opportunities presented themselves in areas including brand development; publishing, as a co-publisher of City Magazine; and AIDS activism.
Lori was a founder of Mothers Voices: United to End AIDS and lobbied for trial testing Protease Inhibitors with the help of Senator Al D’Amato, whose first campaign for Senate she volunteered on and Merck pharmaceuticals and GMHC. She also taught an after-school program in the South Bronx working with children at risk.
Real Estate
Her career took another turn nineteen years ago when she decided to enter the world of commercial real estate, obtaining a perfect score on the New York State Exam. Now a licensed broker, she joined Winick Realty Group, soon becoming one of New York’s top commercial brokers and rising to a position of Senior Vice President. Lori Shabtai was a leader of the Winick team that garnered the Real Estate Board of New York’s “Most Significant Deal of the Year” award for the marketing and leasing of Columbus Square, 350,000 square feet of Upper West Side retail. The Commercial Observer named her one of “New York’s Top Female Real Estate Professionals” and has profiled her as a “Power Broker.” She was also selected by The Real Estate Forum as one of their “Women of Influence.”
Lori placed the REI flagship store at the iconic Puck building and was also the broker who leased the retail at Manhattan’s Empire Hotel. Other clients have included the Trump SoHo and Amsterdam Court Hotels in Manhattan and the Gansevoort Paradiso Hotel in Miami as well as the Valerie Joseph Salons, the Yigal Azrouel Boutique, and the YogaWorks fitness chain, her exclusive-to-the-region client of ten years duration. As a broker, she has seamlessly handled hundreds of thousands of square feet of community use space, including space used for schools and health care centers.
Other diverse transactions have been the 10- year retail lease at 870 Seventh Avenue for AFEX, the global payment and risk management solutions specialist, and the Valerie Joseph Salon at the majestic Century Condominiums on Central Park West. And she recently sold a much-coveted residential coop in the Madison Square Park area.
Lori is also known for the mentorship role she has taken with numerous other real estate professionals. She has always believed it takes a team of knowledgeable caring individuals with diversified skill sets to reach extraordinary outcomes.
Passion
While continuing to pursue her stellar real estate career, Lori has also returned to an earlier passion and is now the founder of Vie Passionnee and Transparent Blond, new concepts in fine jewelry. She is also the co-creator of the Hope Circle (www.hopecircle.com), the exquisite trademarked piece now available at Ben Bridge Jewelers, which is becoming an iconic wearable symbol of hope and unlimited possibilities.
Traversing the worlds of real estate, jewelry, fashion, publishing, art and philanthropy, Lori is a unique New Yorker. A mother of three and a new grandmother to baby Tula Bee, Lori Shabtai is an avid cook and sportswoman. Her children, her greatest pride, are all successful in varying endeavors ranging from social media and brand marketing, to writing, acting and entrepreneurship. She has also co-authored, with writer Elizabeth Sobieski, a soon-to-be-published coffee table book all about blondes, titled BLONDE.
Lori is a member of the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC) and the Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY) and was named among NYC’s Top Retail Brokers by CoStar Group.
Vision
With her extensive background in brand development and strategic knowledge of sales and bottom line formulations, her sensitivity and expertise with tenant and landlord negotiations, and her gift for key placement in the local, national, and international marketplace, Lori Shabtai has become one of the most esteemed brokers in the field. She is known for visionary ideas that bring value add components to both real estate and portfolios. Although her initial area of expertise was retail leasing, her natural curiosity, understanding of deal making, and absolute industry and integrity led her to exercise her exceptional skills at fulfilling landlord and tenant needs in all areas including office, tech space, investment sales and residential sales. She has vast experience in ground up development (e.g. Columbus Square), repositioning (e.g. One Union Square), landmarked historical sites (e.g. Puck Building, Empire State Building), and working directly with developers, architects, and engineers to provide owners with long term real estate value by not necessarily choosing the easiest, but always the greatest and best term use for each property or project.
Lori is open to pursuing all aspects of real estate. For example, two years ago she was offered the task of finding the perfect country home for a notable out-of-town developer, and given a startling deadline of a mere a few weeks. She succeeded.
A no-nonsense businesswoman, she brings creative solutions and visionary skills to all aspects of real estate.
Lori Shabtai’s extraordinary experience and knowledge, unquestionable integrity and unique instincts serve as her guide. She firmly believes: “A successful deal is one in which everyone wins and therefore brings value to the greater sum.”