Stephen J. Meringoff manages his extensive Manhattan real estate portfolio from behind a large antique leather desk in his 26th Street office. Two Apple laptop computers sit folded shut and tucked unobtrusively to the side when not in use.
A managing partner of Himmel + Meringoff Properties, Meringoff, 68, has been investing in commercial real estate for over 30 years.
On May 10, he will be honored for his philanthropic involvement with PENCIL, a non-profit organization that co-ordinates the business community in support of the city’s public schools.
“For the first third of your life you learn, for the second third of your life you earn and for the final third of your life you return,” said Meringoff, who created PENCIL Fellows, an internship program that has placed 150 high school students in paid summer internships with companies including CB Richard Ellis, HBO, JPMorgan Chase and JetBlue Airways.
“I wanted them to know the joy of having a paycheck,” he said.
Meringoff’s commitment to fundamentals — education, a young person’s first job — shows through is his approach to real estate as well.
Together with Leslie Himmel, Meringoff currently owns two million square feet of mainly B and B-plus Manhattan commercial space. The veteran investors are keeping a careful eye on the commercial building market as the effects of the 2008 financial crisis flow through.
“This year is a huge year for re-investing in our property,” Meringoff said. “I see a real need to re-invest right now, and the people who can’t do it are selling.”
At the same time, he said, “There’s a huge amount of money ready to buy.”
Meringoff believes a bubble has formed in the Manhattan office market, fueled by foreign investment and affordable financing.
“Emboldened by extremely low interest rates that will not continue forever, people are paying very high prices, and we find ourselves woefully outbid,” he said, recounting recent auctions that quickly exceeded his expectations by millions.
But with rents yet to fully recover from 2008, he said, the high prices are unlikely to last.
“It’s frothy,” he said. “There’s a lot of fluff on the top of the market and things are selling at prices that seem to exceed the fundamentals.”
In the meantime, Himmel + Meringoff is focusing on off-market and opportunistic purchases, leveraging the partnership’s reputation and relationships.
“There are still properties that owners want to sell that they don’t want to have in an auction,” Meringoff said.
Meringoff is a graduate of Cornell University and the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration.
He will have three interns from public high schools through the PENCIL program in his office this summer. Last year, he hired one intern, Shyam Noredeen, as a part-time employee while he continues his education at City College.
In a YouTube video promoting the PENCIL Fellows — in which Meringoff also appears — Noredeen describe a work day that begins at 3 a.m. for his commute into Manhattan from Queens.
“His life has been honed on the steel of hard knocks and experience,” Meringoff said.
Meringoff is father to four daughters, the youngest of whom is 14. In his office, four portraits smile from across the room directly in front of his desk.
“I love my kids, but they’ve been very lucky,” he said. While his daughters are privately educated, Meringoff believes strongly that every young person in New York should have access to a good education, and he worries about school construction keeping up with the rate of development.
“The population has grown by a million people — how many public schools have we built?” he asked.
Between four daughters and his long-term business partnership with Himmel, Meringoff admits there are a lot of women in his life. But he’s not complaining.
“I think women are smarter than men, in general,” he said. “Education generally values a very narrow type of intelligence, and leaves out the emotional and intuitive parts.”
Having four daughters, he said, has “made me more humble.”
