Howard Rich - Early Years

Early Years

Rich attended the George W. Wingate High School in Brooklyn, New York. While a senior, he earned the New York State Regents scholarship. He studied economics at Baruch College in New York City. He studied investing at the New York University Stern School of Business. According to one source, Rich initially had a plumbing contracting business, but used its revenues to buy real estate. He became a real estate entrepreneur around 1965. He began a pattern of buying Manhattan properties, fixing them up, and selling them. In 1970, he bought a multiresidential building. During the next two decades he bought more buildings and modernized them. Rich described his real estate strategy: "I bought buildings when no one else wanted them, then I sold them." By 1986 he owned 17 buildings but sold 15 buildings. After the 1987 stock market crash he sold one more building. In 1989 he exchanged his remaining property for a property in Houston. In the 1990s he began purchasing Manhattan properties again. In the 2000s, he sold some Manhattan properties and bought garden apartment developments in different states.