What Are You Doing With Your Life?

Even if it’s somehow within the realm of possibility for a 25-year-old to purchase a newspaper, I believe it’s fair to ask just how he is then able to buy 22 Manhattan residential properties as well:

Real estate scion Jared Kushner, the 25-year-old who earlier this week purchased the New York Observer for about $10 million, is quietly expanding his investment portfolio in Manhattan, hatching plans to purchase 22 residential buildings north of 96th Street.

In an interview, Mr. Kushner said his partners in the real estate venture include his siblings, Dara, 27, Nicole, 23, and Joshua, 21, all of whom have minority interests in the Observer. He declined to be more specific about the location of the properties, their current owners, or how much he expected to spend.

A fourth-year New York University law and business student who has said he bought the controlling share in the paper with money he earned and inherited, Mr. Kushner made his first multimillion-dollar real estate purchase when he was a 19-year-old Harvard University sophomore. He is the son of Charles Kushner, a New Jersey developer who in 2004 pleaded guilty to witness tampering, tax evasion, and falsifying campaign-finance reports. He spent a year in an Alabama prison before being transferred in March to a halfway house in Newark, N.J., where he is being treated for substance abuse. He is expected to be released August 26.

The secret of Kushner’s success lies in new countertops:

Having raised venture capital from his parents and a handful of family friends, the younger Mr. Kushner in 2000 established Somerville Building Associates — a division of his father’s Kushner Companies — and put down a reported $10 million on seven residential rental buildings in Somerville, Mass., which borders Cambridge. Soon thereafter, he purchased an additional investment property in Somerville.

“I’d be in class, and get a call that a toilet broke, and have to get a contractor over there,” Mr. Kushner, a Livingston, N.J., native, said.

“At this point, multitasking is what I do best,” he said. “I believe you have to push yourself, until one or the other begins suffering and then you have to make choices.”

Mr. Kushner never had to choose between his studies and his real estate ventures. He graduated from Harvard in 2003, and sold his remaining Somerville real estate holdings for what he describes as a handsome profit the following year.

His business strategy was to increase the value of the apartments through high-end building and renovations. “We did significant upgrades, putting in new kitchen countertops, new floors, and better lighting,” he said. “These were very neglected buildings, and we turned them into places that people could go home, and be proud of.”

. . .

Jared Kushner, who lives in NoHo, did not say how much he earned through these Somerville real estate ventures. He did say the profits from the sales — in addition to some “family money” in his name — allowed him to purchase the salmon-colored weekly.

Asked if his father has advised him on the Observer deal or his current real estate ventures, he said: “We had private conversations that are private.”