Suzanne Seggerman and her husband own a loft on Bond Street that they rent out for income. In 2021, a man named Han Lo signed a two-year lease, having represented himself to them as an architect and shown solid financials — and then, without warning, abruptly demolished most of the bedrooms and closets in the apartment. It took months for the couple to get him out of their place, and Suzanne gradually discovered that this wasn’t his first impromptu wrecking project. She (eventually aided by New York reporter James D. Walsh) unearthed a long trail of wrecked apartments, unpaid bills, ghosted leases, and more. Every New Yorker has a real-estate story, but this one’s way stranger, more alarming, and more compelling than most. One early reader told me that, by the end, he found himself in a novel frame of mind: total sympathy for a landlord.
—Christopher Bonanos, city editor, New York
