therealdeal.com – “Careful when you go outside or some tenant group will bust you,” a young real estate professional with a Gordon Gekko-esque hairstyle joked inside the men’s room.

Such was the mood after Michelle Maratto Itkowitz, a well-known landlord attorney, concluded an extraordinary speech titled “Tenant Buyouts — The Next Generation,” at TerraCRG’s “Only Brooklyn” real estate summit Wednesday.

The lecture centered on strategy for how to “de-tenant” occupied and rent-stabilized buildings, a high-stakes issue for multifamily investors in Brooklyn. Itkowitz began with some corny attempts at hipster jokes about Urban Outfitters and Williamsburg, including this gem: “Why do hipsters like ice in their drinks so much? Because ice was water before it was cool.”