Welcome to New York in the 1980s, where ?the best thing about being obsessed with real estate? is that you can count on it to arise in conversation ?about every ten minutes.? Nina Fischman mostly opts out of those conversations: She?s too busy running down to Housing Court on behalf of her ?poverty law? clients, and tracking down sales on sweaters that camouflage the hips. But Nina?s mother, Ida, has a nose for the market, and that nose gets twitchy when old ladies in her neighborhood start dying, leaving apartments that have miraculously escaped what New Yorkers delicately call ?the cockroach problem.? Someone?s making a killing in real estate.