Superman Swigg takes it all in his stride.

When a prospective tenant recently arrived to view storage space at 44 Wall Street, he was surprised to find not the broker waiting for him, but the building's owner, Kent Swig.

This particular tenant happened to have looked at space in Swig properties before and was consequently familiar with Swig's habit of personally giving tours. But for 15K s/f of storage space?

"He was shocked to see me," Swig recalled. "He said 'Kent, I'm only here to see storage space.' I told him that I knew what he was there to see and that I would be happy to show it to him. I also showed him some space in 48 Wall Street that might have suited his needs."

By the end of the viewing, the tenant was so impressed with Swig's hands-on approach and affability, he called the broker immediately and committed to the space.

Stories like this one aren't unusual in the world of Kent Swig. Known for his meticulousness, Swig makes it a point to participate in nearly every level of his many businesses, including showing space as small as 2,000 s/f. It's a Herculean task considering the breadth of his involvement in real estate.

Swig is the one of the co-chairmen of Terra Holdings, which owns and operates Brown Harris Stevens and Halstead Property Company, two of New York City's largest residential brokerages. He is also a principal at both Swig Burris Equities, a commercial real estate investment and development firm, and the Swig Company, his family's real estate firm, which has a portfolio of 11 million s/f of office space and owns the Fairmont Hotels chain.

Swig's office is packed with tall stacks of paper to such an extent, a visitor may think that the man doesn't believe in filing cabinets. In actuality, Swig says it is a result of his insistence on at least glancing over every important document pertinent to his operations.

His attention to detail doesn't stop there. Swig mentioned that when buying a building he inspects every inch of its space, from the lobby to the cooling towers. He knows every one of his tenants and enjoys chatting with them during the frequent visits he makes to his buildings. For his residential businesses, Brown Harris Stevens and Halstead, he helped initiate and oversee sweeping improvements to the firms' infrastructures when he bought the companies along with David Burris and Arthur and William Zeckendorf in 1995, but also still takes time to personally write for and edit the hefty residential listings brochures that both firms publish at frequent intervals during the year.

To engage in juggling so many responsibilities while successfully helming a number of companies--any one of which alone is probably more than a fulltime occupation--takes a rare sort of individual, one who can conduct his work with extreme intensity and also seamlessly shift his attention to address the daily barrage of relatively disparate tasks that spring up.

Swig conducts himself with ease in this mode and can go from a phone call discussing his next acquisition for Swig Burris--which has purchased roughly $1.3 billion of properties since 2001--to a meeting for Brown Harris Stevens, to negotiating a leasing deal with a broker or prospective tenant, to discussing with his staff better marketing strategies.

"You have to be able to turn a switch on and off in five seconds," Swig said. "It's a matter of being able to accept distraction. I've always been interested and involved in so many different things that it's a natural thing for me."

Swig unsurprisingly comes across as an animated fellow, buzzing with enthusiasm and seemingly perpetually excited by what he does. He has incredible energy and says he sleeps only between 4-6 hours a night, although he concedes he needs more rest when training for the triathlons he occasionally likes to compete in.

Of all the real estate high rollers in the city who can boast of intensely productive and busy lifestyles, Swig's lifestyle has to be up there as among the absolute busiest and most productive and as such, has achieved almost legendary status in the eyes of some of the brokers who have worked with him.

"I get voicemails from Kent at three in the morning when we're doing a deal," a broker once noted to me with an expression of awe. "The guy just goes and goes."

Balance becomes an all-important pursuit for someone in his position and Swig describes success in this area as when he doesn't have enough time for every facet of his life and business equally. He finds vacationing an effective method for securing exclusive time with his wife, Elizabeth, and two sons and recently took a trip to Costa Rica where he and his eldest son got to partake in their favorite hobby, surfing.

"I've been to Hawaii and Australia and the West Coast, but Costa Rica has the best waves of all," said Swig, who described surfing as one of his greatest passions. "When I'm out there, it totally clears my mind."

Acknowledging Swig's place as one of the most prominent and successful figures in the Manhattan real estate industry, the Realty Foundation of New York presented him with its Man of the Year award last week. Swig noted that he isn't usually comfortable in the spotlight, but that he was grateful for this distinction because the Foundation has special meaning to him as its two founding members, the late Harry Helmsley and Jack Weiler, both played pivotal roles in his own and his family's success in real estate.

Coming from a humble background, Swig's grandfather, Benjamin Swig, started buying small retail stores in Iowa in the 1930s and in, 1936, entered into a partnership with Jack Weiler with whom he built a real estate empire that includes the Fairmont Hotels chain.

Swig, whose father took over the business after Benjamin, grew up outside of San Francisco not really aware of what his family's business was. He originally planned on being an international lawyer and studied Chinese history at Brown University before attending Hastings College of Law in San Francisco. But when he graduated, his father fell ill with cancer and asked Kent to help him run the family real estate business. Swig instantly gravitated to the industry's fast pace and, when his father recovered, joined Cushman & Wakefield's research department for a year. His father's cancer returned, however, and again Swig came back to the Swig Company, just in time to rescue the firm's planned acquisition of a property in Los Angeles. At the last minute, a partner in the deal backed out and Swig was charged with finding a replacement. A voracious reader, Swig consumed every single real estate publication he could and saw the same name come up again and again, Harry Macklowe.

"I cold-called him, explained who I was and what I was offering him and asked if he wanted a piece of the deal," Swig said. "He came out and took a look at it and agreed."

The pair's introduction resulted in more than just a joint venture. Realizing Swig's prodigious talent, Macklowe wound up recruiting Swig to join his firm. Swig worked for Macklowe Properties for seven years in what he called "the most excellent schooling in real estate imaginable."

He said, "Harry Macklowe is perhaps the most gifted person in real estate I've ever met. As much of a genius as my grandfather in real estate. While a lot of people can say they are a master at creative leasing, construction, architecture, structural engineering, marketing, or finance, Macklowe is a master of all those disciplines."

After amicably leaving the Macklowe organization in 1993 to stake out on his own, Swig hatched a plan with pals David Burris and the Zeckendorfs to buy Brown Harris Stevens from Harry Helmsley.

"Brown Harris Stevens had unbelievable name recognition," said Swig, who wound up purchasing the firm with Burris and the Zeckendorfs in 1995. "It didn't have computers though, or proper telephones, or marketing, or any of the infrastructure that we wound up infusing to make the multibillion dollar business that it is today. By selling it to us, Helmsley gave us our entry into the real estate world."