Gluck was born to a Jewish family,[2] raised in a two-bedroom, one-bathroom rent-controlled apartment in the Bronx.
[2] In 1985, Gluck partnered with fellow Dreyer & Traub attorney Steve Witkoff, and co-founded Stellar Management; switching their careers from the practice of law to owning and managing real estate; the name "Stellar" came from Steve and Larry.
[10][11] From 2004, he purchased over a dozen ageing residential complexes that had been built with state Mitchell-Lama program subsidies.
As the subsidies expired, he replaced rent-regulated residents with market-rate tenants (generally paying twice or thrice the rent).
[11] Although he typically renovated the facilities, he had confrontations with tenant groups at several of his properties including Independence Plaza in Manhattan, Meadow Manor in Flushing, Queens, and Castleton Park on Staten Island, and was criticized for reducing the rent-regulated inventory of housing stock in New York City.
[11][12][13] In 2005, he borrowed $250 million to buy and renovate the Riverton Houses, a 1,232-unit residential development in Harlem, New York City, with 90 percent of its units rent-stabilized, but lost it to foreclosure in 2008 as the real estate boom collapsed.