Lessons - How One Family Reshaped Miami's Skyline | Gil Dezer - President of Dezer Development ($4B+ in Sales)

In this lessons episode, explore how luxury real estate is transformed through branding, innovation, and strategic positioning. Discover how partnering with established brands accelerates credibility and demand. Understand how unique features and design choices create unmatched value and differentiation, and uncover how timing, market shifts, and external events reshape buyer behavior and pricing dynamics. I want to talk about luxury and innovation. So I want to understand, pre-you building in Florida, there was a version of of South Florida, there was a version of luxury, and then you started to innovate. You innovated with the amenities that you add on, you innovate with the car elevator, and then you get to the point where you start to think, I'm going to co-brand. I co-branded with Trump, I'm going to co-brand with now Porsche. Where does that thought come from? How does Porsche equate to a luxury place to live? Because now you have a car company, you could have had a car elevator, and you could have partnered up with LVMH, or you could have partnered up with any other luxury brand, but you chose car brands as the luxury partner. Yeah, so I can answer that question in four different steps. First step was, yeah, the Trump got me addicted to the brand new. I realized that we get tremendous amounts of press without having to pay for it. That's where I realized that this brand new thing is a great way to, you know, a project starts, they call themselves wind, right, or sun, or rise, or wherever it's stupid name they come up with. Who's going to know about it? It doesn't say where you are, it doesn't say what you are, it doesn't even say, you know, you just, and so that developer is going to spend millions of dollars promoting that brand, and then what happens when the building's over, it's gone, right, and he spent all that money to create what is this building, and then he's, and he sold out and is done. We said, well, what, you know, when I, when I realized the Trump effect and how positive that was, I said to myself, why, you know, we don't need to create brands, we can associate with brands, and that's what we did. So now when Porsche came, and they were looking for something to do, at first, I was, I'm a huge Porsche fan. I don't know if you know, but I'm a huge, I have one on my wall, in my house, I have about, I think I have about 17 portions that I own from all different ranges, old ones, new ones and everything in between. So I'm a huge Porsche fan, so I was chomping at the bit when they said, hey, let's do a building. But then we all sat down in the room and asked the same exact question, what does Porsche have to do with real estate? How do you incorporate Porsche into real estate? And my father was one who piped up and said, we need to put a car elevator in the building. Oh, I see. That's the connection. That's the connection. He said, we need to put a car elevator in the building and make it, make it a car building. And the idea at first was like, you know, I don't know, but we have to start thinking about it. And then as we started to look at it, and we sat there with an architect and said, hey, how do we put a car in a garage? And then we started reading the zoning code. That's when we had the aha moment. The aha moment was that garages in the units above 24 feet high do not affect your FAR, your floor area ratio, which means your sellable square feet, which means a given site, Porsche, for example, had a maximum sellable square footage by FAR by code of 525,000 square feet, which is already a big building. We found out that by putting the garages up there, it doesn't take away from the 525,000 feet. So we took the philosophy of, hey, let's give these people some free space, you know, since it's free to us, it's free to them. And so our marketing efforts, we sold the entire apartment. Where my neighbors were selling at $1,200 square foot, I was selling at $1,200 square foot too. However, I was selling the entire square footage, the apartment, and the garage. So where you had a unit that was 5,000 square feet total that we were selling for $1,200 or $6 million price point, that unit was actually 3,500 square feet interior. And we disclosed that we didn't trick anybody, but it's because I was able to sell the garage space as part of the unit. And the answer was people wanted it. You know, if you didn't want it, there was a lot of people who said, hey, this is not for you. Why do I need my car and my living room? What if it's dirty? This is not for you. Go next door, go someplace else. But then we found a group of people saying, especially South Americans and celebrities. You see, I did it. I wanted the car. I thought the coolest thing in the world is a car in your living room, two cars in your living room. It's very cool. Everybody has the Picasso on their walls. Fuck Picasso. I want my $25 million Ferrari GTO in my living room, right? In a Porsche building or in any branded building, because like the brand really didn't matter. So that was my goal. But when the buyer saw it, and the South Americans and celebrities saw it, they saw something completely different, which I didn't even notice or pay attention to. They saw a way of getting home without seeing anybody or asking for assistance. They saw a way of privacy of getting into their apartment, going up to their apartment and inside their unit without having to go through a lobby, without having to say hello to anybody. And it really made it like a single family home. And so that's where the unit started selling like crazy because people like the idea of having a house in the sky. And it was a real privacy. Every other condo sells house in the sky because they have an outdoor barbecue. That's bullshit in my opinion. We did not just the outdoor barbecue. I put swimming pools on every balcony. So you didn't have to go downstairs, you know? I have the car elevator in the unit. We have a restaurant in the building that orders room service. So this is a building where you never have to leave your unit if you want to be a hermit. You have everything you need in your house, in your house, in this cut. And it took so well to the market that it sold and resold and resold and we're still doing resells right now. And then so from there, we um, I was on a trip to in Dubai and I stayed at the Borscalifa at the Armani Hotel. And I saw this Armani thing and I'm like, how can we don't have this in America? You know? And so I caught up to the Armani guys and I said, listen, I'm the brand new guy in the United States. Nobody else is doing what I'm doing at the time, you know, since then they've all copied me. But um, nobody's been doing what I'm doing. I did the Trump buildings. I'm doing Porsche. Now let's, let's see what we can do with this one. I um, and, and so I had also signed up La Lique, the glass company to do a project with them. Unfortunately, nothing has happened. We're there, but I did have them as a brand signed up. So um, and what's our money is to look on your guide. Let's do a project and sign them up. And uh, and that's where the residents of Armani cost came from, which was a $960 million bill and sold out. And that was where we finished that right before the pandemic. I started selling that in 2016. We finished it in 2019 and 2019. We had our opening party March 7th of 2020. We had pit bull come and sing to the crowd. Amazing party, maybe 2,000, 3,000 people to party. And then the and already the Italians from Armani told us we can't come to the party because COVID was starting to happen. COVID is already starting over there. Yeah. And so March 7th, March 14th lockdowns. So uh, you know, we had at that time, we had 20% still left to sell in Armani. Um, we'd sold 80% closed, 80% and then and then the lockdowns happened and we didn't know what the hell was going to happen. We thought having this huge party with pit bull will make a lot of noise as we do and we'll sell out the rest of the units. So that didn't happen. Um, but then so COVID, we were kind of stuck. We didn't sell anything, but at the same time, we had paid off our loan. So we weren't like with a gun tour ahead. This is all profit. We're sitting there. So it was fine. Um, we just have to pay maintenance on the units carry the units. It's not a problem. And then towards towards the year 2001, is that sorry, 2021, October 21. I remember the world kind of opened up. And that's when we just we sold everything between October and January. We sold the last 20% in three months. So what happened to the world, the, even the south Florida world, the, the, the Miami world, the adventurer, the sunny is what happened to that world after COVID? Because I find it's just been absolute chaos in a good way. Yeah. For this, for this, I mean, I'm down here because of it. Yeah. Right. So it was, it was chaotic in many places. I mean, you know, really draconian ship going on over there. People getting arrested for not wearing masks. And, and you know, that wasn't happening here. You know, and that's where, and the word got out. Hey, Miami's open. No, it's not happening there. You know, and the word really got out. And, and, and, um, you know, they, they, they told us this in, in a university, it was the, uh, the prisoners dilemma. You heard about the prisoners dilemma. You remember that? A little bit. Yeah, I do. I do. The simplest short, and the shortest form of prisoners dilemma is everybody else is closed and you're open. You're going to get the business, right? Yeah. That's the, that's the shortest way of figuring out that prison dilemma. That's exactly what happened. You know, so, um, everybody else was closed. We were open for business. And, you know, the samples took a risk and it paid off for them. And it would all work out. You know, so, um, uh, I got COVID twice. It was nothing. It was a flu. I also think the climate here in Florida, because it was, it was warmer. It didn't, you know, it didn't cause the COVID as much. Well, people are outdoors too. They're not all grouped in, in tiny rooms and what not all winter. Like, that someplace is up north. I think that helps. Right. And, and then, and then the other part that brought people here was, and I, and I really applaud the, uh, the, the police force in all of man, Sonny Al's especially, but all man, there was none of that BS going on of riding, um, that was happening around the country where things started, they shut it down real quick. I remember with their burning cop cars all over the place, there was one police car burned in Miami kind of thing that, that day, you know, we didn't have those issues. We didn't have crime issues or, I mean, we always have crime issues, right? But the police here take it seriously. There's no defunding going on here. There's none of that stuff. They took it seriously and, and, and they're strong and they don't mess around. And, you know, and that created a real safe environment for everybody, you know, so it was COVID and it was safe and, and, and it was a reason to come down. I mean, there's so many places in America that turn to shit over the George Floyd and everything else that, you know, it was, it's, it's, it's really scary to be honest with you. So, I gotta say more luck than brains that were here, you know, I mean, or as I can't say, we knew that was going to happen, but we happened to be in the right place at the right time with, with respect to after COVID. And, uh, and so that's clear in the way. And now, as far as real state, in the United States, I think we're one of the few markets that are still popping, you know? What, what happened? So what did you see post COVID yet? Money moving down from New York yet, money moving from probably LA, probably some of LA went to Vegas too. But talk to me about the influx of, yeah, talking about the influx of cash, what people are starting to pay. Do you think this is going to maintain like when you build your next build? What are you expecting in terms of buyers that have moved down here now? Well, definitely the demographic has changed. We used to get a lot of South Americans where the South American, the market today is rough because the exchange rates. So that's so they're not there. But what happened specifically was, you know, there was a lot of people coming for a small amount of inventory on the high end, right? That's what you heard about. And the small amount of inventory in the high end had to continue to go up based on the bitty wars that these people created amongst themselves. And at the end of the day, they still got a deal because whenever they bought spending too much money, it's still, you know, 30% discount to New York to what they're paying them in there. So, you know, and they're on the waterfront in a tax-free environment. I mean, they won. They won. They did, right? You know, so what happened was the market went crazy because there was only a certain amount of homes and a tremendous amount of buyers. And it didn't, and like I said, it affected us in that we sold out 60 Armani units in 90 days, you know, which is kind of like pretty fast. But in the pre-construction game, which we're in, it kind of rising tide raises ships, but didn't raise the pre-construction ship because everybody wanted something now. And so, anybody who was selling today got a premium amount and what they were selling, but then they couldn't replace it because everything else went up. So, the pre-construction game was as slow as steady a kind of turtle with the winds. It's designed for people who are planning to the future because these buildings are ready for three, four years. And somebody who likes to pay as you go, so to speak. I mean, we're are 50% deposits. We've taken in 10% increments of five payments over the course of four years. So, that makes it comfortable for a buyer, for somebody who wants to, you know, slowly move the money out of the country. Those things are, you know, that's where the pre-construction market goes. So, where the market went crazy, we got the benefit of the higher price per square foot on what things were selling, and we were able to sell it higher price per square foot, but then, of course, costs went up. So, you know, although we're selling for more money, we're not making more money, you know, unfortunately. Costs went up in ratio, and even I actually higher than the cost per square foot, and then stupid costs are still happening. Insurance. Insurance is like completely out of control, you know, concrete and construction materials are getting back in control, but labor has gone out out of control. Labor moved up. A good 40-50% from where it used to be pre-pandemic. So, labor rates. So, so there's still more expensive stuff than, you know, and it's costing more expensive. So, we're selling for more, costing more, trying to make a spread. That's, that's the name of our game, you know. Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode, and if you want to dive deeper into this conversation, check out the links in the description to watch the full episode. See you in the next one.