Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Lessons - How I Turned Car Brands Into Billion Dollar Buildings | Gil Dezer - Miami's Luxury Real Estate King

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Lessons - How I Turned Car Brands Into Billion Dollar Buildings | Gil Dezer - Miami's Luxury Real Estate King · Success Story with Scott Clary

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  In this lessons episode, discover how luxury car brands were brought into real estate to create
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  unique, high-value properties, learn how a patented car elevator system redefined convenience,
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  privacy, and exclusivity for residents, and understand the financial strategy that turned
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  parking into a major revenue driver while pushing the boundaries of innovation in property development.
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  What was the idea about bringing in, because Trump was sort of like a well-known real estate brand.
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  Porsche, Armani, Bentley, these are not what well-known real estate brands, these are car brands,
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  or these are luxury brands, car brands, but when you decided to do this strategy to bring in
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  these names, what was the thought process? You had the idea of brand with Trump, but what was the
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  next thing that made you want to do this? It was an evolution of thought process. So we started
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  out with Porsche Design. You have to understand how I got to these car brands. It was difficult at
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  the time. They didn't want anything to do with the real estate, but Porsche Design was the part of
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  the Porsche company that did the sunglasses and the lighters, and they had the retail stores.
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  So I went to the Porsche Design Company, and they were the ones looking to do a licensing,
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  knowing that they had the name Porsche and the logo in their name, that they could maximize
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  on their Porsche design. At the time, I believe the whole Porsche design part of the company was
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  doing something like $80 million a year in revenues. It's small. It's very small. The tail of the
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  whole Porsche company doing $9 billion a year. So easy to get to, easy to make a deal with,
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  and we made a deal with them. It was the Porsche Design Tower. What had happened afterwards was
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  Volkswagen did a leverage buyout on Porsche, and they took over the company, and they forced
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  the sale of Porsche Design, which was owned half by Porsche the car company, half by the Porsche
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  family. So they forced the Porsche family to sell out, and then I got tucked into the Volkswagen
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  group, and that's how I got my way access to Bentley and all these other brands that we have
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  that we've been talking about and so that's how that happens. They were okay.
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  So the small subsidiary willing to realize that it was not easy. It was not easy. I had to
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  convince them, I said, look, Donald Trump, the only thing he has is his name, and he gave it to me,
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  right? He didn't have a product. He wasn't manufacturing cars or anything like that. These guys,
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  you manufacture cars. You need a lifestyle component. We sat down with them. We really guided
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  them through the process because a lot of the things that we taught them, you're dealing with
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  executives who are not at the same level as our customer pool, if you will. So I represented
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  the customer pool and said, this is what the customer wants. This is what they need. This is what they
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  and they said, oh yeah, that's great, great, great. They didn't say no on me on anything.
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  A few things, we had to stop production of our brochures because the brake calipers were not red.
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  Things like that. They were obsessed with the details.
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  For sure. They checked the building and everything else to make sure that, yeah, of course.
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  That building is 100% Porsche. It smells, breathes, looks, everything, Porsche.
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  And the same way Bentley is going to be the same. So the concept of the car elevator
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  started. My father owns the building in New York City, which is a car dealership on 271th
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  Avenue. It's called Manhattan Motor Cars. It's a Porsche Rolls-Royce Bentley dealership over there.
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  And it's a five-story building. You drive in, you press one of five buttons on the elevator,
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  goes up, opens the door, you drive right out. We said, okay, how cool is this going to be?
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  Maybe instead of pressing a button, you will have an RFID, or we go to the fire department with
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  a design, you drive in, it picks you up. They said, this is great, great, great, no fucking way.
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  Because they said, we don't want you starting a car in the middle of the building.
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  And so that was a whole other process of what is Porsche have to do with real estate.
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  We said, let's make the building for the car lover, for the guy who wants his car and his
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  living room. And that was what our idea was. What really happened was there was something I didn't
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  think whatever of. But based on the fact that we have always South American customers,
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  they love the fact that it was the security and the privacy and safety of them going up and
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  down from an apartment without seeing anybody, without seeing, you know, with everybody
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  know who they are. Instead of jumping on board and being like, and I know you probably have
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  the patents and the IP lock down type. But instead of being like, okay, how do we replicate this?
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  This is a really cool feature. This serves the same clientele as us. It's like the immediately,
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  it's like the blockbuster to Netflix, right? Yeah, people are so slow. They're afraid of
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  you evolve. They're afraid of new things. Yeah. And when they don't understand something,
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  they're quick to say no. And if it was a little education, and especially to developers,
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  I would have expected by now that developers would have figured this out what I'm doing,
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  figured out that this is, you know, the whole reason we're sticking an $85 million elevator
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  in a building, right? You understand why? Yeah, of course. Well, because it's a privacy,
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  it's a convenient, it's a, it's a, it's a, you see, people don't get it. No, that's the abstract
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  effect of it. But there's a financial reason. There's a financial reason I went and patented
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  the shit. Yeah. What's the financial reason? The FAR, you understand real estate, you buy a specific
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  plot of land. It has a floor area ratio, FAR in Europe, they call it GFA Gross Floor Area.
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  The FAR on that site allows you to build in the case of the Bentley Tower, 600,000 square feet
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  of net, sellable square feet. Okay, that is the actual inside of the apartments, not including
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  the balconies, not including the stairs, not including the elevators, not including the parking.
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  So by now placing the parking adjacent to the unit, yeah, I get it. I sell it as part of the unit
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  and I'm picking up an additional 50% on the building. So my, my FAR was 600,000 square feet,
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  I'm selling out 900,000 square feet. What does that turn into in writing? I'm picking up,
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  I'm selling my square 50% more revenue than the neighbor on the same size plot, the same size land.
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  And yes, it's cost of being an elevator, but 300,000 square feet. Yeah, but what do you do in the
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  math? I'm doing it at 1,500 bucks a foot. That's an additional 450 million dollars in revenue.
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  He spent 85 million for foot. Okay. Yeah. That's why that's where the, I mean, if you were to ever
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  call me a genius, that's where the genius comes in. Because we figured out how to milk every
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  single penny out of this building by adding value, by creating this elevator system. But every other
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  developer gives away parking and I'm selling it at the same price per square foot as the unit.
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  So it's an aha moment. And I am surprised at every other developer in the world is not calling me
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  to do the same thing. I don't get it. I don't understand where the, but again, it's because it's
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  something new. They're not used to it. Some others are trying, some others are trying to, you know,
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  to do buildings where you drive in, drive out, which fire departments are going to shut them down
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  on it. I'm the only system where you don't have to start the car. That's my patent. You come in with
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  your passenger in the car. There's a little satellite system slides out, lift the car and
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  use a little like chopsticks. The same way kind of like a tow truck gets the front. We do all four
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  wheels. So the car is in park, passengers in the car, engine off, pulls you in the elevator,
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  the deserverator, pulls you up to your floor, spits you out in your own personal garage,
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  two steps away from your front door. And because two steps away from your front door,
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  you have to buy that garage. And if you don't want to buy the garage, this building's not for you.
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  You can go next door. Have you had pushback? Oh, yeah. Oh, you charged me for the garage. Yeah,
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  well, it's part of your unit. You know, I mean, they don't charge me next door. Okay. That's,
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  we don't have it. That's where you need to live. Go have some valleys, sweat in your car and
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  bang the car up all day long. Yeah. If it's not important to you, you know, if it's not important
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  to, if you really think about it and do the math again, I have, I'm selling four spaces.
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  It comes to square footage wise, about two million bucks, not cheap yet. It's $500,000
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  of parking space, which if you go to any city, anywhere in the world and you want it to buy a
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  parking space, that's the price. All right. And Hong Kong, they're going for two million. New
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  York, they're going for a million. So to spend half a million dollars to have the car right there
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  in front of you. How do you do something that's never been done before? So I know people that
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  build technology software has never been done before. Building something physical that requires
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  engineering architecture. It's like, it's not easy. There's a lot of it. It's expensive. It's time
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  consuming. Well, I, I, here's what, here's what I, I gotta be honest and say, I didn't do anything
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  that's never been done before. I just put components together in a way that's never been done before.
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  Meaning what we took is automated parking. That's been around since the 70s. But never, it was
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  always done to save space to put cars next to each other, save the driveways, you know, and make
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  it a more efficient parking garage because garages are expensive. So I just took that same thing and
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  adapted it in a way where we're, where I'm not looking to save space. I'm looking to bring a
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  passenger in the car. So we had to put a lot of passenger safeties. And the answer is, yeah,
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  I'm not an engineer, but we hired the right engineers who said, hey, how can we get closer to this
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  and how can we get closer to this? And guys would pop in at a nowhere. And I didn't understand
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  what they were doing, but later on became some of the most valuable guys in the whole project,
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  you know, I'm the only elevator in the world with a sprinkler system in it. Should the car
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  catch on fire, you know, there's a sprinkler system in a moving elevator with traveling. And so
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  they, you know, at first we said, oh, we're going to have a traveling water cable. And they said,
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  that's going to be a fucking problem. You can't do that. So, so we went to head to a high-miss
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  system with these huge scuba tanks that sit on the cab and they missed out of fire. Yeah, I mean,
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  but you just got to sit in the thing and figure it out. Everything's available today. Everything
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  can be done today. You know, and if it can't be done, it's easy to make it today. 3D printers and
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  whatnot. Anything can be made. Yeah, that's true. So it's very true. And like, listen, I don't know,
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  you just never take no for an answer when it comes to innovation, it comes to building. I know,
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  like, I, because I truly believe that there's always a solution, you know, and the really,
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  those really, there's always a solution. You just got to think, you know, and sometimes I'm not in
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  the position to think because I don't know the solution, but I got to, I sit there and I force my
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  people to think. And I asked them questions of three-year-old childhood ask and get that juice is
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  going to, you know, but why can't we do it this way? And why can't we do it that way? Even though I
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  know that their answers are going to be, but what about this and what about that and what about this
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  and what about that? And just force experts who, their experts, they've been doing this their whole
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  life, you know, force them to think, you know, force them to think the other way. Thanks for tuning
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  in. If you found this valuable, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an
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  episode. And if you want to dive deeper into this conversation, check out the links in the description
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  to watch the full episode. See you in the next one.