Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Lessons - How One Family Reshaped Miami's Skyline | Gil Dezer - President of Dezer Development ($4B+ in Sales)

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

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