They’ve Paid For Lots Of Miami Buildings But These Visas May Vanish

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A federal program that has help fund dozens of big new South Florida business projects over the past decade by swapping U.S. visas and green cards for foreign investment dollars is teetering on the brink of political extinction, according to its supporters.

The EB-5 visa program, which by the estimate of the investment community has funneled more than $18 billion in overseas cash into U.S. business development since 2008 — including hundreds of millions of dollars in Florida — will expire on Sept. 30 unless Congress renews it.

Some of the ongoing high-profile projects that are using EB-5 funds include Florida East Coast Industries’ eagerly awaited Brightline MiamiCentral, the mixed-use downtown Miami station for the upcoming All Aboard Florida passenger rail service. A deal for $130 million in EB-5 funds will go toward the plaza’s 180,000 square feet of retail space.

SkyRise Miami, the ambitious 1,000-foot skyscraper/tourist attraction planned by developer Jeff Berkowitz to launch in 2020, would also include EB-5 funds as part of its $430 million budget.

But the EB-5 faces congressional critics who want to amend the program into oblivion or even it kill it outright. And even to get a fair hearing, it must compete for attention with the always-contentious federal budget, President Trump’s tax-reform proposal and a score of other high-priority items with upcoming deadlines.

“I think Sept. 30 is the drop-dead for renewal,” said Miami immigration attorney Tammy Fox-Issicoff, who frequently works with EB-5 investors. “And I mean that’s the drop-dead date for a full renewal. We’ve had a number of short extensions. That’s killing the program’s credibility with foreign investors who might like to join. Nobody wants to put half a million bucks into something that might be gone in three months.”

What is EB-5?

EB-5 visas were first created in 1990 as part of a larger congressional reform of immigration policy. They allow a foreigner who invests $1 million in a project that will generate at least 10 long-term jobs to get a visa and a green card if the project is completed. The required investment drops to $500,000 if it’s directed at a high-unemployment area.

But EB-5s didn’t really take off until 2009, when the Great Recession dried up commercial lending around the United States. As banks and other traditional credit sources retrenched, businesses started using EB-5 investment to patch the holes they left.

“As a result of those absences, you had to look for alternative sources of financing,” said Michael Conaghan, chief operating officer at Fort Partners, the developer of the Four Seasons Hotel and Private Residences at the Surf Club in Surfside. Conaghan is raising up to $200 million in EB-5 money to build a Four Seasons hotel-residence in Fort Lauderdale. “Since then, EB-5 has proven to be a good source of financing for projects. It also brings new people and new capital and new jobs to the country. A lot of other visa programs focus on people who are already here.”

EB-5 critics say it’s an inefficient investment tool, a needless subsidy to wealthy developers, and an easy target for manipulation and corruption.

“What it mostly does is it saves money for a lot of folks who are already rich and are just getting richer,” said David North, a senior fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington think-tank that’s harshly critical of immigration.

But what nobody disputes is that from beer joints to giant train lines, EB-5 funds are fueling economic development and local businesses in South Florida at an increasing rate. According to the latest figures available from the industry trade organization Invest in the USA, EB-5 investment throughout the state shot up from $10,500,000 in 2011 to $150,500,000 in the fiscal year 2013.

The precise impact of the EB-5 is nearly impossible to measure because the government keeps few statistics on the program. No one knows exactly how many EB-5 projects have succeeded, how many failed, or how many jobs have been created.

But the money definitely ripples through other economic measures. Invest in the USA estimates that the total gross domestic product contributed to Florida by EB-5 projects grew from $15 million to $179 million. State and local tax revenue went from $858,822 to $10,918,299.

Mezzanine Funding

Usually, EB-5 money serves as what developers call “mezzanine funding,” which fills the gap between what banks will finance and a project’s total cost.

“In a typical project, the developer is going to have some of his own money involved, maybe 20 to 25 percent of the total cost,” said Ron Klasko, a Philadelphia lawyer who has worked on 10 EB-5 projects in South Florida and hundreds across the country. Another 40 percent or so will come from a construction loan — what’s called the senior loan. And the other 35 percent is the mezzanine loan.”

Mezzanine loans obtained from a bank or other traditional lender might charge 14 to 18 percent. But because EB-5 investors are interested in getting their green cards, they are willing to accept a tiny fraction of that, often between 1 and 3 percent interest.

Funding for these projects is usually put together by federally designated business enterprises known as EB-5 centers that act as conduits for the program’s investment money. As recently as 2010, there were less than 100 EB-5 centers around the United States; now there are more than 850. Although they finance everything from farms to body shops, most of their money goes into real estate projects. In Florida, that has included everything from small businesses to mammoth developments.

Doug Rudolph, the CEO of Tapco Restaurant Group, says its first two Tap 42 Craft Beer Bar & Kitchen restaurants — the Boca Raton location, which opened in 2015, and the Coral Gables spot, which opened in 2016 — each used $2.25 million in EB-5 money, or 80 percent of their total construction costs.

The group’s other two locations — one in Midtown, which opened in June, and an upcoming spot at the Aventura Mall expansion — used $2.5 million each. Rudolph said the three existing restaurants have created “three to four times” the number of jobs required under EB-5 rules. That number varies depending on the size of the investment.

“People who want to invest in businesses that are creating jobs can touch and feel and meet us,” Rudolph said. “They can come into one of our restaurants and eat there, so they know exactly what they’re investing in. Most EB-5 investors intend to live in the same city as their investment, and they like the idea of being part of a local business. They feel closer to their communities.”

The $200 million mixed-use Hollywood Circle development, currently under construction on a 3.2 acre lot on U.S. 1 and Hollywood Blvd., will be composed of a trio of residential towers that will include a boutique hotel, gourmet restaurant, parking garage and a Publix supermarket. The budget includes $109 million in EB-5 funds.

The project is being developed by the Gold Coast Florida Regional Center, which was created in 2010 as a way to fill the void left by the departure of Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley and other big financial players from the real estate scene after the 2008 recession.

“We buy money just like plywood for development,” said Charles Abele, a founding partner of Gold Coast. “It’s one of the commodities needed to do what we do, so we decided to raise our own equity. EB-5 serves as a sweetener for every deal.”

Unexpected Benefit

Developers of the 60-story Paramount condo tower at the Miami Worldcenter mixed-use project under construction in downtown Miami say that EB-5 visas have been not a key element in their financing more than $50 million of it — but they say they have become an unexpected marketing tool for the project.

“Four of the 10 units we sold in June went to someone who came to the sales center intending to buy an EB-5 and bought a condo instead,” said Peggy Fucci, president and CEO of the real estate firm OneWorld Properties, the exclusive broker on the Paramount tower. Potential EB-5 investors have pockets deep enough to buy a condo at the tower, where prices start at $700,000.

Curiously, despite the tumultuous state of the U.S. debate over immigration, very little of the criticism of the EB-5 concerns the visas themselves or the 10,000 foreign investors and their family members (the annual cap on EB-5 immigration set by law) who use them to get into the United States each year.

“Most people don’t realize that a million immigrants come into the country each year,” said North, a strong critic of the EB-5. “In the context of a number like that, 10,000 is nothing, a drop in the bucket.”

A much bigger sticking point is what nearly everybody, including the most enthusiastic backers of the EB-5, admits is the program’s inefficient administration by a lumbering immigration bureaucracy that knows lots about visas but very little about cash flow, capitalization or anything else that goes into real estate development.

“The immigration component of the EB-5 program is trivial,” said Philadelphia attorney Klasko. “The EB-5 program doesn’t belong with the immigration service. Immigration officials don’t normally deal with reviewing securities offerings or economic reports or business plans. It creates problems at several levels. When you’re talking about the pace of business — especially in real estate development — it just doesn’t make any sense for immigration officials to say, ‘File your plan with us today and we’ll review it in a year and half.’ That’s not very realistic. But that’s the reality.”

An Uneasy Mix

The EB-5s uneasy mix of politics, business and immigration can lead to practices that are dubious in all three areas. One of the things most frequently denounced is what EB-5 players call “gerrymandering,” after the legislative practice of creating grotesque-looking districts to give one party or another an election advantage.

In the EB-5 version of gerrymandering, developers use tortuous geographic logic to link luxury developments in upscale metropolitan areas with blighted, poverty-stricken districts miles away. That allows them to get access to EB-5 money that’s intended for high-unemployment areas. Because the high-unemployment EB-5 investments can be smaller ($500,000 instead of $1 million), they are more plentiful.

The linkage is possible because the EB-5 law permits the developers to create so-called targeted employment areas, without regard to how large or misshapen they are, as long as the territory consists of adjacent U.S. Census tracts (small areas that are home from 1,200 to 8,000 people).

“We need more regulation on this,” said Rodrigo Azpurua, head of the Riviera Point Development Group, a Broward firm that has raised more than $53 million in EB-5 funds since 2012 to partially fund projects such as the Riviera Point Business Center Doral and the Radisson Red Miami Airport. “Right now, you can pretty easily build a line of Census tracts from Liberty City, where the unemployment rate is 20 percent or so, to Brickell, where it’s zero, and use the Liberty City unemployment to justify a luxury hotel in Brickell.”

Azpurua’s Brickell-to-Liberty City example is, if anything, understated. A 2015 lawsuit in Texas brought to light a targeted employment area that stretched through 190 Census tracts and five counties to link the battered, unemployment-plagued city of Brownsville with a planned upscale hotel in the city of Laredo, 200 miles away.

Not everyone agrees that the Where’s-Waldo? games with Census tracts are a problem. Immigration attorney Fox-Isicoff argues that the location of a project has little connection with where it will create jobs.

“I work on Brickell, but I live in North Miami,” Fox-Isicoff said. “I must drive through 12 or 15 or 20 Census tracts on my way to work each day. Same thing for most of the people in my office.”

And geography becomes even more irrelevant, she says, when the subject is so-called induced jobs — say, the people working in distant factories who manufacture the brick and steel and window glass that go into the construction projects.

“Those are all allowed to count toward the 10 jobs that must be generated by an EB-5 investment,” Fox-Isicoff said. “Does that mean every EB-5 project has to be built next door to a brick factory?”

The Gerrymandering Situation

Others, however, believe that EB-5 gerrymandering is part of a larger problem — that the allure of a potential visa makes investors look past red flags that something is awry. In recent years, EB-5 investors have been victimized in staggering corruption cases in Vermont and South Dakota in which the middlemen packaging their loans ran off well over $100 million of their funds or lost it in unauthorized investments.

The investors not only lost their money (a total of well over $100 million) but their visas, which aren’t awarded unless an investment program is successfully completed.

“It’s true that you can have a Bernie Madoff situation in any investment, with crooks taking your money,” said North. “But the likelihood in an EB-5 investment is greater because the intent of the investment is greater. A bank making a loan is looking for a good investment with solid security. EB-5 investors would like to have their money back eventually, but what they really want is the visas. And they don’t pay much attention to anything else.”

Fox-Isicoff agreed: “Inherent in the EB-5 program is the element of risk. The element of, ‘This may not work. You may not be paid back.’ People lose sight of that fact.”

The bureaucratic delays in the EB-5 program only make matters worse.

“Developers can’t wait two years before they start getting their money from investors, so a lot of times people are making their investment before the government has even reviewed the project,” noted Klasko.

The clumsiness of the EB-5 as an economic tool has led some to suggest that it be replaced with a program that simply sells a certain number of U.S. green cards, just as some two dozen other countries around the world offer citizenship for cash.

The government could use the receipts to create jobs programs wherever they were needed, not just in the high-profile urban areas that developers favor. (A pair of 2016 studies by New York University scholars of the 52 largest EB-5 projects in America since 2009 showed that nearly 40 percent of their money went to a single borough of New York City: Manhattan.)

“If we’re going to prostitute our visa process, let’s get a lot more money for it,” said North. “I’d run an auction. Charge whatever the market would bear. Let the government keep the money instead of giving it to big developers.”

EB-5 Opponents

That’s not one of the proposals on the table in Congress. Those range from killing the EB-5 visa outright to drastically raising its price — which might kill it anyway, many EB-5 supporters say. And although President Trump’s aversion to immigration is well known, the proposals to curtail the EB-5 originated well before his election.

Before President Obama left office, the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the EB-5 program through its United States Citizenship and Immigration Services office, proposed a series of changes that would raise the minimum EB-5 investment from $500,000 to $1.35 million.

“If the cost goes above $1 million, that’s going to seriously impact the program,” said attorney Randy Sidlosca, a partner in the EB-5 Immigration Investor Program Practice at Cozen O’Connor in Miami. “People just don’t want to part with a million dollars for five or six years, which is how long it usually takes to get your money back from an EB-5.” Sidlosca favors a compromise increase to $850,000, which is gaining support in the EB-5 community. “We can live with that,” he said. “Change is going to come, it’s inevitable, and we need to accept that.”

Compromise is possible, said Ronald Fieldstone, one of the most active EB-5 attorneys in Miami, because the fight about EB-5s is about money rather than ideology, a subject Congress knows how to negotiate.

“This isn’t about Trump and people who don’t like Trump, or Republicans and Democrats, or pro-immigration and anti-immigration,” Fieldstone said. “It’s about rural versus urban. The most combative opponents of EB-5 are people like Iowa’s Republican U.S. Senator Charles Grassley, whose state gets almost none of the EB-5 money because of the way the program has been administered. … I think this can get worked out.”

 

Source: Miami Herald

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First Office Building At MiamiCentral Will Open By The End Of Summer

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The parent company of All Aboard Florida (AAF) this summer will open the first of two office buildings at MiamiCentral, an 11-acre mixed-use development that will include a train station for AAF’s Brightline rail service.

Florida East Coast Industries is developing a standalone office building called Three MiamiCentral and another office building called Two MiamiCentral that will be connected to the train station.

Three MiamiCentral, expected to open by the end of summer, will have 100,000 square feet of office space, including 18,000 square feet that the Brightline rail service will occupy.

Two MiamiCentral, expected to open in fall, will have 190,000 square feet of office space and a group of tenants including Ernst & Young and Regus, a provider of shared office space.

The Cisneros media company will occupy the two top floors of the 10-story Two MiamiCentral office building, and general contractor Moss & Associates will lease space on the seventh floor. Venevision International Enterprises, Fortress Investment Group and Florida East Coast Industries will occupy offices in the building, too.

Rental rates are $33 to $35 per square foot, triple net, at Two MiamiCentral and $29 per square foot at Three MiamiCentral.

 

Source: The Real Deal

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Report Finds Miami One Of The Best Cities For International Investment

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Miami was ranked by Schroders Global Cities Index for being a prime global location for real estate investment.

Coming in at no. 27, Miami is one of 18 American cities listed in the top 30 by Schroders.

The index utilized a number of factors to identify the most “economically vibrant cities” including the population age 15 and over as a way to gauge demand for goods and services, median household income, retail sales and gross domestic product. The index also factors potential future growth into its calculations and local university rankings.

“We see universities as being critical in powering city economies,” Tom Walker, the co-head of global real estate securities at Schroders, said. “Knowledge-based hubs are growing in economic strength with a positive knock-on to real estate markets in those locations.”

According to Forbes, the index is used by “wealthy, global real estate investors and by institutional firms looking for the best long term value for fixed asset investments.” Shroders is a top international asset management firm.

Out of those categories, Miami ranked highest in retail sales, with a rank of 12. Miami ranked 19th in population, 19th in median household income, 27th in university ranking and 22nd in gross domestic product output.

Miami is already known as a top spot for international property investors, and it’s inclusion on this list won’t hurt that distinction. And while Miami draws inordinately from South American buyers, perhaps inclusion on this list will help draw interest from European investors.

See the rankings of the top 30 cities below.

 

Source: Miami Agent Magazine

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New York-Based RE Company To Develop 200,000 SF Office Building In Miami’s Wynwood District

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Rose & Berg Realty, a New-York-based private real estate company, has unveiled plans to develop The Gateway at Wynwood, a 12-story, 200,000-square-foot office building located at 2916 N. Miami Ave. in Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood.

The building will have eight floors of office space above four floors of covered parking. In addition, The Gateway at Wynwood will include approximately 25,000 square feet of retail space being marketed by RKF.

Kobi Karp Architecture and Interior Design is the architect of the project, and Jack Lowell, Adriana Rosillo and Noa Figari of Colliers International will handle the leasing of the building’s office space.

 

Source: REBusiness

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Billboard Blight And Mural Ads Are Infecting Downtown Miami

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Somewhere behind all the advertisements, there are actual buildings in Miami’s downtown core.

Apple’s Watch billboard on ME Miami building on NE 11th Terrace photographed on Saturday, June 17, 2017.
(PHOTO CREDIT: Sebastián Ballestas)

If you live or work in one of the towers wrapped like packages, you could pinpoint your location by saying you’re in the Heineken building or the Verizon building or the Apple Watch building or the “47 Meters Down” building that warns shark-phobes to “just stay out of the water.”

If you’re trying to find the bold new Zaha Hadid-designed exoskeleton high-rise on Biscayne Boulevard, it’s next to Ten Museum Park — more easily identifiable as the Sparkling Smart Water building.

In addition to residing in a multistory billboard, there are the blots on your bay view — the 1-800-411-PAIN sign erected by an accident-chasing law firm or the 3,375-square-foot video screen that adorns AmericanAirlines Arena.

“Visual pollution ruins what makes Miami beautiful — palm trees, blue skies, interesting architecture,” said Peter Ehrlich, co-founder of Scenic Miami, which has advocated for tighter regulation of signs. “Tourists don’t come here to see giant ads. Residents are not asking for them. Yet they are in-your-face inescapable.”

The city limits the number of mural ads on the sides of buildings to 45. They can be as big as 10,000 square feet. They have not proliferated, but a few have moved to larger or more visible buildings.

“The outdoor advertisers are constantly jockeying to get on a bigger wall closer to a highway in order to reach more eyeballs,” said Ehrlich, who calls them “monster murals.”

Developer Craig Robins wants to prevent the infiltration of mural signs into the Design District. The last thing he wants to see are tacky ads clashing with glamorous boutiques, modern art and new urban plazas.

“He’s got a vision, a sophisticated vision,” Ehrlich said. “He doesn’t want any chance of hemorrhoid cream or Estrella Insurance ads next to Tiffany and Cartier shops or a sculpture installation.”

SmartWater billboard on Ten Museum Park on Biscayne Boulevard photographed on Saturday, June 17, 2017. (PHOTO CREDIT: Sebastián Ballestas)

Robins is seeking to protect the Design District from billboard blight. He has proposed shrinking the zone in which mural ads are permitted by moving the north border six blocks south to Northeast 36th Street.

On July 8, Miami’s city commissioners are scheduled to hear from Robins, who is the major property owner in the district. Robins was also instrumental in the redevelopment of South Beach in the 1990s.

“I’m not saying they’re inappropriate for all neighborhoods but we’re aspiring to a high level of art, design and architecture in the Design District,” Robins said. “Rather than commercialize it, we want to make it a special place that is a source of pride for Miami.”

One existing ad space would be allowed to remain but new ads would be banned under the proposal. Like other property owners, Robins could rent out his prime wall space, much of which is visible from Interstate 95, to outdoor advertisers for tens of thousands of dollars a month. But Robins has commissioned artists to turn the sides of his buildings and a parking garage into “beautiful installations.”

“If we took all our frontage and rented it out, it would be worth millions of dollars per year, but we’re not interested in marketing opportunities,” Robins said. “The commission is usually sensitive when an idea is definitely for the betterment of the community.”

The city makes almost $4 million a year from fees charged to outdoor advertising companies such as Clear Channel, Outfront Media and Wagner that earn billions from businesses seeking to get their messages and products in front of consumers.

“It’s another in a line of serial acts of municipal prostitution,” said Dusty Melton, a Miami-Dade lobbyist and political consultant who co-authored the county’s sign code in 1985. “The city regularly flouts the code with its interpretation of it and allows programmable LED billboards that are prohibited, No one has the political will to unplug these illegal billboards that are basically giant TVs on top of poles. There are probably 30 out there. The three on the Miami Children’s Museum are illegal.”

The city is discussing whether to raise its sign fees. One prime space that it rents out is on its own Miami River Center administrative building on Southwest Second Avenue and Fourth Street — a building that happens to house the code enforcement department.

“For a while that building had an ad promoting tourism to the Dominican Republic,” Ehrlich said.

Volkswagen Atlas billboard on Marquis Condos in Miami on Saturday, June 17, 2017. (PHOTO CREDIT: Sebastián Ballestas)

The new Melody residential tower at 245 NE 14th St. adjacent to the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts has a huge Verizon ad facing Biscayne Boulevard.

The drive to or from downtown along State Road 836 is a gauntlet of signs, including a Volkswagen Atlas ad on the side of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine 15th Street Parking Garage; Peroni beer and JetBlue Airways ads on the back of the Civica Center on Northwest 11th Avenue; a Haagen-Dazs ad on the side of the Springhill Suites hotel; and Guess and Shell ads on the sides of the Atlantis University building.

“Nothing is too massive,” Ehrlich said. “Property owners are now asking architects to design buildings with large wall spaces available for advertising.”

 

Source: Miami Herald

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City Of Miami Inches Closer To Multimillion-Dollar Riverfront Development Deal

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The city of Miami inched one step closer Thursday to a multimillion-dollar quid pro quo that would land it a new administrative building and parking garage, while facilitating the construction of a $465 million mixed-use project on the site of its current headquarters on the north bank of the Miami River.

With a swift vote Thursday morning, the City Commission authorized the appointment of a special estate counsel in the city’s proposed deal to lease its riverside administrative center to property developer Adler Group in exchange for the construction of a new building and parking garage elsewhere in the city.

Under the agreement, the developer would pay the city a projected $335 million over the length of a 90-year ground lease on the city’s two-acre property through rent and a cut of sales. That adds up to a present-day value of about $70 million. The deal was proposed last year by an Adler Group affiliate, Lancelot Miami River.

City employees would remain in the building at 444 SW Second Ave., which formerly belonged to Florida Power and Light, until the construction of its new headquarters in 2020.

Rendering of Adler Group’s Riverside Nexus Central. Studio X Architects

For Adler Group, the land swap is part of a larger plan to erect a sprawling mixed-use project on the river dubbed Nexus Riverside Central. The project would be built on the city site and a neighboring 1.5 acre parcel. It would include three 36-story residential towers with 1,350 units, a 150-room hotel and 30,000 square feet of shops and restaurants.

Despite Thursday’s vote, the proposal is far from set in stone. Even if a deal is reached by commissioners, who authorized hiring the law firm without much discussion, the question would then be put on the November ballot and at the mercy of voters.

The deal appeared to be headed for the shelf before Weiss Serota Helfman Cole & Bierman, a Coral Gables law firm, was chosen from a pool of 16 candidates. Commissioners first rejected the city attorney’s choice of Shutts & Bowen, raising questions about whether there would be enough time to get a deal together and on the November ballot.

Commissioners said they were uncomfortable that Shutts & Bowen, a Miami firm, represents a plaintiff suing the city, and also that former commissioner Marc Sarnoff currently works as an attorney at the firm.

“It’s the responsibility of the special counsel to ensure that the city gets a favorable deal,” said Miami Mayor Tomás Regalado.

A review of the proposal last year noted that the city would pay up to $123 million for its new 375,000-square-foot office and 1,200-car garage, a roughly $50 million gap from what Adler will pay to lease the riverside property. Administrators say early negotiations quickly cut into the difference, although the most recent development agreement, crafted back in November, doesn’t specify where those numbers stand.

Weiss Serota will help to negotiate further. The commission in a prior resolution voted that when the city undergoes a major real estate deal, a special counsel is needed to ensure the city receives a fair deal, and Florida law states that any long-term waterfront lease requires a voter referendum.

Regalado said he was hopeful that a deal would be reached and that a motion would be put to voters in November.

“The city’s riverside administrative center, located on highly sought-after riverfront land, lacks adequate parking and poses a challenge for residents to access,” Regalado said. “It’s not client-friendly.”

If approved and favorably voted on, the new administrative headquarters would likely be built in one of three spots: near Marlins Park in Little Havana, behind Lyric Theater in Overtown or inside the seven-acre Link at Douglas complex that Adler is building at the Douglas Road Metrorail Station.

 

Source: Miami Herald

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RealConnex Platform Partners With Miami Association Of Realtors To Power Property Investment

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RealConnex, a platform that connects real estate professionals to both access to capital as well as investments, has announced a strategic partnership with the Miami Association of Realtors.

According to RealConnex, the agreement will see the Miami Association of Realtors, and their 46,000 plus members, leverage the RealConnex platform to manage their properties and transactions. The platform wants to provide a wide variety of services for property investing – not just access to capital.

The Association is said to be working with RealConnex to add new features and improve design. RealConnex plans to roll out the program to other real estate associations accross the US.

RealConnex was founded to solve a problem faced by many real estate developers: funding mid-market projects and connecting to the right capital sources and service providers. RealConnex says it currently has a community of 72,000 developers, sponsors, capital sources, service providers and owners. It expects to reach the 100,000 member mark by the end of 2017. RealConnex claims it is on track to facilitate up to $1 billion dollars in transacted deals on its platform within the same time frame.

“RealConnex will provide our members with a powerful competitive advantage,” said Teresa Kinney, CEO of Miami Association of Realtors. “The platform will make it significantly easier for our members to collaborate, share, network and distribute listings locally, nationally and internationally.”

RealConnex founder and CEO Roy Abrams said he looked forward to extending their collaboration as they build out the network.

“As a New York- and Miami-based real estate technology startup, we are excited about working with MIAMI to offer better service to its member realtors and promote South Florida’s booming economy,” said Abrams.

 

Source: Crowdfund Insider

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“There Are Great Opportunities For Miami, But Traffic And Zoning Issues Must Be Resolved,” Says Developer Peebles

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Miami is a “city of the future” that needs to challenge “cities of the day” like New York and Boston to reach a new level, said developer Don Peebles, founder, chairman and CEO of the Peebles Corp.

Already a culturally developed, international tourist destination, Miami can achieve this by attracting new companies, allowing more construction and developing affordable housing for its workforce, Peebles told attendees at a Bisnow conference on transit oriented development Thursday at the Miami InterContinental.

“The region must get people out of their cars, improve mass transit and allow for denser development,” Peebles said. A strong draw for corporate investors is Florida’s low taxes who divides his time between homes in New York and Coral Gables. Why not go after the highly-taxed financial services industry in New York City, for example and bring them to this low-tax center?”

But there are impediments: traffic congestion and excessive complications for new vertical development and density. Miami employees typically spend as much as three hours a day going to and from work, which deals a major loss to productivity, he said. Miami’s workforce for the most part can’t afford to live where they work and lack access to the public transportation system.

The county has a rail system but it is not broadly developed. To access public transportation here today, people need to use cars. One answer is transit oriented development, which allows people to stay close to employment centers.

“People will need to access every part of their lives without getting into a car,” said Peebles, whose company is working on a variety of projects in Miami and the Northeast.

A major roadblock to developing new projects in the Miami area is a lack of unified zoning oversight, which limits density and structural height. Miami and Miami Beach are made up of many municipalities that each has its own city hall, police force and regulations for real estate.

“I never had to hire a lobbyist until I came here,” Peebles said. “Politicians here tend to reach out to small groups of people regarding real estate permitting. They can get elected with 4,000 votes. In New York City, the mayor has 10 million people, so what if 10,000 people get annoyed with him? In New York, people can express their views, but zoning is decided by people who are qualified. A central issue impeding development is there is no comprehensive oversight for real estate permitting, zoning, density and structural height. Miami has to realize that it is an urban center, and allow more supply.”

Peebles was one of several panelists that included Miami-Dade transport officials, real estate developers and attorneys. Others included Meg Daly, founder and president of Friends of the Underline (a park, path and trail built under the Metrorail), who said that bicyclists and pedestrians using the Underline have so far helped remove about 5 percent of cars from US-1 while attracting new customers to businesses along the route.

“Among other projects, Miami-Dade County is concentrating efforts to make first- and last-mile connections for all its rapid transit corridors,” said Aileen Bouclé, executive director of the Miami-Dade Transportation Planning Organization. “Uber and Lyft are helping, but they both are operating at a loss.”

“Meanwhile, as infill increases in the downtown area, the bare bones Metrorail stations should incorporate amenities, and new stations should be added between existing ones,” said Humberto Alonso, vice president of Atkins North America.

 

Source: The Real Deal

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A Developer Talks Miami River, Market Challenges, And His Project, One River Point

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Despite the condo market slowdown, developer Shahab Karmely is confident his project and the Miami River are poised for big growth.

Click photo to view video of Shahab Karmely discussing the Miami River and One River Point at the TRD Broward Showcase and Forum panel by TRD’s Alistair Gardiner

In a post-panel interview, Karmely and The Real Deal South Florida’s Managing Editor Ina Cordle discussed One River Point and the river at TRD‘s Third Annual Broward Real Estate Showcase & Forum in April.

Presales at One River Point are about to pass the 18 percent to 20 percent mark. Buyers there are mostly from South America, but also from Georgia, New York and Canada.

“We have headwinds – not us, just everybody else,” Karmely said. “On the other hand, we are financially very secure. We have no financing.”

The Real Deal previously reported that Karmely’s silent partner is Daniel Loeb, the billionaire investor who runs one of the most prominent activist hedge funds, Third Point LLC. Karmely’s KAR Properties has spent more than $112 million on acquisitions along the River, in Wynwood and in Hallandale Beach since 2013, and more on pre-develoment costs.

Karmely was part of a panel discussion on the economics of new development amid a new administration and continuing global market fluctuation.

To watch the panel in full, click here.

 

Source: The Real Deal

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Check It Out: The View From The Top Of Florida’s Tallest Building

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Future tenants of Brickell’s mammoth Panorama Tower are a little closer to being able to look down on the rest of Miami.

Developer Tibor Hollo’s Florida East Coast Realty is celebrating the topping-off of its 830-foot luxury rental tower at 1101 Brickell Ave.. The ceremony is a customary way for builders to commemorate the completion of the top floor of a new structure.

At 85 stories, Panorama Tower will be the tallest building in Florida and the tallest residential building south of Manhattan, according to the developer. The tower will house 821 apartments, ranging in size from one to three bedrooms and starting at 1,135 square feet., along with a sick array of amenities, including a lap pool, sun deck, weight room, pet groomer and a serenity pool for when you’re stressing about your high rent — an average of $3 per square foot.

Another 208 rooms will serve as a boutique hotel. The structure will house 100,000 square feet of office space and 50,000 square feet of high-end retail shops and restaurants.

Construction on the Panorama, which is estimated to cost a total of $800 million, is expected to be completed by the end of this year. The leasing program has not officially started, but more than 100 units are already reserved.

Including the building’s antenna, the Panorama Tower will reach 868 feet into the sky, which is higher than two football fields stacked end-to-end and taller than the Four Seasons Hotel Miami, which measures 800 feet to tip.

Panorama will only hold the crown of Miami’s tallest for a couple of years. The building will be dwarfed by at least two other giant skyscrapers in development, both expected to reach 1,049 feet: One Brickell City Centre and One Bayfront Plaza.

 

Source: Miami Herald

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