Daniel de la Vega, Paola Marulanda, and Anna Sherrill of ONE Sotheby's International Realty joined Haute Residence for a special panel to look back on the past 12 months of activity in the South Florida real estate market and going forward.
They were hosted by Haute Living's April Donelson. Watch the webinar below.
De la Vega is President of ONE Sotheby's where, among other projects, he and his team have led the way in sales as the exclusive broker of the ultra-luxury development One Thousand Museum by Zaha Hadid Architects in Downtown Miami. Sherrill sold a unit at One Thousand Museum to start 2021 with a bang; she has sold multiple apartments in the building. Marulanda recently closed her sale of the $15 million Beach House in the South of Fifth area of Miami Beach.
This webinar marks the first anniversary since Haute Residence began its exclusive and industry-leading webinars on the latest in real estate, featuring top agents from around the world, developers, and interior designers. De la Vega was the first featured guest in Haute Residence's webinars, which took place as the lockdown measures were being implemented throughout the U.S. and worldwide.
Highlight quotes:
Daniel de la Vega: "[At this point last year,] I don't think anybody had real estate on their mind. Their family and their friends and their well-being were really everybody's priorities. Overall, personally and professionally, gratefulness is a word that continues to come to mind for me.
"We prepared for the worst, but we had an incredible year. We all believed that Florida and South Florida were always undervalued, but we did not think people would come here in the way they're coming. This is the Great Migration from the Northeast, just within the last year. We projected to finish the year down almost 70%; that's where we were budgeting. We took our budgets from 2019 to 2020 and completely scraped them and said, 'All right, these are the new budgets and we're going to be down 70%.' We actually ended up finishing the year in 2020 up 30%, and that was with an abysmal March, April, and May. Things started to pick up at the end of May and June. Everybody came together, all of our incredible agents, in a way that not many companies did it. It's a testament to our entire leadership team and to the grit that everybody has in this company. We've got some even more incredible announcements and things that we're going to be doing here in 2021, so it's been far beyond all of our wildest dreams... Understanding the client is so important. As agents, we start to sell, but it's the opposite. You want to engage with clients at an early stage by asking and listening.
"One Thousand Museum is more than just the crown jewel of Downtown Miami; it's the crown jewel of Miami. We did over $100 million last year, and on pace to do over $50 million right now. We're negotiating two major major deals. At the end of the day, it boils down to the product. Our sales team is, bar none, one of the best in the industry, but the product that the developers built is the best product that's out in the market. When you look at the finishes and when you look at the quality, it's just superior to so much else that's out there. When people walk it they feel it now, they see it, and they smell it. They get emotions that create an attachment that makes them want to buy. The amenities are out of this world, the views are out of this world. So, it's been an incredible experience and it will continue to be throughout the sellout."
Anna Sherrill: "I saw people helping each other with small businesses. Just watching our community become stronger, within Sotheby's, within my family, and within Miami Beach where I live was special for me... Nobody would have imagined right the weird have, during the pandemic, to have such a peak in luxury sales right. It was amazing and the beginning of this year, for me, was even stronger than the entire year of last year. Sellers are definitely still wanting to sell because this market is is a very strong and hot market. If you have the right property in the right location and priced right, there's no reason you won't have sold very quickly. I feel like we still have a huge amount of buyers that want to be here. A lot of people that have rented are looking for their place to call home, so I still have several buyers looking, and quite a few people that will be here in the future, or are here now and ready to buy.
"Supply and demand is the biggest difference [between 2020 and 2021]. The buyers shifted. It used to be just a lot of the Northeast and we used to get more of an international crowd, but in the last year, we have seen people come from Illinois, North and Southern California, and other areas. Our supply has gone down from several months of inventory in houses and condos to a few months. The good stuff is days on the market and gets multiple offers. It's a different market. I have been in real estate for 21 years and have never seen this kind of market. As long as you're communicating, managing people's expectations, and both sides are doing the right thing, you can get deals done and make everybody happy."
Paola Marulanda: "We really need to be there with our hearts for people. We cannot possibly understand what everybody's going through, so we need to listen. And we need to put our hearts first, and that's what allows us to understand how we can serve people who are still emotionally unequipped for such a massive change for all the things that were happening. Empathy was definitely my best friend through this and what allowed me, I think, to succeed a lot and to keep being a source of comfort and help people to make good decisions.
"We are seeing people who are not moving quickly and not accepting what's happening are either losing out or progressively missing opportunities. A lot of sellers are having second thoughts about selling because they think, 'Even if I profit this much, now where do I go?' because the inventory is so competitive. People coming from the outside are used to paying such higher price points. If you're a buyer, read the numbers yourself and see what's happening from any source, not just your realtor. I don't think that this is the bubble that's that you're going to buy and then it's going to depreciate. This is just the beginning of a steady increase in the new era that Miami is experiencing, and now Miami's being discovered in a way that it was never discovered before."
On her sale of the Beach House in South of Fifth, "This buyer was the perfect person to live here and was exactly who we were targeting. He's obviously a very wealthy person. This is not even their primary residence. It's in South a fifth, which is a community that has so much that everybody wants right now, but there's nothing like it that is like a house. Even penthouses are not comparable to this particular property."
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Daniel de la Vega, Anna Sherrill, Paola Marulanda
