Rendering of the Ransom Everglades expansion

A Miami-based commercial developer who lives next door to Ransom Everglades is seeking a legal roadblock against the private school’s expansion plan.

On Jan. 25, Caroline Weiss sued Ransom in Miami-Dade Circuit Court for breach of contract, alleging school officials violated a 2010 agreement to protect her four-bedroom estate at 3187 Royal Road from any negative impacts caused by future development of the Coconut Grove campus.

Weiss, CEO of The Weiss Group of Companies that has developed multifamily and office buildings in Miami-Dade since the 1970s, is seeking unspecified damages and a permanent injunction to stop Ransom from implementing its special area plan, which was approved by the Miami City Commission on second reading the day she filed her lawsuit.

“My client has been more than reasonable with her neighbor,” said Weiss’ attorney Michael Schlesinger. “She believes they are not living up to their previous agreement and that the expansion plan is going to cause her to lose enjoyment of her property.” Weiss also plans to appeal the city commission’s Jan. 25 vote, Schlesinger added.

Ransom spokesperson Amy Shipley declined to comment on the allegations. “We just learned of the complaint and are reviewing it,” Shipley said. “We always strive to be a good neighbor and will continue to do so.”

Ransom wants to expand its high school campus at 3575 Main Highway by nearly seven acres through the addition of an adjacent property known as La Brisa that it bought in 2016 for nearly $35 million. In addition to increasing the Upper School’s total lot area to 801,319 square feet, the special area plan increases Ransom’s maximum enrollment by 67 for a total of 726 students, increases staff from 140 to 160 and increases the surface parking lot by 31 spaces for a total of 241.

According to Weiss’ lawsuit, Ransom provided Weiss with $50,000 in escrow to make Royal Road a private street per the 2010 agreement. She says she has taken “substantial steps” in order to secure the artery’s closure.

However, Weiss alleges that Ransom has declined to support the abandonment and closure of Royal Road because school officials have refused to sign the necessary applications and other documents needed in order for the county to re-plat Royal Road as a designated private street.

Furthermore, Ransom has failed to place screens between Weiss’ home and demolition projects currently underway at the school, the lawsuit states. She also accuses Ransom of failing to extend a border wall that acts as a buffer between her property and the Coconut Grove campus.

“Such failure by Ransom has caused unwanted ingress and egress from Ransom’s property onto Weiss’ property,” the lawsuit states. “As such, Ransom seeks to violate the agreement by constructing gate access points on Royal Road subsequent to the demolition of its existing structures.”

Las Vistas at Amelia rendering and Alex Ruiz (Credit: Prestige Companies)

Prestige Companies just broke ground on Las Vistas at Amelia, a 174-unit rental complex in Hialeah.

The Miami Lakes-based developer expects to soon close on more than $18 million in construction financing from Centennial Bank, Prestige principal Alex Ruiz said.

Las Vistas at Amelia will be built at 7925 West 2nd Court, just north of Florida State Road 924 and next to Amelia Earhart Park. Records show Prestige affiliate Amelia Hialeah Holdings LLC paid $5 million for the 4.8-acre property in 2016.

The project will feature two-bedroom apartments averaging 900 square feet with monthly rents priced at $1,500, Ruiz said. Units will come with hurricane impact windows, washer and dryers and granite table-tops. The garden-style community will target millennials, and is set to be completed in about a year.

Prestige has been busy developing in the area. The developer recently built Amelia Oaks, a nearby 82-unit rental project.

Las Vistas at Amelia and Amelia Oaks join a number of other residential and commercial developments trying to court millennials in Hialeah, including MS Development’s and L. Michael Osman’s proposed Apogean Pointe mixed-use project.

9 Indian Creek Drive (Credit: Realtor.com)

Miami Beach resident Vladimir Krasavtsev just sold a vacant lot on Indian Creek Island for $27.5 million, marking a new record for waterfront land in the pricey enclave.

Property records show SMM Sunny Holding LLC, a Delaware company, paid about $345 per square foot for the site at 9 Indian Creek Drive. Mirce Curkoski and Albert Justo of One Sotheby’s International Realty represented Krasavtsev, and Irina Artemova of Luxe Living Realty represented the buyer.

The $27.5 million price tag beats a previous land record for Indian Creek when Krasavtsev paid $25.69 million for the 1.8-acre site in 2015. “Originally they were going to build a dream home and things changed and they decided to sell it,” Curkoski said.

An attorney represented the buyer, he said. Artemova could not immediately be reached for comment on the buyer’s identity.

The 80,000-square-foot lot was briefly listed for sale at $31.5 million, but Curkoski said the sale was an off-market deal. “We listed it as we were getting close to [closing] to open it up to potential buyers,” he said.

It has about 200 feet of water frontage.

The exclusive island, with about 40 properties, is home to some of the 500 wealthiest people in the U.S., including activist investor Carl Icahn, car dealership mogul Norman Braman, and developers Jackie Soffer and Jeffrey Soffer.

In July, Julio Iglesias listed an 8-acre assemblage of waterfront land on Indian Creek Island for $150 million. The singer-songwriter is looking to sell lots 4, 5, 6 and 7 in Indian Creek for $18.75 million per acre or $470 per square foot. Each property has 80,000 square feet.

Jackie Soffer listed a waterfront teardown at 26 Indian Creek Island Road for $29.5 million last year as well. Curkoski said it’s the only other similarly sized waterfront lot available for sale on Indian Creek.

From left: Mitch Roschelle, Jimmy Kuhn, Greta Guggenheim and Scott Rechler at the Times Center (Credit: Will Parker fior The Real Deal)

On the morning following President Trump’s State of the Union address, RXR Realty chairman Scott Rechler called the president’s $1.5 trillion infrastructure pitch unrealistic.

“It’s not a reality. The trillion-and-a-half dollars isn’t possible,” Rechler said at a panel for the Urban Land Institute Wednesday morning. “The money that we would use for infrastructure was repatriation dollars… has been used for tax reform. Not saying good or bad, but the answer is, there’s no trillion-and-a-half dollars.”

Since the 2016 campaign, Trump has proposed reviving America’s outdated roads, bridges, airports and other infrastructure by leveraging mostly private investment, offering incentives to those willing to take on new projects. Rechler — who advised Trump on the matter during the presidential transition last January and who is a board member of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority — said he is largely supportive of public-private partnerships, but suggested that much of the infrastructure work that needs to be done wouldn’t result in a profit for private firms. He used the potential repair of water systems without a consummate rise in the price of water as an example.

“There’s no revenue stream for the private sector to come in and potentially take advantage of that,” he said. “So I think this concept of we’re going to invest $200 billion dollars and that’s gonna raise a trillion to a trillion-and-half dollars is not realistic.”

Rechler was joined on the panel by TPG Real Estate Finance Trust’s CEO Greta Guggenheim and Jimmy Kuhn, the president of Newmark Knight Frank. The talk was moderated by PwC’s Mitch Roschelle. The participants discussed the outlook of national real estate in 2018 and even swapped some insider gossip about where Amazon’s second headquarters may be likely to land (Rechler’s heard the Washington, D.C., suburbs, but Guggenheim said she’s been hearing Atlanta).

All of the panelists commented that recently enacted federal tax reforms, which will cut effective rates for most real estate investors, was positive for the industry, though some conceded that there may be unintended consequences that will reveal themselves with time. Rising interest rates were also a key topic of the discussion. Guggenheim cited the U.S.’s “interest rate bull market for 30 years” that is now changing, with a still to be determined effect on real estate capital markets.

Rechler previously served on the board of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, but left in early 2016, citing frustration with the body’s internal and external political disputes. He is currently the chairman of the Regional Plan Association.

Downtown Miami skyline (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Despite increases in rent and absorption, sales volume fell dramatically for Miami-Dade’s office market in 2017, according to a report from Avison Young.

Sales volume dropped 58 percent from the previous year to more than $816 million. In 2016, investment sales totaled more than $2.3 billion thanks to the $516 million trade of the Southeast Financial Center and the $220 million sale of the Miami Tower, both Class A office towers in downtown Miami. The biggest investment deals last year were the $155 million sale of 1221 Brickell and the $96 million trade of Park Square at Doral.

In 2017, the average asking rent for full-service, Class A space in Miami-Dade County was $45.10 per square foot, up 9 percent from $41.26 per square foot in 2016, the report shows.

Net absorption was negative along the Biscayne corridor, in Miami Beach and in South Dade, but overall vacancy improved slightly, falling to 10.10 percent from nearly 11 percent in 2016, as about 310,000 square feet of space was absorbed in 2017.

The 115,000-square-foot renewal and expansion of Amadeus North America at One Park Square at Doral in the third quarter topped the year’s list of biggest leases. It was followed by the renewal of Merrill Lynch’s nearly 106,000-square-foot lease at the Bank of America Tower in downtown Miami in the fourth quarter. And the third largest deal was a short-term lease for FEMA in Doral, according to the report. The Federal Emergency Management Agency took the 94,000-square-foot building at 2001 Northwest 107th Avenue in Doral to service the Florida Keys post-Irma.

Brightline is also expected to give the tri-county region a boost, especially its office markets. Once the three stations in West Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale and downtown Miami are up and running, proponents hope tenants and residents will move to the urban cores. Brightline’s MiamiCentral station will be adding 300,000 square feet of Class A office space to the area.

Tighter submarkets like Coconut Grove may also see rents drop as new office buildings are delivered, although that may extend into 2019 and 2020. Last year, the Grove’s office market reported a 96 percent occupancy with 21,000 square feet absorbed. Less than 500 square feet of the vacant 42,000 square feet was Class A space, according to the report. About 75,000 square feet of Class A space is now under construction in the Grove.

Rendering of homes at Century Lakes III and Sergio Pino (Credit: Century Homebuilders Group)

Sergio Pino’s Century Homebuilders Group just paid $8.85 million for a large vacant lot west of Tamiami and is about to break ground on Century Lakes III, a planned single-family home community, The Real Deal has learned.

Century Lakes III will be built on a 12.5-acre lot south of Coral Way and just east of Southwest 152nd Avenue. The land traded for about $16 per square foot. Pino said the company plans to break ground in the beginning of April.

Records show Cypress Lake Homestar LLC, led by Jose Fernandez, sold the property. Fernandez paid $4.3 million for the three-parcel lot in August. The site now traded with rights to build up to 59 single-family homes, Pino said.

Records show Pino’s company scored an $11.6 million construction loan from Apollo Bank.

Home prices will range from $439,000 to $527,000, with one- and two-story houses spanning from 2,500 square feet to 4,100 square feet. About 40 percent of the homes will be facing a lake, Pino said.

Century Lakes III is set to be completed by December 2019. Pino said he hopes to complete sales by the end of the year.

Century is also developing Midtown Doral, a mixed-use project that will include more than 1,500 condos, as well as retail space and offices. In October, Pino announced that he would shrink the size of some of the condos and turn them into micro units – a move he said is geared to attract more local buyers.

17 Tahiti Beach Island Road and Jonathan Vilma (Credit: Daniel Petroni Photgraphy, Wikimedia Commons)

Super Bowl winner Jonathan Vilma just sold his waterfront Tahiti Beach estate for $14.375 million, according to his listing agent’s Instagram account.

The former NFL linebacker and ESPN analyst sold the 8,000-square-foot, five-bedroom mansion at 17 Tahiti Beach Island Road in Coral Gables. The home hit the market last year with Douglas Elliman’s Chad Carroll for $18.5 million, which means it sold at a 22 percent discount.

Miami-Dade County has not recorded the deed, so the buyer is unknown. Carroll declined to comment.

Vilma, who played for the University of Miami Hurricanes, the New York Jets and won a Super Bowl with the New Orleans Saints, paid $6 million for the property in 2011 and later built the house. It features floor-to-ceiling windows, tile flooring, 12-foot tall ceilings, an elevator, a chef’s kitchen, a home theater and a three-car garage. It also includes a pool with a waterfall and 161 feet of frontage on Biscayne Bay.

A number of CEOs, athletes and celebrities have called the island home, including the former CEO of Carnival Cruise Lines Bob Dickinson and his ex-wife Jodie Dickinson  , Cher and basketball legend Ray Allen. The ritzy island enclave has 26 houses.

Eric and Donald Trump with a photo of the Fort Lauderdale listing

The Trump Organization’s boutique real estate brokerage is expanding in South Florida, adding the company’s most expensive listing to date.

Trump International Realty is “expanding in Jupiter and big time in Miami,” Eric Trump told the Palm Beach Post earlier this month. The move makes sense given that the president’s company owns Mar-a-Lago, Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter and Trump National Doral Miami. Since Donald Trump took office, the initiation fee at Mar-a-Lago has doubled to $200,000.

Both Trump International offices at the Jupiter and Doral resorts have added agents over the past few months, according to the Palm Beach Post. The brokerage is also planning on expanding into commercial real estate. In September, it brought on Heidi Brzyski as managing broker of the Jupiter and Miami offices.

Agents Katrina Campins and Jennifer Barnett recently listed a waterfront Fort Lauderdale property for $39 million, the priciest home Trump International has ever listed. [Palm Beach Post] – Katherine Kallergis

Prive at Island Estates and BH3’s Charlie Phelan, Greg Freedman and Daniel Lebensohn and Gary Cohen

Score a court victory for the developers of Privé at Island Estates in Aventura. Builders Gary Cohen and BH3 are walking away with a $26 million jury verdict against the Williams Island Property Owners’ Association, which had sought to stop the luxury two-tower development since 2013.

On Tuesday, after a seven-day trial, a jury in Miami-Dade Circuit Court ruled that the association breached a 1982 agreement requiring it not to object or oppose future developments by Cohen on the 84-acre Williams Island. Jurors awarded Cohen and BH3 $26 million in damages according to the verdict form, and there is an additional $8 million in interest the association will also have to pay, said Glen Waldman, the developers’ attorney.

“My clients have been wrongfully attacked from all sides for so long,” Waldman said. “They feel very good that a jury listened to the evidence, got it right and ordered substantial damages against the people who caused harm to the project.”

Jeffrey T. Foreman, lead lawyer for Williams Island Property Owners’ Association, declined comment. Waldman said he expects the association to appeal.

The developers’ win comes seven months after Miami-Dade Circuit Judge William Thomas, who presided over the case, dealt a signficant blow to the association’s complaint and a separate lawsuit filed by the Island Estates Homeowners Association, which represents another group of homeowners. Thomas ruled the statute of limitations had long expired for both associations to challenge a vested rights determination agreement.

Williams Island Property Owners’ Association originally sued the City of Aventura, Cohen and Prive Developers LLC, a partnership between BH3 and Cohen in April 2013. The Island Estates group sued in October 2013 and filed a separate complaint a year later accusing the city of allowing BH3 to build an illegal sidewalk that encroached on homeowners’ properties. A judge ruled in favor of Island Estates in October.

Waldman said Cohen and Williams Island Property Owners’ Association are bound by a 1982 settlement agreement between the original developers of the 84-acre luxury enclave in which neither parties would interfere with new projects. “Neither guy would mess with one another’s development plans they had on the islands,” Waldman said. “They also would not encourage or participate with others to object. It is that simple.”

Williams Island Property Association violated the agreement by filing its lawsuit and encouraging Island Estates Homeowners Association to also sue Privé’s developers, Waldman said. “These three lawsuits really hurt us,” he said. “Instead of being able to obtain a conventional loan at a 5.5 percent interest rate for a project that was awesome in terms of loan to value and contracts already in place, we could only get vulture funding at a 15 to 18 percent interest rate.”

As a result, the developers had to pay roughly $21 million in interest, Waldman added. Furthermore, the ongoing litigation put a cloud over the project that resulted in delays in selling out units. “Buyers were scared,” he said. “Brokers testified that they wouldn’t even go to the project. We should have sold out two years ago.”

The 150-unit project at 5000 Island Boulevard is 75 percent sold out and opened two weeks ago.

Condos range from 2,500 to 6,200 square feet and priced from $2.3 million to $8.6 million.

“We have our temporary certificate of occupancy and people are moving in,” Waldman said. “We are looking forward and not looking back.”

Janet Yellen and the Federal Reserve building (Credit: Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain Images)

In Janet Yellen’s final policy committee meeting as Federal Reserve chairwoman, the benchmark interest rate was left unchanged in a unanimous vote, holding at between 1.25 and 1.5 percent.

That leaves incoming Fed Chairman Jerome Powell — to be sworn in on Monday — with a decision to maintain the slow hike of interest rates or speed up the pace.

Go too slow and the low borrowing costs could set the stage for another asset bubble, the Wall Street Journal reported. Raising them too quickly could slow a strong economy.

The committee said in a statement Wednesday that “inflation on a 12‑month basis is expected to move up this year and to stabilize around the Committee’s 2 percent objective over the medium term.” Adjustments to monetary policy should lead to steady economic growth and a strong labor market, it added.

Wednesday’s decision follows Yellen’s general policy over her three years as Fed chair. Rates were raised once in 2015, once in 2016 and three times in 2017 during her tenure.

Increases in the federal funds rate tend to push up the cost of mortgages and put downward pressure on property prices, but that didn’t happen last year. [WSJ] – Dennis Lynch

Gary Keller and John Davis

UPDATED: Jan. 31, 2:00 p.m.: In 2010, Keller Williams Realty launched an aggressive campaign to boost its ranks. As of today, the Texas-based brokerage says it’s the largest franchise firm in the world with 177,000 agents, up nearly 13 percent from last year.

Those agents sold $314.6 billion worth of real estate in the U.S. and Canada in 2017, up 15 percent year over year, Keller Williams said in a news release.

CEO John Davis said the results are a direct result of KW’s drive for market share starting seven years ago, when he said the company’s growth “went vertical.” According to Davis, a key driver to KW’s recruitment has been a narrow focus on boosting agent productivity. “Everything we do is focused on them, to build their business and help them with clients,” he said.

According to Davis, KW agents outperformed the market during 2017’s fourth quarter — typically a slow time of year — by anticipating the dip and going after new business ahead of time. For the full year, KW agents closed 1.07 million deals, up 9.7 percent from 2016.

Despite the strong numbers, the company’s sales growth (15 percent) fell short of a 19.6 percent uptick in 2016. Davis attributed the deceleration to low inventory. “When we look at existing home sales in the U.S., they were up 1.1 percent in 2017,” he said. “That’s the inventory impacting that.”

Keller Williams — which shares profits with agents and owners of regional offices — said agents turned $174.7 million in profits in 2017, up 13.1 percent from 2016. Regional owners received a total of $200.8 million, a year-over-year increase of 11.6 percent. (In 2017, Keller Williams International received $196 million in royalties.)

Although Keller Williams is a dominant player nationally, it’s a relatively new player in New York. Keller Williams NYC, owned by Ilan Bracha and Haim Binstock, opened in 2011.
Keller Williams Tribeca, led by CEO Mark Chin, opened last year.

The NYC operation was No. 6 on The Real Deal’s most recent ranking of residential firms, based on its agent count. As of that ranking, in May 2016 Keller Williams had nearly 600 agents in Manhattan. It had another 661 in Queens as of June 2017, as well as 131 agents in the Bronx. “We’re fairly new to the New York area,” Davis said. “We’re really excited to grow and have roots there.”

Nationally, Keller Williams competes with the likes of RE/MAX, Century 21, Coldwell Banker and HomeServices of America, a subsidiary of Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway.

Steve Murray, founder of data firm Real Trends, said RE/MAX still does more business globally than Keller Williams. “RE/MAX in Canada alone is many multiples of Keller in Canada,” he said. Based on agent count, however, Keller Williams has grown at a “much faster rate” than any of its competitors.

“What’s really interesting,” he added, “is that Keller Williams has achieved this growth without spending any money on national, regional or local advertising of the Keller Williams brand.”

Midtown Manhattan parking garage (Credit: Getty Images)

As the rise of self-driving cars threatens to make many parking garages obsolete, developers are thinking about ways to repurpose them.

Architecture firm Gensler, for example, is working on ways to turn garages into affordable housing, for example by building modular units that can fit into existing structures. The firm also recently designed an office building in Cincinnati that includes three stories of parking space that can be converted into offices.

“The term that we’re hearing over and over again is ‘future-proof,’” Jeffrey Shumaker, director of Urban Planning and Design at Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, told the Wall Street Journal.

Meanwhile, architecture firm Perkins + Will is designing the 27-acre mixed-use project Mission Rock in San Francisco with autonomous cars in mind. It could include less parking space and more curbside drop-off areas. “These projects are beta-testing the autonomous future,” the co-director of Perkins + Will’s mobility research lab, Gerry Tierney, told the Journal.

In the future, the backs of parking structures might be designed so they can maximize the light for residential tenants, according to Gensler regional managing principal Joseph Brancato. “Parking garages are big and deep, and with residential you want as much natural light as you can get,” he told the Journal. Convertible parking garages cost more to make, but the payoff could be great: In Denver, converting one garage to office space could yield an ROI of more than 40 percent, Brancato said.

Developers are mindful of a future dip in demand for parking space because many are building structures meant to last decades, if not longer.

At a June panel, Jeremy Levine, a partner at venture firm Bessemer Venture Partners, argued that self-driving, electric cars would spell the end of pricey Manhattan parking garages. “Operators of real estate will go from selling parking spaces to selling electricity” through charging stations, he said. [WSJ] — Konrad Putzier

Steve Reibel, Eric Rickenback, Tim Pappas and Marco Zarfati (Credit: Keyes Co.)

The Keyes Company closed on the acquisition of Rickenback Realty, a real estate brokerage based in Aventura.

Miami-based Keyes is gaining 25 agents who closed more than $25 million in sales volume last year, according to a press release. It’s the fifth acquisition in months for Keyes. In August, the brokerage closed on the acquisition of Shorewood Real Estate’s Aventura office.

Rickenback Realty will move to Keyes’ Aventura office at 2822 Northeast 187th Street. Its president and managing broker Eric Rickenback and co-founder Harriet Rickenback will stay on as Realtors, a spokesperson said. Keyes alumnus Marco Zarfati was also just appointed Aventura district manager.

More recently, Keyes acquired the Realty Pros, a 43-agent company that closed about $75 million in sales volume in 2017.

Keyes CEO Mike Pappas previously said the firm will pay between two and six times a firm’s EBITDA, or earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization, for a brokerage.

In South Florida, firms like One Sotheby’s International and Brown Harris Stevens have also been active on the acquisition front over the past couple of years.

Jade Signature in Sunny Isles Beach with Edgardo Defortuna, and Riva in Fort Lauderdale with Bradley Deckelbaum

Developers recently completed two large condo projects, adding about 300 new units to the South Florida market.

Closings are underway at Jade Signature, a 57-story, 192-unit beachfront tower at 16901 Collins Avenue in Sunny Isles Beach. The building is 96 percent sold, according to a spokesperson for developer Edgardo Defortuna. Defortuna declined to provide the projected sellout amount in dollars.

Fortune International Group launched sales and construction in 2013 and the remaining units start at $4.8 million and 3,312 square feet. Penthouse units range from $14.2 million to $32.9 million. It’s the fourth Jade building Fortune has built.

Jade Signature was designed by Herzog & de Meuron with interiors by Pierre-Yves Rochon and Raymond Jungles landscaping. Buyers include Brazilian soccer pro Douglas Costa.

Developer Bradley Deckelbaum’s Premier Developers also recently delivered Riva, a 15-story, 100-unit condo development at 1180 North Federal Highway in Fort Lauderdale.

Ivan Ramirez, a vice president at One Sotheby’s International Realty, said the building is about 70 percent sold with a projected sellout of $135 million. Two-bedroom units start in the mid $700,000s and penthouses start at $2.29 million.

In August, Deckelbaum lowered the deposit requirement from 35 percent to 20 percent in a push to sell more units.

Condos come with boat slips, and range from more than 1,500 square feet to about 8,800 square feet.

Falkanger Snyder Martineau & Yates designed the development, which has have 8,000 square feet of commercial space on the ground floor, a 400-foot-long landscaped river walk, a water taxi, water sports center with a private dock, and a spa. Riva also includes a 40,000-square-foot club deck on the fourth floor with a 7,000-square-foot gym, a 2,500-square-foot club room, a 1,500-square-foot kitchen, private wine lockers, a dog park and a lap pool.

Madison Realty Capital provided a $65 million construction loan last year.

(Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

A bill that would allow the state to take over vacation rental regulations — eliminating local government authority — has cleared a Senate committee. The bill would allow for continuity across Florida, a state in which many municipalities have their own set of regulations, according to one of its authors.

Under the proposed bill, vacation rental properties would be regulated like hotels and motels, meaning owners who hold five or more properties are obligated to semi-annual inspections by the state, according to the Daily Business Review.

The bill, which on Tuesday passed the state Senate Community Affairs Committee, would also require hosts to provide the state with emergency phone numbers to be would be shared with local governments, according to the publication. It now heads to the Senate Regulated Industries Committee before being voted on by the full Senate.

The bill is actually a merged version of ones proposed by state Sen. Greg Steube, R-Sarasota; and state Sen. David Simmons, R-Altamonte Springs.

Those who oppose the bill say they want local regulators to have more control to install and oversee regulations. Vacation rental ordinances passed before June 1, 2011, would remain, according to a bill amendment.

In October, the Miami-Dade County Commission approved a slate of new regulations for short-term rentals.

Airbnb has already secured tourist tax agreements with a number of Florida counties. In May, Miami-Dade collected and remitted $522,000 in tax revenues, and Broward County collected and remitted $191,000 in tax revenues. [DBR] – Amanda Rabines

David Santee and David Neithercut

Amid a glut in available rental properties, Equity Residential reported a decrease in rental income in New York City — the public company’s only market with a reported decline in the fourth quarter.

Equity, one of the largest apartment owners in the U.S., reported an average 0.3 percent decrease in rent in New York, Bloomberg reported. None of the real estate investment trust’s other markets — including Boston, Washington D.C., Seattle, Los Angeles and San Francisco — saw a decline.

“New York was our worst-performing market,” David Neithercut, the firm’s chief executive officer, said on a conference call on Wednesday. “We still expect New York to be our worst-performing market.”

The overall decline shouldn’t come as too great a surprise; about a year ago Equity said it expected declines at its New York City holdings, and budgeted $4 million in funds dedicated to concessions, which pushed down profits.

Roughly 19,000 new apartments are expected to hit the New York market this year, 62 percent of which will be in Brooklyn and Long Island City. In October, Equity executives indicated that their Manhattan-centric portfolio hadn’t seen much of an impact from competition in Queens.

But on Tuesday, David Santee, the company’s COO, said prices in Manhattan could be driven down by landlords offering discounts in Long Island City and Brooklyn. [Bloomberg] — Kathryn Brenzel

The Real Deal’s February issue

Science fiction has long warned about the prospect of robots taking over human occupations. Increasingly, it’s a topic that’s presented more as fact than fiction. But for a traditionally slow-to-adapt industry like real estate, has the time come?

“Real estate is the largest class on the planet and among the least changed by technology,” Chris Kelly, co-founder of the tech-focused office services firm Convene, told The Real Deal.  “Anyone who can see straight has to realize this will change.”

For the cover story this month, TRD explored technologies that are changing the industry now and those that will likely do so in the not-so-distant future. These include smart buildings fully controlled by technology, robots turned construction workers and 3D-printed New York City skyscrapers.

Meanwhile, we compiled two comprehensive NYC brokerages rankings: one for the residential world, and another for investment sales. In terms of NYC residential brokerages with the greatest dollar volume of for-sale properties on the market, Douglas Elliman clocked in at No. 1  with 1,187 listings valued at $5.31 billion, up 2 percent from $5.2 billion in May 2016. In investment sales, Cushman & Wakefield rallied to beat out CBRE and Eastdil Secured amid a sluggish market.

The issue also took a look at the expected wave of condo loan modifications, as debt issued post-recession nears maturity. There are also profiles on one of the city’s most influential construction unions and on one of the most active hotel buyers.

To read the February issue of TRD, click here or on the “Magazine” tab on the top left of the homepage. Enjoy! — Kathryn Brenzel 

(Credit: Luxury Real Estate South Florida Vimeo)

Home prices in South Florida keep rising, according to a new report from Attom Data Solutions.

The index, which tracks prices in 112 U.S. metros, found that median home prices in Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach jumped by 8.9 percent year-over-year to $245,000 in the fourth quarter of last year.

Ocala, Florida saw the biggest annual increases in home prices with a 14.3 percent jump, followed by Kansas City with 13.4 percent.

The median price for a home in Miami-Dade is $269,000, up 9.8 percent compared to 2016 and up 109 percent from $129,000 at the bottom of the cycle in 2011. Home prices peaked in 2007 when the median hit nearly $309,000.

In Broward County, home prices jumped 9 percent year-over-year to $227,900, marking the biggest spike since 2011, when the median price was $100,000. The fourth quarter figure is still lower than the 2006 median price of $270,000.

Palm Beach also experienced an annual bump in home prices to $238,250, according to the report. That’s a 5.9 percent increase from $225,000 the year before. In 2006, the median reached $285,000 and fell to nearly $115,000 in 2011.

In December, single-family home sales dipped in all three counties, according to data released by the Florida Realtors. Condos sales, on the other hand, performed better.

From left: Carol Cassis, Laura Keller and Stephan Burke

It only took about six months for Bitcoin investor Michael Komaransky to find a crypto buyer for his Miami mansion. On Thursday, he sold his home at 7350 Southwest 47th Court nearly entirely in Bitcoin for about $6 million, or what came out to roughly 455 Bitcoin, the agents involved in the sale told The Real Deal.

The deal marks the most expensive Bitcoin-to-Bitcoin real estate sale and only the second known transaction to close in Florida.

The 9,452-square-foot house hit the market in August for $6.5 million with listing agents Stephan Burke and Carol Cassis of Brown Harris Stevens. It went under contract Jan. 8, and the buyer made Bitcoin payments in increments. The agents said it came out to about 80 percent Bitcoin.

Pulse International Realty’s Laura Keller represented the buyer. Keller, along with Pulse owner and broker Rena Kliot, declined to identify the buyer, but said he is an early investor in Bitcoin. “It actually went rather smoothly. We had two parties with the same mindset,” Kliot said.

“This is the first Bitcoin sale in the country of this size,” Keller added.

Burke and Cassis hope the deal proves skeptics wrong. “We wanted to show those people that it’s possible to do [a high-end sale],” Cassis said. “It’s possible to do it in a legal frame, in a perfect way, when you have the right team doing it.”

A number of properties are now accepting Bitcoin, but only one known deal has closed in Florida. Burke and Casses arranged that sale, $275,000 for a Miami condo purchased by a Bitcoin entrepreneur, which closed in December.

Because of statewide limitations, the latest deal will be recorded in dollars. The title company, attorneys, and agents are typically paid in dollars, as well.

The cryptocurrency’s volatility is a concern among most. As of Thursday, 1 Bitcoin was worth about $9,200. The cryptocurrency peaked in December at $19,500 and fell to about $9,000 in early January.

Komaransky previously said he tried to buy the house with Bitcoin, but the seller at the time wasn’t interested. Property records show he paid $4.6 million for the seven-bedroom mansion in 2014. The home sits on an acre of land near Coral Gables and features covered terraces, a chef’s kitchen, a summer kitchen, pool, basketball court and playground.

From left: Geoff Palmer, Joe Cayre, Bennett Lebow, President Donald Trump and Richard LeFrak (Photo illustration by Lexi Pilgrim for The Real Deal | Credit: Getty Images)

The coastal elite real estate moguls that helped bankroll Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential victory didn’t stop cutting the checks after their candidate entered 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

A review of federal contributions records for the Trump Victory fund, a joint committee of the Trump campaign and the Republican Party that allows for nearly $450,000 to be donated per individual, shows that since the inauguration at least 21 percent of the $16.4 million raised for the fund came from New York, Los Angeles or South Florida real estate interests.

Many of the top donors to the fund last year were also rather generous with their pocketbooks during the 2016 election and the inauguration. The biggest spender of that crew in 2017 was Blackstone Group CEO Stephen Schwarzman, who gave $344,400 to the Trump Victory fund after already giving $250,000 to Trump’s inaugural committee a year ago. Two other previous top donors, Midtown Equities’ Joseph Cayre and Vector Group’s Bennett Lebow, gave $170,000 and $135,000, respectively. Florida-based Nicholas Mastroianni, the founder of the EB-5 visa fundraising group U.S. Immigration Fund that’s hyperactive around the New York area, gave $150,000. Vornado Realty Trust’s Steve Roth, who was previously an economic advisor to the Trump campaign, gave $100,000.

For others close to the president, it was a family affair. Developer Richard Lefrak, who co-chaired Trump’s short-lived infrastructure advisory council with Roth, joined in with two of his sons to give a total of $350,000. The family members of James Dolan, best known for formerly owning Cablevision but who also own Madison Square Garden and other sports properties, gave $250,000. Red Apple Group’s John Catsimatidis, his wife Margo and son John Jr. together gave $100,000.

Howard Lorber, CEO of Vector Group and chairman of Douglas Elliman (and whom President Trump appointed to chair the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum), gave $35,000. As did Elliman CEO Dottie Herman.

Others in the New York property crowd giving substantial money include Stanley and Frieda Chera ($100,000), Steve Witkoff ($94,400), Eliot Tawil ($50,000) and Lloyd Goldman ($35,000). Chera and Witkoff were also among the fund’s largest real estate donors during the campaign.

Lesser known names from New York real estate included Coleman Burke, the head of a commercial real estate company called Waterfront NY that owns the Terminal Stores in Chelsea, who gave $35,000. Arnold Gumowitz, president of AAG Management, gave $74,000. And as was previously reported in USA Today, the would-be developers behind something called “China City” in the Catskills, a $6 billion multi-use development project that had been seeking financing through the EB-5 visa program, gave a staggering $600,000.

Los Angeles real estate developers and executives were also among major donors. Developer Geoffrey Palmer, one of Trump’s biggest donors during the election, gave $100,000. Peninsula Beverly Hills hotel owner Robert Zarnegin and his wife also contributed $100,000. Michael and Miriam Miller, the parents of White House aide Stephen Miller who run the multifamily real estate company Cordary, gave $40,000.

One of the biggest donors from Southern California, however, is a name that few will be familiar with. As Politico previously reported, a Lily Tang and Ben Tang of Upland, California gave $300,000 to the fund. Contributions records list Lily Tang’s occupation as real estate and her employer as the brokerage Coldwell Banker.

The largest Florida real estate donor was sugar baron and developer José Fanjul, who gave $200,000. His company is currently building a 271-unit rental project in Palmetto Bay.

Per federal election rules, some of the money raised by the joint committee will go directly to the Trump’s re-election campaign, while the bulk of it will go to Republican National Committee and state parties, which then have limitations on how they can spend it. In addition to Trump Victory, Trump and the party have another joint committee, Trump Make America Great Again, which raised more money last year but with much smaller individual contributions.

Several of the Trump Victory donors have publicly expressed their support of Trump’s major policy priorities, especially tax reform, which is expected to benefit most commercial real estate investors. The EB-5 visa program, meanwhile, faces the possibility of major reforms or even dissolution by Congress that would come as a shock to the many developers that have tapped it for financing, as well as to the world of brokers and middle-men that built their businesses around the program. Trump has never officially commented on the program, but a Trump-branded rental tower in New Jersey, that was built by his son-in-law and advisor Jared Kushner’s Company, received $50 million in construction financing through EB-5.