Overhead view of the Zacara Farm (Inset: Marc and Melissa Ganzi)

Melissa and Marc Ganzi, once considered the “royal couple of polo,” just dropped $27.29 million for an expansive 100-acre equestrian estate in Wellington.

Palm Beach County records show the two, through their company Blonde Farm LLC, purchased the Zacara Farm at the southeastern corner of South 50th Street and 130th Avenue.

The deal covers 100 acres of prime land in the town, including five barns with 120 horse stalls, housing for 24 staff members, two playing fields, and a guest house with three bedrooms and two bathrooms. Of that land, 31 acres are undeveloped.

Equestrian life is nothing new to the Ganzis: they were dubbed the “royal couple of polo” by the Palm Beach Post in 2012 for their ownership of two separate polo teams, as well as Wellington’s Grand Champions Polo Club.

Melissa Ganzi is the heiress to late auto magnate Victor Potamkin, and her husband Marc made a fortune from leading cellular infrastructure companies like Global Tower Partners, whose parent company was acquired by rival American Tower Corp. for a reported $3.3 billion.

For their latest Wellington purchase, the couple got a discount of just under $5 million for the Zacara Farm’s $32 million ask. The deal breaks down to about $272,900 per acre and was financed with a $19 million loan from the Northern Trust Company.

County records show the seller is a limited liability company named after the farm, which lists its managing member as Phyllis Noble, a realtor based out of Berkshire Hathaway’s Montecito, California, office.

Wellington equestrian land has been a hot commodity this year, with both high-net-worth players and developers snapping up properties. One of the most notable deals was Microsoft founder Bill Gates assembling an entire street to form one massive private residence for $38 million.

Clockwise from top left: Bruce Mosler, Sharif El-Gamal, Don Peebles, Christopher Wein, Jonatham Miller, Jay Neveloff, Nick Mastroianni II and Chris Marlin

News of Chinese investment in U.S. real estate continues to roll in this week, with highlights including Xinyuan Real Estate’s $66 million purchase of a Flushing development site, Extell’s score of Chinese investment firm Shanghai Municipal Investment as an equity partner in Central Park Tower, and Joe Sitt’s pronouncement that despite a lull at the start of the year, Chinese interest is back, big time.

The Real Deal has once again taken note, and we’re heading back to China this November for our second U.S. Real Estate Showcase & Forum in Shanghai.

The event will take place at the five-star Jing An Shangri-La Hotel from Nov. 17 to 19. Our 2016 show will bring prominent industry professionals and investors from the United States to Shanghai, including former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who will be delivering this year’s keynote address.

Rudy Giuliani

Other distinguished speakers in our growing list include Bruce Mosler (Cushman & Wakefield), Sharif El-Gamal (Soho Properties), Don Peebles (Peebles Corp.), Chris Wien (Great Gulf), Chris Marlin (Lennar), Nick Mastroianni II (U.S. Immigration Fund), Jay Neveloff (Kramer Levin) , Jonathan Miller (Miller Samuel) and U.S. Ambassador Charles Gargano. The sessions will compliment workshops and more than 100 exhibits of residential and commercial developments.

A report issued this spring said Chinese investment in existing U.S. real estate assets could total more than $218 billion from 2016 through 2020. But there is a major disconnect between Chinese investors and U.S. developers and marketers owing to differences in culture, language, time zone, Internet freedoms and market familiarity. The Real Deal’s U.S. Real Estate Forum and Showcase will provide an arena for dealmaking and relationship-building in this notoriously difficult market.

For more information about programming, contact Heather Grossmann at hg@TheRealDeal.com. For sponsorship opportunities, contact Ross Fox at rf@TheRealDeal.com.

Want to stay up-to-date on Chinese investment in North American real estate? Subscribe to our China Watch newsletter, launching this fall.

Clockwise from left: Renderings of Cendro and the retail condo, Gil Blutrich and Shai Ben Ami

Gil Blutrich of the Israel-based Mishorim Development Group and his local partner Shai Ben Ami just paid $2.675 million for the retail space at Centro, a newly built condo tower in downtown Miami.

The partners announced Tuesday that they purchased the 4,350-square-foot commercial condo on the 37-story tower’s ground floor and are now marketing the space to potential tenants.

Newgard Development Group, which built Centro, was the seller. Blutrich and Ben Ami’s price breaks down to $615 per square foot.

This marks the partnership’s first deal in Miami. The two said they are looking for other investment opportunities in the city’s central business district.

Ben Ami of Sterling Equity Realty has brokered several deals in Miami’s downtown area over the past year, including representing developer Moishe Mana and Canadian investor Danny Lavy.

Blutrich is the CEO of Mishorim, a publicly traded company headquartered in Israel that’s a major property owner in its home country as well as in Canada. In the United States, Mishorim notably owns the Hyatt Regency Cleveland, the Terrace at Florida Mall in Orlando, and the University Place shopping plaza in Huntsville, Alabama.

The firm’s latest acquisition, Centro’s retail condo, is located at 151 Southeast First Street. It’s housed in an entirely parkingless condo building: Newgard sacrificed a traditional parking podium in favor of more sellable square feet and reduced construction costs, thanks to a Miami 21 waiver. Newgard began turning over units to their owners in late July. — Sean Stewart-Muniz

1214 North Ocean Boulevard and John Sculley (Credit: Douglas Elliman and Wikipedia)

John Sculley, who formerly headed Apple and Pepsi-Cola, just bought a new oceanfront pad in Palm Beach.

Property records show Sculley and his wife Diane dropped $14.925 million for a 6,470-square-foot home at 1214 North Ocean Boulevard. The trade breaks down to a little more than $2,300 per square foot.

New York tech-focused hedge funder David Fiszel and his wife Sarah sold the home, records show. Fiszel launched the asset management company Honeycomb last year. It now has more than $500 million under management and holds a stake in music streaming company Spotify.

Records show the Fiszels spent $5.8 million on the nearly half-acre property in 2013. The couple tore down the house soon after, listing agent Payton Smith of Douglas Elliman said.

The house was completed in 2015 and features home automation and AV technology throughout, including wireless speakers and integrated lighting systems.

The five-bedroom, six-bathroom home hit the market in November for $14.95 million – meaning the house only traded for $25,000 less than its original asking price. Paula Wittmann of the Fite Group Luxury Homes brought the buyers.

Sculley, who famously bashed heads with Apple founder Steve Jobs in the late 1980s and early 1990s, now invests in a number of high-tech start-up companies, including 3CInteractive and XL Marketing. Records show his wife Diane owns another house in Palm Beach at 127 Reef Road.

Sculley joins a number of tech entrepreneurs to call Palm Beach home, like Daniel Borislow, the inventor of MagicJack, and James Clark, who co-founded of Netscape and other Silicon Valley companies. Clark’s Palm Beach home is on the market for $95 million. It initially hit the market in 2016 for $137 million.

Miami City Hall (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

The City of Miami General Employees’ & Sanitation Employees’ Retirement Trust (GESE) is divesting from real estate investment trusts following an asset-liability study.

GESE eliminated its target 5 percent real estate investment and will instead increase its target investment in core fixed income by and domestic large-cap core. The trust had a 4 percent allocation in real estate as of September 30, 2017 and a total of $27 million in its REIT portfolio, according to Pensions & Investments. It also dropped its target for domestic small cap equity and international equities.

Nationwide, REITs collectively performed worse than the soaring stock indexes last year. The FTSE NARIET All Equity REITs index rose just 8.7 percent to the S&P 500’s 21.8 percent. The index is down 2.4 percent so far this year. Investors point to expected interest rate increases and the recent federal tax reform as reasons for the poor performance. REITs do not pay income taxes, so do not benefit from the tax reform as much as some other sectors.

The city of Miami trust manages funds for general and sanitation employees of the city and was established in 1985 “to serve permanent employees other than firefighters and police officers.”

[Pension & Investments] — Dennis Lynch 

The Dorchester Hotel in London, where the Presidents Club Charity Dinner was hosted

From TRD NYC: London’s “Gropers Gala’ fundraiser, where members of the all-male guest list harassed female waitstaff, was heavily attended by real estate executives.

Real estate groups sponsored 10 of the 21 tables at the Presidents Club Charity Dinner last week according to the Financial Times, which on Tuesday published a shocking report on inappropriate activities at the club that had gone on in plain sight for years.

The charity fundraiser, where young women were groped, sexually harassed and propositioned, shut down following the news report after 33 years.

Of the more than 300 guests who attended the event, 39 have so far been identified as working in the real estate industry, and another 151 were guests of real estate companies.

“Property definitely has a problem,” an industry figure who did not want to be named told the newspaper.

“There are big characters, big egos. It’s all about money, it’s all about relationships, and it’s always been tycoons and megabucks,” he added. “It can all combust at times.”

In New York City, the real estate industry is coming to terms with institutionalized sexism and the way its female members are treated. Bawdy “bro culture” exists at many industry functions, such as the numerous parties hosted around the annual International Council of Shopping Centers expo in Las Vegas. And at the annual MIPM retail conference in France, prostitutes are a regular sight at champaign-fueled yacht parties. Two year ago, the industry publication Estates Gazette called the event “not property’s finest hour.”

Back in London, however, at least one real estate figure pushed back on the criticism that’s been hurled at the President’s Club.

“I mean, the people who go, we can afford a girl if we want one,” the executive told the FT. “The ticket to the dinner costs £5,000 but if we spend £500 or £1,000 we can get a girl to come to our house if that’s what we wanted.

“These are not underage girls. They are all over 18. They know what they are doing,” he said. “They all know it’s a bit racy. There is free champagne. They can have a drink, they have fun.

“Do things happen after? God knows,” he added. “They can always complain to the police if so.” [FT] – Rich Bockmann

Taylor Swift and 153 Franklin Street (Credit: Getty Images and Town Residential)

From TRD NYC: Sorry, the new Taylor can’t come to the phone right now. Why? Probably because her companies are being sued by Douglas Elliman.

The pop star’s LLC stiffed an Elliman broker on the commission for the Tribeca townhouse she bought last year for $18 million, according to a lawsuit filed on Thursday in New York Supreme Court. Though an Elliman broker showed Swift representatives the townhouse at 153 Franklin Street, another broker took the commission for the deal. Elliman is seeking roughly $1.1 million in damages — or roughly 6 percent of the property’s purchase price.

Representatives for Swift declined to comment.

According to the complaint, an unnamed broker from Elliman had a written promise to exclusively represent Swift in her purchase of the townhouse. The broker showed Swift’s representatives 15 Leonard Street and offered up the Franklin Street property as an alternative.

The broker allegedly did a lot of legwork at Swift’s behest, including measuring the townhouse with a laser device, introducing the former owner of the townhouse to representatives for Swift and obtaining blueprints for the property. The broker also pointed out to Swift’s reps that 153 Franklin abuts her duplex penthouse at 155 Franklin Street, which would potentially allow the singer — with an alteration to the connecting wall — to leave her penthouse through the new townhouse through an indoor garage without being spotted.

But the Elliman agent was ultimately cut out of the deal, according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit doesn’t name the alleged interloping agent, but a listing by Town Residential does appear during a search for the property online. A spokesperson for the brokerage declined to comment.

The complaint doesn’t specifically name Swift, but includes Firefly Entertainment, 13 Management and Euro Tribeca — an LLC that she’s used on her previous real estate transactions — as defendants. The lawsuit notes that Firefly and 13 Management — both companies affiliated with Swift — acted on behalf of a “famous celebrity.”

Swift couldn’t immediately be reached for comment, but her advice to Elliman may go something like this.

Kenneth Harney

Many mortgage applicants have never heard of “rapid rescoring” or CreditXpert score simulations — in part because some lenders choose not to educate them.

That’s unfortunate, because anyone who’s looking for the most favorable interest rates and terms in 2018’s rising interest rate environment ought to know at least the basics about them — especially if their current score puts them near a break point between getting a better deal or qualifying for a loan altogether.

Here’s a quick primer. Say you spot one or more errors in your credit reports — maybe an account you’ve paid off in full but is still being reported as open and delinquent or a collection-account issue you’ve settled with a creditor but is still reported as ongoing. Both are potentially significant negatives for your credit score but if you have documentation, you can show they’re out of date.

What to do? You could begin the standard process of getting them corrected by asking the creditors involved to request the national credit bureaus to amend your files. But here’s the problem: You’re under contract to buy a house and you need the errors corrected immediately — or you risk not qualifying for the mortgage or interest rate you need.

Fixing the errors directly with the credit bureaus could take weeks. Enter rapid rescoring — a process that frequently can get the erroneous information corrected in as little as two to three days. It works like this: You provide the documentation about the accounts to your loan officer, then request a rapid rescore using the loan officer’s mortgage credit-report vendor. The vendor’s staff will then verify your documentation with the creditor(s) involved and provide the corrected information directly to the credit bureaus.

The updates should show up quickly on your credit files, allowing the vendor to supply a new and more accurate credit report to your lender along with a new — and typically higher — credit score.

Paul Wohkittel of CIS Inc., a national credit-reporting company, says that although the improvements in scores vary with the severity of the erroneous credit-file information being corrected, he’s “seen scores that go up by 50 to 60 points,” saving applicants thousands of dollars in higher mortgage payments over time.

Terry Clemans, executive director of the National Consumer Reporting Association, a credit-industry trade group based in Roselle, Illinois, calls rapid rescoring “a great tool anytime consumers find something in error but need to expedite the [correction] process.”

But rapid rescoring is not for everyone who seeks a quick score boost. For example, if the negative information depressing your score is accurate, it won’t help. Then there’s the expense. Rescoring can cost $30 or more per updated account per credit bureau. So if you’ve got multiple accounts to correct in all three major national bureaus, the total cost can be significant. Plus, there’s another wrinkle: You as a consumer are not permitted to pay directly for rescoring. Your lender is required to foot the bill, though that might find its way into your total loan fees at settlement.

The expense of rapid rescoring is why some lenders are reluctant to raise the subject with certain applicants. Paul Skeens, president of Colonial Mortgage Group in Waldorf, Maryland, told me that “a lot of people who have problems on their credit reports simply don’t have a lot of money to spare.” But for those who can afford it, “it really does work.” One applicant who had a good income but a 680 FICO credit score — too low for the best available mortgage rate — zoomed to a much better 740 after a rapid rescoring, recalled Skeens in an interview last week.

Here’s another valuable mortgage credit tool you should know about. If your score isn’t quite what you need but the information in your files is accurate, your lender should be able to obtain a “what if” simulation through its credit vendor. Using a proprietary model marketed by Baltimore-based CreditXpert Inc., the simulation can estimate the credit score changes available to you by taking certain actions. For instance, the simulation might reveal that by paying down a specific credit card balance or by lowering your currently maxed-out “utilization ratio” on another account, you could improve your score by enough points to get you approved for a better deal.

Bottom line: Be aware of these options. When you apply for a mortgage, you’re not necessarily locked into your score. You just might be able to do better.

Adam Neumann and London

From TRD NYC: WeWork is now the largest corporate occupier in central London.

The $20 billion co-working startup has leased 2.6 million square feet of space since 2012, according to Cushman & Wakefield figures cited by the Financial Times. That’s more than the 1.3 million square feet leased during that time by Google, Amazon’s roughly 1 million square feet and the 900,000 square feet leased by Deutsche Bank.

WeWork is second only to the U.K. government in the amount of space it occupies.

“Have they won the race for scale?” asked Elaine Rossall, head of UK offices research and insight at Cushman & Wakefield. “Yes, I don’t think anybody could keep up with their pace of growth.”

WeWork in 2016 ranked as the 11th-largest office tenant in Manhattan, according to data CoStar provided to The Real Deal.

In the City of London, the company’s footprint more than doubled in 2017, and those familiar with WeWork’s strategy say it’s looking to capitalize on banks’ uncertainty over Brexit by leasing them flexible office space.

In October, WeWork agreed to buy the Blackstone Group’s London office complex Devonshire Square for about $785 million.  [FT] – Rich Bockmann

Miami

From the winter issue: The last few years have been good for design professions in South Florida. Although the building boom has slowed some, there still are projects on local architects’ drawing boards in Florida, Latin America and the Caribbean. So, what do architects make? It depends on the property type and experience.

The Real Deal spoke with industry veterans and dug into public records to get a sense of the incomes across a dozen of the more popular fields in residential and commercial real estate, and to gauge the effects — if any — the market slowdown is having on earnings.

Joseph Dobos, a Fort Lauderdale architect who designs custom homes, said because there are fewer homes for sale, some people are buying land and building, thereby creating work for independent architects who haven’t had much business in the last five years.

Dobos said he gets paid per square foot for a home. In Miami, the per-square-foot charge for a residential architect ranges from $2 to $4, sources said. For commercial work, Dobos earns 3 to 4 percent of the total construction cost for a small-to-midsize commercial project. He is currently designing a $12 million multipurpose center in Broward County and earning a $360,000 fee.

In Florida, licenses are required for certain types of architectural design work. For example, an architect must hold licenses to design big projects such as a shopping mall, office building, hotel or apartment building. Having a license and years of experience will factor into salary. For example, a licensed senior architect with experience in an in-demand niche such as hotels could earn as much as $250,000 annually, said Kobi Karp, president of Kobi Karp Architecture and Interior Design in Miami.

In South Florida, there are more than 25,000 architects, who earned an average annual wage of $73,930 in 2016, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics 2016 employment data.

Click here to read more of “Making bank?” from The Real Deal South Florida‘s winter issue.

Rendering of Village of Bluesten (Credit: Synalovski Romanik Saye)

The Hallandale Beach Planning and Zoning Board approved plans for a 45-unit rental development overlooking Bluesten Park, sending them to the city commission for final approval.

Bluesten Developers LLC, a group led by Elias Benaim, is proposing the Village of Bluesten Park, a 45-unit development at 215 Southeast Fifth Street. Benaim said he expects to break ground in the second quarter of this year.

The development would be built on 1.25 acres now occupied by the Gulfstream Trailer Park. Residents of about 22 trailers are in the process of vacating the site. Property records show Bluesten Developers paid nearly $1.9 million for the land in 2016. It owns 17 trailers in the park.

A number of trailer parks in South Florida have been gobbled up by developers as the region becomes more urban.

Before the city commission can approve the plan, the city will have to verify that residents of the five remaining trailers can be relocated, according to Keven Klopp, director, department for development services.

The planning and zoning board approved the project despite it failing to meet all the minimum requirements, including minimum unit size and the number of parking spaces. One-bedroom apartments start at 609 square feet, smaller than the 700-square-foot minimum, and the developer is proposing 81 parking spaces, 10 fewer than the 91 that are required. The development will start out as rentals and may be converted to condos later.

Benaim is working on four projects in Hallandale, including Atlantic Village I, a 32,000-square-foot office and retail development at 801 South Federal Highway that he is wrapping up. He will be break ground on Atlantic Village II shortly.

Auberge Beach Residences & Spa Fort Lauderdale, CAOBA and The Bristol

UPDATED, 4:45 p.m., Jan. 26: A handful of high-rise residential towers In South Florida reached new heights and topped out.

Auberge Beach Fort Lauderdale’s south tower

The 23-story south tower at Related Group’s 171-unit beachfront condo project in Fort Lauderdale topped off at 70 percent sold.

Related, along with its partners Fortune International Group and Fairwinds Group are developing Auberge Beach Residences & Spa Fort Lauderdale, a two-tower project at 2200 North Ocean Boulevard. The 17-story north building topped out a few months ago and is nearly sold out, according to a press release. Construction began in 2015.

Nichols Brosch Wurst Wolfe & Associates and interior design firm Meyer Davis designed the development. Condos range from one to five bedrooms units and from 1,500 square feet to 5,000 square feet. Former Miami Dolphins quarterback Dan Marino and Winnipeg Jets’ Jacob Trouba purchased units at Auberge. Sales are being handled between Related Realty and Fortune Development, according to a spokesperson.

Hurricane Irma toppled a construction crane at the development in September, but it did not cause any damage or injuries, according to a spokesperson.

First building at Miami Worldcenter

Miami Worldcenter developers Nitin Motwani and Art Falcone, along with Taubman Centers and Forbes, just topped off the first building of their massive $2 billion project, according to a press release.

The CAOBA building, named after the spanish word for mahogany, will be a market-rate 43-story, 444-unit apartment tower at 698 Northeast First Avenue, a block away from All Aboard Florida’s MiamiCentral. The building, previously known as the Seventh Street Apartments, is slated to open this fall. Pre-leasing will launch this summer.

Apartments will range from 500-square-foot studios to 1,300-square-foot three-bedrooms. Amenities will include a pool deck, fitness center, clubroom and an outdoor lawn for dogs.

The 27-acre, mixed-use development will include Paramount Miami Worldcenter, a 562-unit condo tower; the 1,700-key Marriott Marquis Miami Worldcenter Hotel & Expo, and a 600,000-square-foot office tower. It’s one of the eight submitted sites in South Florida for Amazon’s second headquarters.

The Bristol in West Palm Beach

The Bristol in West Palm Beach topped off at 25 stories. Developers Al Adelson, principal of Flagler Investors, and Gene Golub of Chicago-based Golub are building the 69-unit building at 1100 South Flagler Drive. Douglas Elliman is handling sales for the units, priced between $5 million and $22 million.

Condos at the Bristol range from 3,600 square feet to 14,000 square feet and feature views of the Intracoastal Waterway, Atlantic Ocean and Palm Beach Island. As of November, sales at the luxury condominium project hit 85 percent, according to the Palm Beach Daily News. The total sellout is estimated at about $550 million, according to the New York Attorney General’s Real Estate Finance Bureau.

In March, the developers closed a $206 million construction loan for the project. It’s set to be completed by the second quarter of 2019. Suffolk Construction is the general contractor.

Gran Paraiso in Edgewater

Gran Paraiso at the Related Group’s Paraiso complex in Edgewater is topping off next week, according to a spokesperson.

Related launched sales for the 317-unit tower at 480 Northeast 31st Street with Fortune International Group in 2015. The complex, designed by Arquitectonica, will be home to former New York Yankees hitter Alex Rodriguez, DJ and record producer David Guetta, San Antonio Spurs player Manu Ginóbili and tennis champion Arantxa Sánchez Vicario.

GranParaiso’s amenities will include a pool, children’s pool, gym and spa, bowling lanes, virtual golf, theater and access to Amara at Paraiso Bay, a Michael Schwartz restaurant.

Related nabbed $92.7 million in financing for Gran Paraiso in 2016 from Bank of the Ozarks.

During Hurricane Irma, a construction crane snapped at the construction site.

Correction: A previous story misrepresented the firm marketing sales for Auberge Beach Residences & Spa Fort Lauderdale. 

Rendering of Riverwest Miami and Alan Amdur

UPDATED Jan. 27, 1:45 p.m.: A multifamily developer based in Miami Beach is jumping on the Little Havana apartment boom.

Alan I. Amdur is proposing a 19-story mixed-use project on a 2.84-acre block between West Flagler Street and Northwest First Street. It will feature 719 apartments for seniors and workforce housing, 150,000 square feet of retail and 959 parking spaces.

The Miami City Commission on Thursday approved a request by Amdur’s Riverwest Miami LLC to rezone eight properties on Northwest First Street and Eighth Avenue and one parcel at 29 Northwest Ninth Avenue to increase the density from 65 units to 150 units per acre. Another nine lots on West Flagler Street and Eighth Avenue that are part of the proposed development site did not require rezoning.

In addition to providing housing to working class residents in Little Havana, Riverwest Miami could generate between 75 and 300 permanent jobs to the neighborhood, said William W. Riley, an attorney for the developer.

Riley said Riverwest is looking to bring in a national grocery chain like Aldi and a discount department store like Ross or Marshalls. “The zoning changes allow us the depth to bring in the grocery store and other big, moderately priced retailers.”

The developer’s partners include Todd Michael Glaser, Jared Jarrett and Sean Posner, Glaser said. Kobi Karp is designing the project.

Amdur is principal of i3 Development, a company that acquired and rezoned a residential tract at 9931 West Flagler Street for $3 million in 2013, according to his LinkedIn profile. After getting the property rezoned, i3 Development sold the site two years later for $5.2 million to Johnson Development Associates, a real estate investment and development firm based in Spartanburg, Georgia. In 2016, Johnson completed a 175-unit, five-story apartment building.

Amdur’s company is also involved in deals to develop homes on 4,000 acres in Manatee County and to develop 1,200 acres in Ocala, per his LinkedIn.

Riverwest Miami joins several other major multifamily projects in the pipeline for Little Havana. Earlier this month, the city’s Urban Development Review Board approved three developments, including Mast Capital’s Miami River Walk, a 688-unit, eight-story project on 6.3 acres along the Miami River at 1001 Northwest Seventh Street.

Tribe Urban Innovation Lab and Cowork (Credit: Catalina Ayubi)

A new co-working concept geared to the Overtown community is opening, part of a growing number of shared-space buildings that are popping up in South Florida.

Tribe Co-Work and Urban Innovation Lab will open Feb. 5 out of a historic building in Overtown, co-owner Felecia Hatcher said. Miami Innovation District developer Michael Simkins owns the building at 937 Northwest Third Avenue.

Allapattah-based McKenzie completed the buildout, which was funded by a $350,000 Community Reinvestment Act grant. The two-story, 3,700-square-foot space features eight offices, conference rooms, classrooms, a library and a kitchen.

Tribe Co-Work marks the first co-working concept for Hatcher and co-owner Derick Pearson.

“It’s open to everyone but at the same time we are in Overtown,” Hatcher said, referring to the predominantly black community.

Memberships start at $49 a month for middle- and high school students, and $149 a month for college and nontraditional students. An open-desk membership will cost about $250 a month, and office spaces start at about $1,000 a month. The concept will also host weekly networking meet-ups, trainings and seminars that members can access for free or at a discounted rate.

Members include Code Fever and Black Tech Week, two nonprofits founded by Hatcher and Pearson.

Property records show Simkins’ Lion Folk Life Village LLC paid $555,000 for the building in 2014. In Overtown, Simkins and his partners have spent $100 million assembling 10.4 acres in Park West, which includes the nightclubs E11even and Club Space, and several warehouses and vacant parcels. Portions of his land were submitted as a potential site for Amazon’s second headquarters. Miami was announced as a finalist for the $5 billion development last week.

In South Florida, other co-working firms include Büro, WeWork and Pipeline. Mosaic CoWork was also just added to the growing list of shared office concepts.

Mosaic opened its doors on Friday in West Palm Beach. The co-working space, at 5840 Corporate Way, will offer packages starting at $15 a day or $55 a month. Mosaic, led by Ann Marie Sorrell, will also have “hot desking,” allowing members to reserve a space for a few hours, or several days. The space features private offices, a conference room, mail storage, an on-duty receptionist, lockers, free parking and more.

Steve Wynn (Credit: Getty Images)

UPDATED: January 27, 2018.

More than 100 women have come forward to allege decades of sexual misconduct by casino mogul Steve Wynn, who is CEO of Wynn Resorts Ltd.

The Wall Street Journal interviewed around 150 women who worked for the 75-year-old casino magnate and hotelier. Some told the Journal that Wynn was known to make advances on female employees and request sexual favors. They said they felt pressured to follow through given the power their employer wielded over them.

The investigation started from a lawsuit by Wynn’s ex-wife, Elaine Wynn, which sought to lift restrictions on her Wynn Resort stock. That suit revealed Wynn paid a female manicurist $7.5 million in 2005 after allegedly forcing her to have sex with him.

Employees at the Wynn Las Vegas’ on-site salon — which Wynn frequented — told the Journal they sometimes created fake appointments and had others pose as assistants so female workers wouldn’t have to be in Wynn’s office alone with him. Some female employees reportedly hid in the bathrooms or back rooms when they heard Wynn was on his way.

By early Friday afternoon, Bloomberg reported that shares of Wynn Resorts Ltd. fell 8 percent on the news.

On Saturday, BuzzFeed reported Wynn had resigned from his position as finance chair for the Republican National Committee.

Wynn called the allegations “preposterous” and claimed the Journal’s investigation was instigated by his ex-wife, amid their “terrible and nasty lawsuit” over her Wynn Resort shares.

Wynn built and later sold the Mirage, Treasure Island, and Bellagio resorts in Las Vegas. He owns four Wynn and Encore-branded casinos between Las Vegas and Macau, China, and is building a Wynn resort outside Boston. [WSJ] — Dennis Lynch

Comfort Inn & Suites Hotel rendering and Boaz Ashbel (Credit: Aztec Group)

The developers behind a planned 120-key Comfort Suites hotel in Miami Springs scored a $15.2 million construction loan for the project. The hotel is among a few set to go up near Miami International Airport.

Developers Steven Marin and Michael Pfeffer want to build an eight-story Comfort Inn & Suites at 665 Mokena Drive, right along Northwest 36th Street, according to a news release. The area has seen a recent uptick in activity from hotel investors and developers.

Records show an entity led by Marin bought the 32,100-square-foot property in 2015 for about $2.1 million.

TotalBank was the lender, and financing was arranged by Boaz Ashbel of Miami-based Aztec Group.

Marin and Pfeffer own and operate several hotels in South Florida, including a nearby 102-key Comfort Suites hotel at 657 Minola Drive.

Construction of the Comfort Suites, which is just north of Miami International Airport, is set to be completed by mid-2019.

Amenities include complimentary breakfast, a fitness facility, a swimming pool and meeting space. There will also be a retail component. It will be managed by Travelers Hotel Group, which is also led by Marin and Pfeffer.

Nearby a new Wyndham hotel is under construction. In November, an entity led by developer Salvatore Natoli secured a $17.7 million construction loan to build the 10-story, 150-key project at 4909 Northwest 36th Street.

Another hotel to sprout near the airport includes Riviera Point Development Group’s Radisson Red hotel at 3450 Northwest 25th Street. – Amanda Rabines

Clockwise from top left: Miami’s Hall South Beach hotel sold for $58 million, Elliman’s Gordon von Broock and Jay Phillip Parker will relaunch a sports and entertainment division, Ensemble Investments is proposing a 22-story residential tower in Philadelphia, and Doug Yearley and David Von Spreckelsen of Toll Brothers.

New CEO plans to grow Realogy by focusing on technology and data
Realogy, the $5.8-billion-dollar owner of residential brokerages across the country, including Corcoran, Coldwell Banker and Century 21, faces challenges on many fronts, but new CEO Ryan Schneider plans to leverage technology and data to move the company forward. At a New York City real estate conference on Thursday, Schneider said Realogy has more data than its competitors but needs to quickly develop tools to use that derive insights from that information to help agents. These were the first public comments from the former executive at Capital One since taking over on Jan. 1 from Richard Smith, who had led the company for 21 years. [TRD]

Public offering raises $400M for luxury homebuilder Toll Brothers
Pennsylvania-base homebuilder Toll Brothers raised $400 million through a public offering announced last week. The company specializes in custom luxury suburban developments and operated in 30 markets across the country. Its City Living division broke into urban communities in 2004 and has properties in New York, New Jersey and Maryland. Toll Brothers reported $5.82 billion in revenue last year. In a release on the public offering, the company stated that it plans to use the new funding to pay off debts and use it for general corporate purposes. [TRD]

Construction startup Katerra gets $865M investment from SoftBank
Katerra, a three-year-old construction startup, got an infusion of $865 million from SoftBank’s Vision Fund. Katerra, which is a one-stop construction shop, plans to use the funds to build new factories, increase manufacturing and speed up the launch of its customer-facing platform. The three-year-old company already has $1.3 billion in construction contracts for multifamily, student housing and hospitality. [TRD]

“People don’t believe housing is in a bubble” warns money manager 
James Stack, a money manager who predicted the last recession in 2005, issued a warning about the current high-flying housing market. “It is 2005 all over again in terms of the valuation extreme, the psychological excess and the denial,” Stack told Bloomberg. “People don’t believe housing is in a bubble and don’t want to hear talk about prices being a little bit bubblish.” [TRD]

Elliman rebooting its sports and entertainment division
The sports and entertainment division at Douglas Elliman was meant to tap into the celebrity market for high-end real estate, but more than two years after it launched, the division is undergoing a reboot. Elliman will create a network of 15 agents in New York City and 20 in Florida tackling celebrity leads. The firm will also hire consultants from sports leagues and management agencies to help, according to Jay Parker, the CEO of Douglas Elliman Florida, who considers himself the “de facto” leader of the operation. [TRD]

Shares in REITs aren’t keeping up with the stock market boom
Over the first weeks of 2018 real estate investment trust stocks were down 2.4 percent even as the stock market overall continued to climb. According to industry experts, REIT stocks are isolated from the bull market for two reasons, according to the Wall Street Journal. First, they do not benefit from the new federal tax law because REITs do not pay income taxes, and secondly, investors fear rising interest rates could hurt the real estate market. [TRD]

MAJOR MARKET HIGHLIGHTS

Realtor.com takes on StreetEasy in NYC ad campaign
Rupert Murdoch’s Realtor.com is gunning for more marketshare against rival Zillow’s New York City brand StreetEasy, and the former company has launched a marketing campaign to win over real estate browsers. With ads posted throughout the city, Realtor claims it has 20 percent more listings than StreetEasy. While Realtor does have an advantage in listing volume, the numbers might not match up with what the advertising states, TRD found. StreetEasy’s general manager, Susan Daimler, said her firm “has always been, and will continue to be, focused on the quality of our listings data, not the quantity.” [TRD]

High-end retailers are buying into Downtown Los Angeles
Downtown L.A. hasn’t always been known as a shopping destination, but a host of high-end retailers are moving into the area and more space is being built. With additions such as fashion brand Theory, German eyewear brand MYKITA and Andrea Lieberman Collection, the Broadway theater district is leading the way with adaptive reuse projects. “We have to remember that in 2004, we didn’t have any retail in DTLA at all,” said Brigham Yen, a Realtor with commercial brokerage Miren.co. [TRD]

Miami’s Hall South Beach hotel sold to Spanish group for $58M
An American affiliate of the the Spanish conglomerate Grup Peralada paid Rockwood Capital $58.2 million for the 163-key Hall South Beach hotel. Rockwood bought what had been the Haddon Hall hotel and the neighboring Camden Apartments in 2013 for $34.5 million and combined the two Collins Avenue properties into one hotel in 2015. The Hall South Beach deal is Miami Beach’s most expensive hotel sale since 2016, when the Confidante Hotel sold for $229 million. [TRD]

Investor betting $87.6M on pair of 21-story office towers in Chicago’s suburbs
American Landmark Properties, a Skokie, Illinois-based real estate investor, is in contract to buy two half-occupied office towers in the suburbs north of Chicago. The two 21-floor towers, now known as Schaumburg Towers, were once the headquarters Zurich North America. The properties are expected to go for $87.6 million, with American Landmark looking to raise $29.9 million in capital and financing $57.7 million in debt. [Crain’s Chicago Business]

With nearly 11K apartments added in 2017, metro Denver expects another 12K in 2018
Developers added nearly 11,000 new apartments in the Denver area in 2017, and another 12,000 more should come online in 2018, according to RealPage, a real estate technology and analytics firm. The occupancy rate for apartments in metro Denver held steady at 94.3 percent, RealPage found, and rents rose 3.2 percent in 2017. With supply continuing to grow, however, rents should not spike, experts said. [Denver Post]

Beijing and Xi Jinping (Credit: Foreign and Commonwealth Office via Flickr)

From TRD NYC: Communist Party leaders in China, where the home ownership rate is nearly 90 percent, are embarking on a grand experiment to pivot toward renting.

President Xi Jinping is encouraging developers, banks and local governments to emphasize renting in an effort to curb the effects of a 13-year rally in real estate that’s put housing out of the reach of many Chinese citizens, Bloomberg reported.

In Beijing, for example, land prices have skyrocketed 1,538 percent from 2004 to 2016, according to a study from the University of Wisconsin.

“China’s property market is on the brink of tremendous change,” Shen Jianguang, chief Asia economist at Mizuho Securities Asia Ltd. in Hong Kong, told Bloomberg. “The push for rental properties shows a new model is starting to emerge.”

Xi is looking to create a new market model that blends capitalism and the Communist system of allocating homes by work units.

The plan could include a long-awaited property tax, and auctioning off public land to developers that would build rental-only projects. Banks are offering credit lines to finance rental projects, and the Shanghai Stock Exchange is paving a way for investment products that are backed by rental income, Bloomberg reported.

Developer China Vanke is converting former offices in Shanghai into dormitory-style, one-room apartments in order to attract millennials. Some real estate firms are securitizing rental income into investment vehicles that look like real estate investment trusts, and in Beijing about 30 percent of the new supply in the pipeline by 2021 is designated for rental. [Bloomberg] – Rich Bockmann

Ronan Vaspart and MIPIM (Credit: Twitter and Getty Images)

MIPIM pledged to “increase communication” with members of the annual real estate conference in France about its code of conduct after the industry was called out for its involvement with the “Gropers Gala” charity event in London.

“Mipim has a code of conduct applicable to everyone attending the event,” event director Ronan Vaspart emailed in a statement to Bloomberg News. “If we are informed of inappropriate behavior we will take action. Mipim is committed to safeguarding the dignity and respect of all its participants.”

The Financial Times earlier this week reported that members of the real estate industry made up a good portion of the attendees at the Presidents Cub Charity dinner in London, where female hostesses were allegedly harassed.

The report made reference to an article from two years ago in the industry magazine Estates Gazette, which reported that sex workers were a common sight at MIPIM. The magazine referred to the event as “not the industry’s finest hour.”

The event’s code of conduct says the organizers reserve the right “to refuse entry, or to have expelled, any participant whose presence, conduct or behavior threatens the image, peace or safety of the event and or of the other participants.”

In New York City, meanwhile, the industry is coming to terms with treatment of female professionals in the workplace and opportunities available to them. [Bloomberg] – Rich Bockmann

Art Falcone

An appeals court overturned a $4.2 million verdict against real estate developers Art  Falcone and Edward Falcone in connection with their 2003 acquisition of a cemetery.

The 4th District Court of Appeal in West Palm Beach rejected a jury’s finding that the Falcone brothers financially damaged two widowed sisters by convincing them to sell a family-owned cemetery in Boca Raton for less than it was worth.

Fifteen years ago, the Falcones paid $6.1 million to acquire the 18-acre cemetery, now called The Gardens of Boca Raton. It’s located in Boca Raton at 4103 North Military Trail.

Lawyers for the families of the original plaintiffs – two widowed sisters who died before the trial – claimed the cemetery was worth $40 million.

At trial, the jury ordered the Falcones to pay $2 million in attorney fees and other expenses the widows incurred in selling the cemetery, plus $2.2 million in punitive damages.

But the appellate court found that widowed sisters Elishka and Kathleen Michael didn’t lose money on the cemetery sale, so the Falcone brothers have no obligation to pay their families $2 million of their expenses or $2.2 million in punitive damages.

William Cornwell, the attorney representing the Falcone brothers, said the jury found they took improper action to acquire the cemetery but concluded they didn’t damage the Michaels sisters. [Palm Beach Post] – Mike Seemuth