A Top Miami Broker on the Booming Market for Ultra-Luxury Homes

SPEAKER_1 (0:03)

Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news.

Joe Weisenthal (0:20)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:25)

And I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:26)

Tracy, do you remember our episode with Hiten Samtani about how there's this separate world of real estate for the ultra rich in cities like Dubai and New York City and Los Angeles, Aspen, Miami, that's just totally disconnected from like normal real estate markets?

Tracy Alloway (0:44)

Yes, I do. It was an eye-opening episode, not least because of all the discussion of the branded apartment buildings and luxury condos and things. And I still, I'm not entirely sure. I personally would want to live in a Mercedes Benz apartment building or whatever, but it's definitely a thing that's been happening.

Joe Weisenthal (1:03)

You wouldn't want to live on the Porsche Tower in Sunny Isles or the Armani Casa Tower in Sunny Island.

Tracy Alloway (1:12)

I'm trying to keep an open mind and I realize everyone has very different tastes, but I am not a fan of modernism, no matter how hard I try, I don't get the whole white rooms, glass boxes thing, which seems to be predominantly what the luxury market is, at least in certain cities.

Joe Weisenthal (1:35)

It is a lot of glass. All right, so don't move to the Aston Martin residencies in downtown Miami near Biscayne Bay. So avoid that one.

Tracy Alloway (1:46)

I was this close to buying the $10 million apartment in Miami, but now that you've said that, I won't. No, you're absolutely right. There seems to be this entirely different luxury real estate market in the US, which is still going pretty strong, even in the environment of higher interest rates. And you see these numbers that are thrown around, and it's so hard for me to conceptualize this, but I was looking up, there was a $70 million mansion in Miami Beach that sold recently, and then all these $25 million mansions, and even $10 million condos.

It's hard for me to wrap my mind around those numbers.

Joe Weisenthal (2:27)

I think I saw that Ken Griffin, the Citadel chief, this is a big story, is that Citadel has moved a bunch of its operations to Miami from Chicago. I think Ken Griffin is spending $100 million on a dual mansion property or something like that.

And then there are all these stories and Bloomberg reports on them a lot about these New York City finance people that are moving to Miami and maybe spending 51% of the year there for various reasons. But I really want to get more color on what's this like? Why are people wanting to buy into the Aston Martin building? What's going on in Miami? Where is all this money coming from besides Citadel? How long it can last? I just want to get a better feel for what this market, we know that the market exists.

And now I want to get a better feel for like what it actually looks like and like how it all works and how people find these places and all that.

Tracy Alloway (3:16)

Yes, so there are two things that I'm really interested in. So one is the momentum factor and the idea that once you get money pouring into a specific place, it kind of can attract more money. So that's what we were talking about with Hiten Subtani, this idea that rich people basically can like force prices up even further by buying up all this property.

Joe Weisenthal (3:38)

And they compete with each other.

Tracy Alloway (3:39)

Yeah, and it becomes kind of like the self-fulfilling prophecy or self-reinforcing cycle, rather. And then the second thing I'm interested in is how much this market, if at all, differs from the normal real estate market. Are there certain aspects of luxury real estate that operate differently to say, I don't know, like a $300,000 home being sold in the Midwest or wherever?

Joe Weisenthal (4:07)

Right, it doesn't seem like it's the same as just sort of like going on Zillow or something and booking some local broker.

Tracy Alloway (4:15)

Yeah, do millionaires surf Zillow as much as I do and just fantasize about new houses? Is that how they find them?

SPEAKER_1 (4:22)

I don't know.

Joe Weisenthal (4:23)

I wanna find that out too. Well, I'm really excited because today we really do have the perfect guest to bring us into the world of a high-end luxury Miami real estate. We're gonna be speaking with Dina Goldentayer. She's the number one agent at the major real estate brokerage Douglas Elliman. She's been operating out of the Miami market for 19 years and she's involved in lots of these deals.