"Passion for the Business"
Tere Blanca de Ulloa well remembers her first big real estate deal: A Brickell Avenue office building she sold for $12 million. It took 14 months.
Blanca, 42, left her home in Havana with her parents as a baby and grew up in Puerto Rico and Venezuela before going off to the University of Miami for her bachelor's and master's.
TERE BLANCA DE ULLOA
Senior managing director / Cushman & Wakefield
MiamiReal estate: Just her primary home on Key Biscayne.Diversions: Dancing and music.In 1986, after a few years selling computer products in California and an introduction to commercial real estate work there, she got a job at what was then Coldwell Banker Commercial in Miami. She stayed just long enough to impress and follow producer Hank Klein when he joined developer Armando Codina, who with Klein was establishing a brokerage unit. She spent 15 years with Codina, going on calls with the likes of Jeb Bush ("a team builder ... just a plain good man") and becoming a top producer with $221.6 million in sales, 2.1 million square feet in landlord rep work and 741,337 square feet of tenant rep work from 1990 to 2002.
She moved last year to head Cushman & Wakefield's south Florida operation. The Miami and Fort Lauderdale offices have 70 employees, 33 of whom are brokers. One of her conditions for joining Cushman & Wakefield was that it put in place a strong administrative and human resources person. That way she can focus on what matters most to her. "I just absolutely have a passion for the business. I get up every morning looking forward to work. I love commercial real estate."
Flagler Development
From Square Root to Square Feet
After four years as an accountant, John Carey wanted something new. So he took a career path usually not associated with accountants. He joined commercial real estate developer Trammell Crow as a leasing agent peddling space.
Turns out that landing tenants suited him better than counting beans. The 48-year-old Maryland native now heads Flagler Development, a unit of Florida East Coast Industries, that has 60 buildings totaling 7 million square feet of suburban offices and industrial buildings in Orlando, Jacksonville, Fort Lauderdale and Miami. It has governmental approvals in place to build another 14.5 million square feet on 938 acres, and it owns an additional 4,900 acres of raw land. Carey's looking to enter Tampa.
JOHN CAREY
President/Flagler Development Co.
JacksonvilleGolf handicap: 14.Favorite course: Timuquana Country club in Jacksonville. Favorite dirt: Flagler Center, a 1,000-acre project in Jacksonville with a new I-95 interchange opening in the spring, and Flagler Station in Miami-Dade, where Flagler already has 4 million square feet of buildings and another 600 acres to work with.Real estate: Just his family's primary home.Well-capitalized and with land holdings and approvals in place, Flagler has a "very long-term view of Florida," Carey says.
The past couple of years were flat with the sluggish economy and tech sector collapse, but Carey sees vacancies being absorbed as demand returns.
Three-quarters of the way through last year, Flagler's buildings were 87% occupied. It forecast a $40 million to $42 million operating profit (before depreciation and amortization) on $64 million to $66 million in revenue for the full year and is forecasting 6% to 8% profit growth this year and as much as $85 million in spending on new buildings, infrastructure, maintenance and improvements.
Carey still gets involved with leasing whenever he can. "I like that a lot better than addressing personnel issues," he says. And, as he learned as a rookie rep with Trammell Crow, "Everything starts with leasing."
Carlisle Group
More Than a Niche
Miami developer Lloyd Boggio got into building affordable rental complexes as a niche, believing it was a countercyclical, sideline business. He discovered that it actually was non-cyclical. And, now, it's no sideline.
Boggio's Carlisle Group has developed or is completing a total of 6,200 apartment units in 15 Florida counties, using tax credits that provide cheap financing. It's one of five firms that dominate the tax credit market in Florida.
Affordable housing has advantages. Financing a $40-million market-rate project, for instance, might require $8 million in developer equity. Affordable housing projects, in contrast, get 100% financing. What the developer does have to worry about is getting approval from the state's Housing Finance Corp. -- a process requiring persistence, lobbying for local support and savvy at negotiating the process. In return for credits, developers set aside units for families earning a fraction of the area's median income.
LLOYD BOGGIO
Co-founder, CEO/The Carlisle Group
MiamiCool Hand Lloyd: Boggio plays high-stakes poker at Las Vegas, Biloxi, Miss., Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut and on a local gambling boat, The Card RoomBachelor's: University of Miami.Naturally: A Hurricanes fan.Personal real estate: Primary home and a second home in Mystic, Conn.A Miami native, Boggio chose real estate because "I had no money. Whatever I was going to do I'd have to do with hard work and wits, if I had any." After several successful ventures, he founded Carlisle in 1998.
He loaded it with talent such as President Mark Kaplan, the former head of the state housing finance corporation. Kaplan says Boggio "was always a guy who was going to tell you the truth and do what he said he was going to and was very creative in affordable housing." Boggio's stable also includes consultant Steve Seibert, the former secretary of the Florida Department of Community Affairs.
The niche has no grand-slam payoffs, but Boggio, 57, likes the low risk and a different kind of reward. "You move a law firm into an office building, no one cries. No one hugs their child and talks about how their life is going to be better."