In this episode, we dive deep into the latest market trends, exploring the fascinating interplay between hospitality and non-hospitality branded residences. Join our esteemed guests, Nancy B. Lash, Co-Chair of the Miami Real Estate Practice at Greenberg Traurig, LLP, and Ryan D. Bailine, Shareholder at the same firm, as they share their expertise and insights.
In this episode, we dive deep into the latest market trends, exploring the fascinating interplay between hospitality and non-hospitality branded residences. Join our esteemed guests, Nancy B. Lash, Co-Chair of the Miami Real Estate Practice at Greenberg Traurig, LLP, and Ryan D. Bailine, Shareholder at the same firm, as they share their expertise and insights.
Speaker 1: What's up everybody, and welcome back to another episode of Loop It In, the DoorLoop Podcast where we pick the brains of experts in property management, real estate and investing. Tech, we cover it, marketing that too. Whether you want actionable tips or the insider scoop from top performers in their industries, this is one show you won't want to miss. Be sure to subscribe so you won't miss out on any future episode.
David Bitton: Hello everyone. This is David Bitton, co-founder and CMO at DoorLoop. I'm going to be co-hosting this podcast with another co-founder and our COO Adam Mait. Adam say hi.
Adam Mait: Hi.
David Bitton: And today we have the pleasure of hosting Ryan Bailine and Nancy Lash from Greenberg Traurig. We're going to discuss the state of the real estate market in 2023 in South Florida and also the US. Adam has actually known both of them for many years. Adam, I will let you say hi and introduce them.
Adam Mait: David, thanks so much. First of all, my name again is Adam Mait. I'm co-founder and COO of here at DoorLoop Property Management Software. And frankly, I could not be more excited to welcome both Ryan and Nancy to our podcast. Ryan and Nancy, I've known for years, friends with them and frankly probably two of the most knowledgeable people that I have ever met in the real estate law and business sector. And probably frankly, two of the most connected people that I've ever met in the real estate game. They're both shareholders over Greenberg Traurig and more importantly, they're just absolute pleasures to deal with. If anyone ever has the opportunity to work with them, they'll know exactly what I'm speaking about. Ryan and Nancy, thank you very much again for taking the time out of your day to join us both.
To give everyone a little bit of a better understanding about Ryan and Nancy, I'll just start off by sharing just some brief information about their very impressive bios. Nancy is the co-chair of the Miami Real Estate Practice at Greenberg Traurig. She also represents landlords and tenants and complex lease negotiations including ground lease developments in the public private sector. And I've personally worked with her on many, many deals and I'm understating, she is an absolute rockstar. Ryan represents some of the most active and prolific developers in North America, advises on residential, commercial, industrial, mixed use projects. He routinely advises developers and property owners on qualified opportunity funds, regulatory structuring issues related to opportunity zones and a whole lot more. Frankly, if you know me, I could honestly talk forever about both of them, their credentials, their awards, their community involvement, but instead of letting me speak about it, why don't I let them speak about it. In no particular order, Ryan or Nancy, if you want to just tell everybody a little bit more about yourself, the work that you all do, I'd appreciate it.
Nancy Lash: Hi Adam. I hope we can live up to that introduction. Thank you very much. It was incredibly, incredibly gracious. As Adam said, I am Nancy Lash and I'm delighted to be here today with DoorLoop on this podcast. I have been practicing real estate in South Florida in Miami office of Greenberg for 34 years and am currently the co-chair of the real estate department. We're extremely active in all assets of all classes of real estate in the South Florida market as well as nationwide. If you guys are familiar with the firm, we have a national platform and too many offices for me to remember today having been with the firm so long, exactly how many, but north of 30 in the United States and also internationally.
We do have obviously a great deal of experience in South Florida real estate. We are I think, the largest real estate law firm in the State of Florida and up in the top 10 or 20 nationwide. In South Florida, we have a very large presence in connection with real estate developers and real estate development. Again, we handle all classes of real estate, office, retail, residential, but we do have a specialty and Ryan will speak a little more to this in real estate development in the public private sector and private sector condominiums. And we'll get into all of that in this podcast.
Ryan Bailine: Thanks Nancy. And I echo when Adam said, I really wish... I'm going to have my kids tune in for the podcast, with the buildup because no one's ever said those things to me. Wow. My pleasure to be here with you and David and picking up on what Nancy said. And I've been with Greenberg almost 10 years because of Greenberg's history here in Miami, in both multifamily office we have a condo group that's second to none land use and development. The reality is that particularly in South Florida and throughout Florida, we have our finger at least on one aspect of the large scale real estate developments, whether it's just doing the condo work, just doing financing construction loans or on the land use and entitlement side.
But often because one-stop shop so to speak, we handle multiple aspects of the same project, which really gives us the unique ability to know certain deals inside out. And I had a few of the things that we worked on when you were in the vertical development world, so to speak, rather than the tech sector. I think we worked on a bunch of stuff together. Some of it's a single phase, some's a multiphase deal, but from the top of the stake down to the keys, Greenberg is usually involved in some aspect of the more complicated and significant deals, both private-private as well as when the public sector/governmental agencies are about.
Adam Mait: Amazing. I'd love to take a step back and before we jump into the nitty-gritty, I don't actually know if I know and maybe the listeners would care to know how did you all get started in this sort of industry, we'll call it the legal real estate industry? Just love to hear the story from both of you.
Ryan Bailine: Mine's a short story and a 100% true. I went to law school and I was getting an MBA at the same time, and so I was a four-year student, not a three-year student. And when I went to interview with firms in New York, which is where I wanted to go and practice, they all would've had to wait another year for me, so I didn't get any job offers. And when I finally graduated business school, I had a couple interviews in Miami and one of them was a previous firm and the lady that was interviewing me said, "Do you have any experience with real estate development?" And she looked right at me and said, "Please say no because I don't want to spend six months unteaching your bad habit."
I said, no. She walked me down the hall to the chair of the real estate group. He sat me down, I've never seen more diplomas on someone's wall. And he said, "Such and such wants to hire you and we're not going to figure it out for a year or two if you're going to be good at this, so I'm just going to go along with her and do you want to come work with us?" And I had a pretty good run there for about eight or nine years and then came over here and had been working with Nancy and Gary Saul, our condo folks and the land use folks. And I'm not sure if I'll practice law the rest of my life, but I highly doubt I'll practice law anywhere other than Greenberg.
Adam Mait: Wow. Go ahead Nancy, please.
Nancy Lash: Mine is a little simpler, but from the beginning. I'm from the northeast and what I'll say is in law school in your first year, there are certain required classes and property was one of them. I was always very into architecture and had been thinking about that in college, but I ended up going on to law school. And absolutely loved property class, so I knew that that was the area and I seemed to have a knack for it and that was the area that I knew I would pursue. What I will say is I could not have thrown a dart. I could not have studied or investigated or thought out, try to attempt to find a place where that would be the greatest place to practice real estate law in this country and found Miami. Miami has been just spectacular over the years watching it from when I came here 34 years ago from Connecticut and just picked up and moved with my husband down to South Florida and really landed in the right place to be practicing real estate.
Ryan Bailine: And I echo what Nancy said. I came down here from New Jersey to go and get a law degree and a business degree and I always wanted to go back to the northeast. By the time I had the opportunity, I had made some friends, I didn't have any family down here and I've been down here since '99 and I think the city's on the fourth or fifth version of itself. Obviously accelerated a lot the last few years, but we look like the smartest people in the northeast moving down here at any point before 2019. But yeah, this is just a great spot to be in.
Adam Mait: Amazing. We'll jump right into it, but I'd love to learn a little bit more about from the people that are really seeing it happen every day, the state of the market. And you guys represent both developers, obviously, and lenders, correct?
Nancy Lash: Yes.
Adam Mait: Okay. And so we'll talk more from the institutional clients. What are you really seeing of more of the trends that people are moving into? Is it more of the affordable, is it more of the opportunity zones? Where are trends? Is it the condos? Where's the market headed?
Nancy Lash: Frankly Adam, I would answer that question with the market here on a number of different fronts is moving forward and still extremely active.
Ryan Bailine: I agree.
Nancy Lash: I think that... And Ryan chime in whenever, but from the condo perspective and just looking back on 2021 and 2022 in South Florida, obviously 2020 was an unusual year with the pandemic for the entire country. There was the slowdown and then the turnaround in 2021 and 2022, it was phenomenal. The market was on fire and we would say, coming into 2023, looking here locally, it's gone to a more normal pace, but it's still an extremely active pace. In some ways we can look back at 2021 and 2022 and South Florida, as we all know, is a little bit different, especially post pandemic and say it was a little bit on fire. It's not that it was a bubble, it was just extremely accelerated.
Ryan Bailine: And I would say where's the market headed? We represent a lot of local folks, Adam, like the company you used to work with and partner with. And we do a lot of work with national REITs, public and private. And some of the national guys would tell you, the merchant builders would say, "I'm looking to sell all my deals," but they would turn around and say, "How many deals can I get tied up, so I keep my pipeline going?"
Adam Mait: Interesting.
Ryan Bailine: Let me just say a couple of things. The first is there was this period of time, I think end of October through maybe early December, where were deals going to close, were purchase and sale agreements going to get signed?
Adam Mait: Was that interest rate increasing? Was that the-
Ryan Bailine: That was the uncertainty of the interest rate increasing. There were lenders that called our clients and said, "Come talk to us in January, we're done for the year." And when you hear that at Thanksgiving, that's not settling. But let me say something else. Separate, apart from the pandemic, Nancy and I were having this conversation yesterday, the condo world is taking its own course right now in part because of what unfortunately happened in Surfside. We're seeing older buildings saying to themselves, "Okay, do we go out there and do bulk sales?" And someone codes and terminates a condo and builds a beautiful new building. We were talking about the other day, you're seeing a lot of branded condos to try and move into the world and set a standard of... What did we say? Standard of service.
And you're going to get, you have the Porsche building, you have the Bentley building, you have the Armani building. And so the condo world, in some respects, it's almost the Amman where they just closed a major loan this year, construction loan. In some respects, you're seeing the condo world almost elevate itself. And I didn't double check, but I think our condo team is just as busy as they've been for years. We have seen a little bit of a slow-down, at least I have, in the market rate multifamily stuff because some of it may not pencil out like it did six months ago. Go ahead.
Nancy Lash: And I would say that in the multifamily where I'm active is with REITs in particular, and it has a lot to do with the market. It has a lot to do with the dividend returns for their investors and the availability of loans in the capital though they usually initially invest at least large REITs with cash. And so they were extremely active in 2021 and 2022 in multifamily and industrial. If there's been any slowdown at all in that arena, it is tied to interest rates and returns for their particular investors. And that's sort of that world. The thing I'll say about the condo, which is really interesting I think is when Ryan's mentioned it, but the branded residences and we're seeing two kinds in heat, he mentioned them. We're seeing the traditional hospitality branded residences like Ritz-Carlton, and there are a lot of branded projects that may or may not include a hotel, St. Regis, Waldorf Astoria. The EDITION has gotten into that game too. And then we're seeing the other ones that the non hospitality branded residences, which you mentioned with Bentley, Aston Martin.
Ryan Bailine: The Aston Martin building, right over my shoulder here.
Adam Mait: Sure.
Nancy Lash: And Porsche. And I think that what's been discovered there, it's twofold. It's that condo buyers at a certain level are looking for that level of service. And it's the actual brands, hospitality brands and non hospitality, finding it a new revenue stream and revenue source in property management and the licensing fees. Think about Trump, that name used to be and is on a number of buildings here in South Florida. Our condo team is... The condo group here, and that means our developer clients because processing their work and working with them on the deals and the new developments, they do have a strong pipeline and that could be waiting for... There's always projects in the pipeline.
Ryan Bailine: Always.
Nancy Lash: And looking for the next round of-
Ryan Bailine: Because you mentioned a couple other classes I don't want to skip over. We've got a couple national builders that would build almost any garden style deal they could find enough land on in Florida, we see some of them. We have a couple projects where they're actually doing garden style apartments and they're doing a two-story parking garage and they're putting the amenities on top of the garage. We also have folks that in the affordable world, because there's a huge housing need in affordable housing need in South Florida and Florida. We're going to see I think an increase in the tax credits that get awarded to the affordable guys, the affordable companies, because the tax credits are how many... The allocation of federal income tax credits to states to build affordable housing is a direct correlation of population. That's why New York, Texas, California, Florida, it takes longer to do a deal in California.
But with the increase in population here, our affordable clients are anticipating a significant bump in the amount of tax credits that will be available for the Florida Housing Finance Corporation to hand out. Now that doesn't get the building built tomorrow, it gets the building built two and a half or three years. But there is that anticipation. And let me say one other thing, and I've heard this, I heard this from one client, I didn't think much of it, and then I heard it from two more. The real estate folks like yourselves are smart. And so we have clients underwriting deals, whether it's land, construction costs, what have you, and they are taking out the last 12 years of finance. They're going back to 2005, '06, 1995, and they're anticipating that the Fed has two jobs to keep unemployment low-
Adam Mait: Inflation.
Ryan Bailine: ... and to keep inflation low. And as long as whatever the interest rate is, if unemployment's low and inflation's low, why cut the interest rate? If one goes up or one goes down, then you use them as lever. Said in a typical lawyerly way, I'm going on. But said another way, we have clients that are assuming that the interest rate's going to be between five and six and a half percent for the next 25 years, and they didn't make deals work like that.
David Bitton: Really?
Ryan Bailine: And that has not been the case. That has not been the case the past 10 or 12 years where a lot of people have made a lot of money in real estate and money was practically free to borrow.
Adam Mait: No, that's very interesting. And are you seeing that across the various sectors and across different markets through the US or is it really in the underwriting in those major markets? You've talked about the Texases, the Californias, the New Yorks and the Floridas, or is this just nationally occurring?
Ryan Bailine: Well, when I mentioned the New York, Florida, Texas, California, I specifically meant those were the markets where-
Adam Mait: Affordable.
Ryan Bailine: Well, affordable markets because they get the highest allocation of tax credits. Those four states. How they get divvied up between San Antonio and Dallas and Los Angeles and San Francisco. I know enough about Florida, I don't know... The processes are different in those states, but in Florida the major, the Tampa, Tampa Bay, Orlando, Miami, Fort Lauderdale market are likely to get significant increases in tax trend allocations, projects in those markets. That's what our clients are seeing or anticipating.
David Bitton: Now Ryan, last time you and I spoke offline, you mentioned population growth in Texas, but then you said affordable housing is not keeping up. Can you touch on that again?
Ryan Bailine: Yes, last time we spoke, I had had lunch with a client that day and he is working on a few deals in Texas. And the typical affordable deal is you tie up land for a period of time and then once you get it entitled and financing is in place, then you buy the land. Over the last 18 to 24 months, things have gotten very complicated in Texas and a number of affordable folks have had to take down land without having either entitlements in place or construction loans in place or both. And so for the calendar year of 2022, unfortunately there were zero affordable deals that closed in the State of Texas.
Now there are some political considerations there, which I know enough to be a little dangerous, but I don't think by any means am I an expert. But the unfortunate thing is perhaps the most needy group or sector of the housing market are those who need affordable housing. They can't afford it on their own. They need subsidy or they need the government to provide subsidies so that private sector can bill for them. And unfortunately in the great State of Texas, not one affordable deal closed last year. I think that that will be significantly different this year. But some of that is just secondhand from people who are trying to build it.
David Bitton: Got it. Thank you.
Adam Mait: Interesting. I'm just curious because you guys have your pulse on obviously the legal sectors here. Are you seeing as a result of COVID and the unfortunate incident that occurred a couple of years ago in the condo world of course, are you seeing overregulation starting to occur and do you think it's going to have an effect on the market as well and developers' interest in going into those particular areas or out of sight out of mind and people are moving past that?
Nancy Lash: No, the Surfside collapse has had a big impact on real estate in this market in South Florida. We were speaking with our condo group about this very issue and they have conference calls with folks who are very active in the legislature and they keep their pulse on regulations. And as you know, last year there was a substantial legislation passed to try and address the Surfside issues. One of the biggest changes and an easy one to discuss here in this forum is reserve requirements. The reserve requirements, because that in large part was a big issue. Before the legislation last year, condo boards and condo unit owners could waive the requirements for reserves, and that was the Surfside situation. Reserves were waived for in terms of reserves for capital improvements and improvements that were necessary repairs and maintenance over a period of time.
And when they needed to make those repairs, the number was in the millions and the unit owners didn't have the funds or didn't want to spend the funds. That's why the reserves were waived in the first place was to keep the HOA assessments lower. And it's human nature and it's not uncommon that that's one building, but that is not uncommon with older condos here in South Florida. A number of things have happened that have come out of that, to try and answer your question, Adam, more directly. One is, some of the older condos that may require substantial repairs where the unit owners don't have the finances to cover it, we are seeing some and we expect to see more condo terminations.
Ryan Bailine: Exactly.
Nancy Lash: We touched on this and developers coming in and finding opportunities there, which is really helpful on both sides when you think about it taking out the folks who are there who can't afford to fix the place. And God forbid another catastrophe like that happens and an opportunity for a developer. One of the other offshoots of this reserve requirement is that... And this we understand was a last minute fix in the legislation that came out, there was a thought that it should not just be existing older condominiums, but also developers should be required to maintain reserves while the association is developer controlled. And so what does that do? That increases condo assessments for buyers, so that impacts the value to the developer and the unit purchaser on new condominiums since those requirements are in place. One last thing I would say is that this was really surprising to me is that Miami-Dade and Broward were the only counties, tell me if I have this correct-
Ryan Bailine: Pre legislation last year.
Nancy Lash: ... were The only counties in Florida that had recertification requirements for condos.
Ryan Bailine: That's right.
Adam Mait: Wow.
Nancy Lash: And the rest... I know. We felt the same way. But the rest of the state did not. The sub of the legislation went to that as well, which is obviously important rules, but it does come down to a large part, the discussion is about the reserves and those requirements both for new and for older condominiums.
Ryan Bailine: And there's a few, not to get into the weeds, a few other detail issues that are coming up that the legislation, and this sometimes happens when legislation is being pass for reason A or B, there are some unintended consequences. Our understanding through our Tallahassee office is that there's not much of an appetite to pass what we would call cleanup legislation to iron out some of those wrinkles or get rid of some of those unintended consequences. But likely in the future there will be some minor changes. But the big issue with respect to the tragedy at Surfside, which drove a lot of the legislation, they seem to have taken some good prophylactic measures.
Adam Mait: Out of curiosity, and you guys are the experts here, are we seeing, are we thinking as a result of that a lot of these condo takeouts are going to turn into multifamily rental buildings or are we saying no, they'll stick as condos, they'll knock them down and resell them?
Ryan Bailine: Well, a number of them that we've seen because of where the property is located, i.e. waterfront on the beach, that kind of thing, I don't think that the... As part of the termination process, there's a whole appraisal done and what have you. I think that there's a decent likelihood that the appraised value is going to be too high to justify a rental building.
Adam Mait: Sure.
Ryan Bailine: And there's another one that I was just with the folks yesterday that's on the dry side, for example, of Brickell Avenue that went from, I don't know, 35 or 38 condos to about 140 condos in a spectacular building. But my gut tells me the answer to your question is no, in large part because of, think about where the Surfside building was. It's prime realist and the whole market in Surfside with the new Four Seasons condo tower. That area of the world all the way down, it's on fire.
Adam Mait: Absolutely. It seems to me that, and I think I read a recent study that Miami-Dade has some of the highest rental prices as well for multifamily as well in the nation now. Not to mention probably we all experience with some of the worst traffic, so hopefully we get some more roads and some more affordable projects as well out there.
Ryan Bailine: Absolutely.
Adam Mait: Indeed. Other than the condo world, I know you guys work on large scale deals, transit oriented developments, opportunities zones, public-private partnerships. Anything in that world that we can discuss today and let our listeners know a little bit more about trends in those particular sectors. I think a couple of years ago, opportunity zones were big, transit oriented developments, but I'd love to hear your guys' thoughts on those.
Nancy Lash: I would say even more broadly, Adam, for what started for us as the transit oriented developments and the county, Miami-Dade County in particular, being out front in those kinds of projects, realizing that they could monetize and capitalize on real estate that they owned as they saw multi mixed use developments coming up. And we can talk about that a little bit too, but mixed use developments like a Brickell city center or the all aboard Brightline Station and so many others now, Miami World Center. Projects like that, they capitalized on that around the metro rail. And so I've seen that concept grow. The county's concept essentially was let's put out for RFP a real estate project, a potential real estate development around transit, around the metro rail. We'll get the improvements that we need to the metro rail and the metro rail station because all of those deals include that. We'll help with the traffic, which you just mentioned by getting more commuters on the rail and using the rail.
And we'll receive some revenue in the process, long-term revenue stream to bolster the county's budget. I've only seen that grow. We've seen it expand to colleges and to community colleges. The school board of Miami-Dade County is pretty active in this area, either working or attempting to work with developers they own, they're actually one of the largest landholders in Miami-Dade, if not the largest, probably the largest.
David Bitton: I think so.
Nancy Lash: And so Broward College had put out to an RFP and friends of ours were the successful respondents in that and developing on the college's property. And their entire purpose was to supplement their budget through a development project on land that they were not using and did not see they had a use for to supplement losses in revenues that they were receiving from the state. I think you're going to continue to see that grow. I think folks are monetizing their property and it actually makes a lot of sense.
Ryan Bailine: And let me pick up on something that Nancy just said, and I would say that I'm making this statement as just passing information on from clients. And that is whether you're building multifamily or buying multifamily or building office or buying office or building $10 million condos or affordable housing, many of our clients, particularly over the last few years have continued to look to Florida to execute on deals, buying, selling, what have you. And a number of them, if you've read in the paper, have opened offices in Florida because for whatever reason right now, those folks in the finance and real estate world-
Adam Mait: They're moving down.
Ryan Bailine: ... see that Florida, they can conduct their business. It's very business friendly.
Adam Mait: Tax friendly too, let's be honest. Right?
Ryan Bailine: Right. Their counterparts, whether they be in Chicago or California or New York, feel the same way. And that's why I'm going to crib a comment from a colleague. That's why Florida is still this bit of a unicorn while many other states are going through transitory and difficult times, both with finances, financings, I should say, and real estate projects.
Adam Mait: All right, so a couple of final questions that I have and we'll get into some other stuff of course, if I'm forgetting to ask, I think more than anyone that I know you all have your pulse on laws, new laws, regulations, federal, state, et cetera, that are up and coming. Is there anything that you think our listeners should be aware of that's coming out there that we should impart to them?
Ryan Bailine: Yeah, I can think of one topic. I can think of one topic that has not to my knowledge gotten a lot of momentum here in Miami-Dade. However, our market rate clients and even some of our affordable clients are dealing with this issue in other places. In other places, South Florida, so you have what in Miami, the city of Miami, you have what is called inclusionary zoning. You build affordable, you can get a density bonus, you can get unit counts, sorry, FLR unit count increases or FLR increases. There are other counties, i.e. Palm Beach County who are kind of doing it differently. And they're saying if you want to build market rate, X percentage of those units have to be set aside for workforce or even set aside for affordable. Now the difficulty there is it pretty much costs the same thing to build a market rate unit or an affordable unit in the same building.
And so where's the gap or where's the subsidy coming from? There is a lack of subsidy in Florida, which we've known about for many, many years. However, we've got some clients, I had a glass of wine with one last week who are seeing this in several counties, particularly as you move up the state where they build garden style market rate and if they want to build 200 units, 10% of them have to be affordable. Well they don't know affordable. And they can build, but then there's also the regulations or the red tape or the reporting on affordable. Said another way, we have clients who see this concept spreading throughout Florida where if you want to build a market rate deal, you have to include some element of affordable.
The only place, Adam, where I've run into this in Miami-Dade and you're familiar, is if you build on land owned by Miami-Dade County or Miami-Dade County Agency, I think it's more than four units, 12 and a half percent of them have to be workforce. However, this is being applied to private property. And so that's where some of our clients are like, do we go do a deal and unincorporated Palm Beach County if we know we're going to have this obligation or Pasco County or I'm not picking on those swords or Osceola County because gaining traction in this concept even in Jacksonville. And so that's one, I don't want to say it's a state law, but you're seeing jurisdictions heading in this direction.
Adam Mait: Interesting. Nancy, anything on your end?
Nancy Lash: No, I'm just thinking, I'm trying to come up with something. We had that condo legislation last year, but something else that came out last year in Miami-Dade County, and it was not rent control, but it was an interesting regulation that required landlords to give advanced notice if you are going to raise rental rates.
Ryan Bailine: I forgot about that.
Nancy Lash: That just happened recently. And I could see requirements like that because of the shortage of affordable housing here and Ryan hit on a great one. We're seeing it in the city of Miami too. And I do think that they have, it doesn't have to be just city owned land where there is potential affordable environment.
Ryan Bailine: It used to be for many years because the affordable housing, there's the funding, but then there's also the rents that could be charged, which are dictated by HUD. And depending upon if you provide utilities, if you don't, depending upon the, what we call AMI, area median income. And it used to be for years that the city of the county tracked each other, but then a couple of years ago, the city went and changed their definition of workforce from 60 to 140% of AMI to 60 to a 100% of AMI. And if you ask your average multifamily builder, whether they're national, regional or local, a huge percentage of their building is between a 100 and 140% of AMI.
Adam Mait: Sure.
Ryan Bailine: That's a police officer, teacher, some young professionals. And in kind of parting ways with the county instead of maybe being in sync, it has changed. I've seen deals not move forward in the city because if you can't run above a 100% of AMI for workforce housing, it may not pencil out. And so that paired with a lack of subsidy from time to time, I think has hurt the market more than it's brought those up who are in need of this class of housing, so to speak, affordable and workforce.
Adam Mait: All right, so before we finalize here, is there anything that you all can think of that I'm forgetting to ask or that you want to share with our audience that you think is of interest?
Ryan Bailine: Well, I think it may... This is going to be a little self-serving. I think that Nancy really should speak for a minute or two given how many deals she's involved in as to the strength of the office market down here in South Florida.
Adam Mait: Love to hear it. Absolutely.
Nancy Lash: It's so funny. He just read my mind.
Adam Mait: Awesome.
Nancy Lash: I think that the most ironic thing post-COVID, post-pandemic if we are post-pandemic is that we all thought the office market would crash. We figured out and learned that we effectively could all work remotely except for myself personally, but everybody, the entire city and county was all working remotely. And there were discussions in our firm, we didn't do it. It's very expensive to do it, but we thought we would see downsizing, we thought we would see subleasing and quite to the contrary. But that's the unicorn aspect of Miami, I think, versus the rest of the country. And I think it's really an intersection of a lot of different factors. One, simply the weather, so many people moved down here from out of state. It has not only spawned real estate development in the office sector in the city of Miami, but also in the suburbs.
People want to work closer to home, so we're seeing new office buildings like the Starwood office building on Miami Beach that we hadn't seen in, I can't tell you how many years. It had been so long since the new office building went up over there. The office market held and is stronger. I mean we saw Citadel relocate here. And again, the factors that I'm talking about is the business friendly nature of Florida, the weather. It's an exciting place to be. It's a growing city. We have the good fortune of having our friends from South and Central America come here as well as Northeast and from all over the world. And so the office market is strong. There's a good number of new office buildings both under construction getting ready to be completed and on the drawing books as long as the tenants keep coming. But it looks like that they will.
Ryan Bailine: I just want to pick up on something Nancy said because I think it's important. And we've been reading for the last couple of years about company A and finance, company B in real estate, even competitor law firms that were never in Miami before. Everyone's coming, everyone's coming, everyone's coming. You read it in the paper and you see it on Twitter. But the reality is, of the couple of thousand employees between Blackstone and different law firms and Citadel, very few of them are here. And so what I think is going to be interesting over the next couple of years is number one, what happens to real estate values when those people who are high wage-earning people start coming down here? I think an answer is that at a certain level, real estate values are going to continue to increase, particularly in the single family residences in the neighborhoods where people want to be i.e. Coconut Grove and the like.
Number two, and I see this not just, Adam, your kids and mine go to the same school, but I hear this both from my wife as well as other people like yourself and friends. What's going on in the school world in South Florida, public and private. I think there's going to be a significant change into how people get into school, particularly the private school world. It's already changing. Most of the larger private schools are building and they'll be able to accommodate more students, but I think it's going to be a different landscape in three or four years down here than it is today.
Adam Mait: Sure.
Ryan Bailine: And see, those are some of the things that I think you read about company relocations, but the 1100 or 2000 employees from Citadel, they're not here yet. And the question is, what happens traffic wise when they get here or what happens infrastructure wise? And I think that Miami's looking at it and the county's looking at it, and I'm hoping that those business leaders who have the phone to the mayor and what have you, and I'm hope and the lobbyist, I hope that they're all looking at it or else we could have some absorption/infrastructure issues in three, four years time.
Adam Mait: Well look, before we wrap up, I know you all are very selective and you take very large clients, but let's just suppose somebody's listening and we have of course tens of thousands of users or anyone that's listening to this podcast. If somebody wanted to work with you all over at Greenberg Traurig, how would they do that? How would they get in touch?
Ryan Bailine: 305 579 0500 and ask for Nancy or myself? I don't normally say things like this, but you know it's true. I don't go to bed before any phone call or email is returned that day and we may be the right fit and we may not be. My sense is we can figure it out, but that's how they would do it.
Adam Mait: In fairness... Go ahead Nancy, sorry.
Nancy Lash: We would love to speak with your listeners any way that we can help. We take calls because of the website. I'm sure this happens to Ryan too. My name must be early on that comes up because I get random calls and I always take them. And if we can't help or it's not the right fit, we can direct them to someone who can.
Adam Mait: Well, I'll tell you, before we started this, I was speaking with David and I joked not only are Ryan and Nancy, of course, some of the most intelligent, wonderful, knowledgeable people to work with, but they're also some of the most responsive, it's almost uncanny. You send a message and before the send button has hit, the response already comes back in. It's absolutely amazing. To our listeners who is listening, if you are looking for not only standup attorneys that are exceedingly knowledgeable but that are also very, very responsive, these two that are here, Nancy and Ryan are just amazing, amazing people and you can't go wrong with. I highly encourage you to reach out to them. Any final words of wisdom?
Ryan Bailine: Final words of wisdom. Let me ask a question. If our clients, and a lot of them you know whether they've got a 10 unit building or a 300 unit building, are not happy with management, want to make a change, want to get a little more tech-savvy in terms of how they run their operation, I assume it's fair for us to point them in your direction in David's direction to see how you can help them.
Adam Mait: I would love that. They can, of course come to DoorLoop.com and read all about us and we would welcome an opportunity to help anyone and everyone, especially if they come referred from the both of you.
Ryan Bailine: And I will tell you not to... A little foreshadowing, we're having that event that we invited the two of you to in a few weeks. And there are a number of folks, number of companies that are new to Miami. We actually are targeting new companies to Miami and what have you, who you, I think would really enjoy meeting with. If you can stay the whole event, that'd be great. If not, whatever you could do. I know you've got a lot going on at home, so hopefully we see the both of you in the next couple of weeks so we can make some intros and go from there.
Adam Mait: I'll be there. I wouldn't miss it. Absolutely.
David Bitton: Awesome. Well, thank both of you for joining us. For everyone listening, you can look at and listen to future podcast episodes at doorloop.com/ podcasts. Once again, Nancy and Ryan, thank you both so much for your time.
Ryan Bailine: Thank you.
Nancy Lash: Thank you.
Adam Mait: Thank you guys.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening all the way to the end. Don't forget to give us a good rating on whatever platform you're tuning in from and we'll be back soon with another new episode. We hope to see you there. And until next time, this has been Loop It In.