Discover the fusion of vacation bliss and financial acumen with Joel Greene, our expert guide from Condo Hotel Center. As the tides of 9/11 reshaped his career, Joel sailed into the harbor of condo hotel investments, and he's here to navigate us through this lucrative market. Unpack the subtleties of buying into a hotel's rental program, where the charm of owning a vacation home meets the savvy of an income property. It's where the allure of the W Hotel in Fort Lauderdale isn't just in its luxurious offerings but also in its investment potential. Ready to transform your leisure into wealth? Joel's journey and insights are the compass you need.
With a foundation built on 22 years of real estate mastery, Joel doesn't just sell dreams—he ensures they're constructed on solid ground. His philosophy is one of transparency and value, breaking down the complex dynamics of condo hotel investments while fostering realistic expectations for his clients. This episode isn't just about unearthing the gems of the real estate niche; it's a masterclass in customer service from a seasoned professional who has walked the path and knows every turn. If you're drawn to the intersection of pleasure and profit, Joel's expertise is your key to unlocking the doors of the condo hotel market.
Discover the fusion of vacation bliss and financial acumen with Joel Greene, our expert guide from Condo Hotel Center. As the tides of 9/11 reshaped his career, Joel sailed into the harbor of condo hotel investments, and he's here to navigate us through this lucrative market. Unpack the subtleties of buying into a hotel's rental program, where the charm of owning a vacation home meets the savvy of an income property. It's where the allure of the W Hotel in Fort Lauderdale isn't just in its luxurious offerings but also in its investment potential. Ready to transform your leisure into wealth? Joel's journey and insights are the compass you need.
With a foundation built on 22 years of real estate mastery, Joel doesn't just sell dreams—he ensures they're constructed on solid ground. His philosophy is one of transparency and value, breaking down the complex dynamics of condo hotel investments while fostering realistic expectations for his clients. This episode isn't just about unearthing the gems of the real estate niche; it's a masterclass in customer service from a seasoned professional who has walked the path and knows every turn. If you're drawn to the intersection of pleasure and profit, Joel's expertise is your key to unlocking the doors of the condo hotel market.
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Jeremy Wolfe.
Speaker 2:
Hello, hello everyone, and welcome back to the Good Neighbor Podcast. I'm your host, jeremy Wolfe, and today I have joining me Joel Green. Joel joins us from Condo Hotel Center. Now I've got to say Joe I was just telling you before the recording started most of our guests it's fairly self-explanatory what they do. I have a realtor on the show, a plumber, an AC technician Everybody knows what they do. But tell me, what do you guys do at Condo Hotel Center?
Speaker 3:
We are real estate brokers, but we have a specialty niche and that is the sale of individual condo hotel units that are being sold by the developer and, unlike other real estate brokers, we have no geographic boundaries. So, whereas many brokers have a farm area of Pembroke Pines or something like that, our farm area is literally the entire world, because we have sold real estate in Dubai, in the UK, in Baja and, of course, mostly in our backyard in South Florida and Orlando.
Speaker 2:
Okay, so I want to dig into this a little further, because this is something that I had never even heard of, did not know it existed. So, first of all, never even heard of, did not know it existed. So, first of all, how did you get into this niche in real estate? Tell us a little bit about your journey and your backstory, and then I want to get into a little bit more of the mechanics on how that works in terms of-.
Speaker 3:
I got a real estate license in 1986, right out of college, and a year after working with another firm, I joined my dad's firm, bringing with me just a little bit of new knowledge that I could add to his firm, even though it was inconsequential. My father, sheldon Green, has since passed away, but he was the premier hotel and motel real estate broker. He had a specialty niche back then, which he started in 1970, in which I joined him in 1988. I was selling hotels and motels, primarily in Florida, with him for 16 or so years, and then we had something called 9-11 happen.
Speaker 3:
9-11 absolutely crippled our hotel brokerage business. The phones weren't ringing, we couldn't bridge the gap between what buyers were willing to pay and what sellers were willing to accept, and subsequently we were just kind of in a limbo. It was about that time that my dad, who was the entrepreneur, said hey, joel, I see where several of the properties that we've sold in Sunny Isles, which was formerly known as North Miami, which we sold on three, four or five times over the last 30 decades, are now being torn down in favor of luxury condo hotel buildings, and I think if we were to develop a website and get buyers from the internet that maybe we could sell condo hotels and make some bread and butter deals in between our hotel sales. And it was the start. It was unfortunate for 9-11, but for us it turned out to be a wonderful thing business-wise, because after just two years of selling condo hotels, we dropped the hotel and motel brokerage business that we've been doing for 32 years up to that point.
Speaker 2:
So explain to me the difference between just buying a condo right, A condominium and a condo hotel.
Speaker 3:
Sure, when you're buying a condominium or, let me put it this way, when you buy a condo hotel, it is just like purchasing a condominium. You own it 365 days a year, you have all the financial responsibilities for ownership, but it is not a primary residence, it is a secondary home or a vacation home. Buyers typically use it a couple weeks out of the year and then, when they're not using it, rather than leaving it laying dormant and still having all the real estate taxes and HOA fees and utilities, et cetera, to pay, they now have the right, but not the obligation, to place it into the hotel's rental program, where the hotel's professional management will maintain the unit for them, rent the unit out for them and then share the revenue with them.
Speaker 2:
Okay. So it's kind of like, if I'm following correctly, an Airbnb program for a condo, because you can't do an Airbnb on a condo because there's the association. But it's the same type of model. It's a second property.
Speaker 3:
You stay there sometimes and then you're able to rent it out in a hotel type format there sometimes, and then you're able to rent it out in a hotel type format. I guess it's similar, but instead of doing the Airbnb, where the individual owner is doing all the renting of his own.
Speaker 3:
he's putting it into a hotel rental program. So let's take an example. The W Hotel in Fort Lauderdale is a condo hotel. Okay, Is it really? There's many of them in Fort Lauderdale and you would never know it. There's the Conrad, the Hilton, the W, the Four Seasons.
Speaker 3:
So, as an example, let's say you were an owner at the W Hotel. You own one condo hotel unit, a one bedroom, a two bedroom unit. As a guest in the hotel, somebody could be staying in your room. They would never know that the building is a condo hotel. They may think there's one owner for the entire hotel property. In fact, there could be 300 owners of 300 individual units. Their stay is going to be exactly the same as their stay in any other W hotel. Services, amenities, everything that they expect of the W will be there for them.
Speaker 3:
From your point of view as an owner, you use your unit when you want and don't pay any money to do so, except for maybe a cleaning fee. And when you're not using it, you say to the W I'm not gonna use my unit for the next 11 months. I want you to maintain it. I want you to rent it out for me and then send me my quarterly check. That quarterly check will help you to rent it out for me and then send me my quarterly check. That quarterly check will help you to offset your ownership expenses rather than leaving your place empty for 11 months out of the year, when you're not using it anyway, still incurring all the ownership costs.
Speaker 2:
Very interesting. So this is not all or nothing when it comes to hotel. Like they mentioned the W, is it all own hotel condo ownership or is it a mix of the hotel owning some of the some of the units and people owning others? Or how does that work.
Speaker 3:
The W is rather a unique example, and I probably shouldn't have selected that one, because they have two towers. One is all condo hotel, the other towers all hotel rooms. But even then, buyers of a condo hotel at the W don't have to be concerned that the developer has hotel units as well, fearing that they're going to fill those up first, because hotel rooms are typically about 350 square feet, whereas all of the condo hotels are one and two bedroom units from like 750 to 1200 square feet, two-bedroom units from like 750 to 1,200 square feet, and a family of four is not going to be as comfortable in a hotel room as they will in a two-bedroom unit or even a one-bedroom unit with a pull-out couch, and so you're really not going after the same markets.
Speaker 2:
Okay. Is that always the case where? No no usually Can you own a 400-square-foot regular hotel room as condo hotel, or is it reserved for the larger spaces?
Speaker 3:
Well, condo hotels don't typically have hotel room sized units. They typically have studios, one bedrooms and two bedrooms. And while there are some smaller studios and some properties that could be as small as 400, 450 square feet, they're still usually significantly larger than a typical hotel room and they typically have full kitchens, sometimes washers and dryers. They are delivered to you, the owner, with plates and silverware and pictures on the wall and everything furnished for you. So as an owner, all you got to do is bring your toothbrush when you go to travel. And as a guest in the hotel, you now have not only a place to sleep, but you also have a place where you can do your own cooking, so that you don't have to feel like you have to go out every night, and you typically have the same kind of great four or five star services and amenities that you would if you stayed in a four or five star hotel, including the concierge and restaurants and the spas and the bars, etc.
Speaker 2:
Got it, got it. So how do you typically get new clients for this? Because if, again, this is the first I'm hearing of this, I didn't even know this existed. I'd imagine that's probably the case for a large swath of the population. How are people learning about this? How are people coming to you?
Speaker 3:
Well, this is an interesting thing. It was my father and I that started Condo Hotel Center back in 2002 as a concept. It was about a year later that my sister, Susan, who is a professional writer living in the Orlando area, said hey, dad, Joel, I've got some ideas that could improve your website, which will improve your search engine ranking, which could lead towards more buyers and potentially more sales. Improve your search engine ranking, which could lead towards more buyers and potentially more sales. And we let her adopt us.
Speaker 3:
We had started out with a $500 four-page website, which, over the next two years, Susan, grew to over 750 written pages, and suddenly we dominated Google with the number one, two, four, seven, nine and 10 listings appearing for any search. You would do with the number one, two, four, seven, nine and ten listings appearing for any search. You would do with the words condo hotel in it. Gradually, as a result of that, we grew our database to over 30,000 buyers in a short period of time. Now, about that same time, condo hotels was becoming very well known. Condo Hotels was becoming very well known, and so the reporters that were doing stories for newspapers that wanted to do stories about condo hotels and didn't have a clue what they were said. Well, who do we talk to? So they Googled condo hotels and there's Joel Green one two, four, seven, nine, ten.
Speaker 3:
So I was doing Wall Street Journal, new York Times, businessweek, usa Today, washington Post, miami Herald two, three interviews a week and every time we did that we'd pick up another 50 or 100 people finding our website and saying how do we get your property alert newsletter? Because we couldn't be interested. And so things just absolutely mushroomed. And the reason we aborted hotels and motels as a brokerage specialty for 32 years is within a very short period of time.
Speaker 3:
We were making so many more deals selling individual condo hotels where we were getting much larger commissions and we didn't have the same difficulty selling a hotel, you know, working on a deal for six months only to watch it fall apart and have nothing to show for it. Our specialty niche with condo hotels is to specialize in developer owned inventory, which means that I have an on site salesperson at every single property hired by the developer to assist me. They provide me the information, the pictures, my sister writes up her professional newsletters and we get that out. I handle the inquiries and get the buyer to the point where they say I'm interested in moving forward, and at that point my on-site salesperson handles the contracts, handles the deposits, I'm moving on to the next deal, and yet I earn the full commission.
Speaker 2:
Very cool. I love what you're doing. This is all interesting. I love learning new things.
Speaker 3:
Now here's the interesting thing, really, because of the way we're doing things, with a developer that has an onsite salesperson that works with us, I'm selling condo hotels sitting in my home office in Pembroke Pines. I don't see the properties that I'm offering because we're usually offering them in early pre-construction. I rarely ever meet my buyers. Over the last 20 plus years of doing this, I probably met a hundred buyers in person and that's because they wanted something in Fort Lauderdale or Miami, but I've been selling real estate all over the world. In 2005, we were contacted by the first developers of a condo hotel, referred to as a part hotel, in Dubai.
Speaker 3:
Condo hotels was becoming the hottest real estate trend since timeshare in the 1970s and Dubai was the biggest market in the world with everything that they did was the biggest, the strongest, the fastest, the highest. They put ski mountains inside malls. It was crazy and everybody was hearing about Dubai. Now they had condo hotels and we were kind enough to the first developers there to offer our verbal assistance answering questions for them. They rewarded us with exclusive inventory in their properties. Susan would write up the property alert, we'd send it out and I would literally sell as many as 15 condo hotel units in a weekend.
Speaker 3:
Some brokers won't do that all year, and this was just mind blowing to me because I'd been killing myself trying to sell hotels and motels for 16 years and I was a raging failure. I was horrible. I was riding on my father's coattails. But now, as a condo hotel broker, where I don't have to be a listing agent, I just have to deal with my buyers and give them my attention and detail I found my own expertise, my thing. My father was the hotel motel guru that's how he was known and suddenly I was the condo hotel guy, you know. So things just exploded for us after about 2004. And then we started adding on Dubai. We had tremendous success with selling the Trump in Baja Mexico. Then in 2015 through 2018, we were selling a ton of condo hotels in the UK and we have literally been all over the map since. But still, florida is where most of our inventory is, because I'm reading publications, that I'm learning about what's available and that's what I'm typically seeing Orlando, south Florida, the Caribbean, COVID must have thrown you guys for a loop.
Speaker 2:
Tell me about that, what happened during COVID and how that affected your business.
Speaker 3:
COVID was the second best thing to happen.
Speaker 2:
Do tell, do tell please.
Speaker 3:
While everybody else was now trying to figure out how they're going to make a living when they're stationed in their home.
Speaker 3:
I was already stationed in my home and, yes, people were worried, was unfortunately unable to go out and travel, and nobody was looking to buy property until all of a sudden there was a vaccine, a light at the end of the tunnel, and now for the better part of a year, you've had people that were still earning money working at home, couldn't invest it anywhere, wanted to travel, and now, with the light at the end of the tunnel, they say, oh my God, I can buy a condo hotel and I'll have a place to go travel, I have a place to invest my money, I have a place to potentially make some income.
Speaker 3:
And in twenty one and twenty two while I don't know what the rest of the world was doing, because I'm kind of like a hermit in my own home our business took off yet again. So we have ridden ups and downs. You know, when we started the business in 2002, when business took off for us, in 2005, when we were starting to sell properties in Dubai, then the real estate market collapsed. And in 2008, I had my worst year ever and it took about three or four years before it bounced back, but since 2012, 2013, we've been riding a second or third wave of success, and COVID really was a boost for our business.
Speaker 2:
See, I wouldn't have thought that right. I would have thought that, travel being restricted and people being uncertain, industries such as yours would not blow up. But clearly I was mistaken.
Speaker 3:
You were mistaken.
Speaker 3:
You're very fortunate. I'm not a super salesperson. I'm a personable guy who's detail oriented, who takes the time to answer every single buyer's questions. I mean literally. They'll ask questions and I'll stop at the end of their period and I'll put my answer in red and I go on to their next statement so that nothing gets overlooked, and I've got a good follow-up system, et cetera. But what we do better than anybody else, I believe is put out quality information that will answer 98% of most buyers' typical questions so that they can make an informed decision. I'm a low-pressure guy. It's not my style. If I provide them the information and they want more, I'll get them more. If they want a virtual presentation, I'll arrange that and I'll sit on the call with them because I can add something with 22 years of experience that the onsite salesperson giving the presentation may gloss over. And I want my buyer to feel like, hey, Joel didn't just earn a commission for making a phone call. He earned it because he was looking out for me, and that's something I've always done.
Speaker 3:
People are always telling me that I'm too honest. That's the only way I know I mean seriously. I tell buyers that condo hotels are great vacation homes but they're not designed to be a good cash flowing vehicle. So if you're looking at this strictly as an investment, don't buy it. You may get a decent return. But because I'm selling an early pre-construction, developers have to follow SEC rules and regulations that say you may not sell the investment aspects of a condo hotel. All you may sell is the real estate and the lifestyle. So if you're looking to get from me, what's the bottom line going to be? How much money am I going to make? I'm not going to give you those answers because they can't be given to me and I'm not going to stick my neck out and provide information that, if it doesn't materialize, you're going to say well, joel told me I was going to get an 8% return. No, joel said you're going to get a great vacation home that you're going to use and enjoy and you'll make some money to offset all or most of your ownership expenses when you're not using it.
Speaker 3:
And by keeping honest with people, some people say, well then, this is not for me and I say I understand. And others say wait, you're working for commissions and you're telling me I may not make a good return. What's wrong with this picture? You're not lying to me and that's what I'm used to. I said, well, listen, you know I've got a great reputation. I didn't build up a large database by telling people what they want to hear. I tell them the truth and if it's still what they want, I want to work with that person more than somebody who tells me I want a six and eight, a 10% return, which I will tell them right up front. You're not being realistic. And then sometimes they're not too happy about it and they tell me off. But please, everybody.
Speaker 2:
So so okay, not for everybody, but for our listeners out there that would like to learn more. How can they reach you? Maybe share your website and your contact information.
Speaker 3:
Let us know how we can get in touch, joel Well my website is wwwcondohotelcentercom, and center is spelt the American way, not the British way. I always joke because I don't really have much in the way of competition specializing in condo hotels. So when buyers try to tell me off, oh well, I've got $150,000 and I can buy anything I want. I don't have to work with you. Who do you think you are? I said listen, just pull out your phone, ask Siri, who's the number one condo hotel broker in America. I'll wait, because my website with all 750 plus pages is still going to pop up right at the top, and there's my face.
Speaker 3:
So if you think you can find somebody else more knowledgeable about condo hotels, god bless you. You know I, I okay, I'm a wise guy. That's just my nature. But the bottom line is I take care of my customers and I don't let people tell me off or put me in my place because I've got a little bit of an ego. After 20 plus years of success of doing this. I think that they need me more than I need them, but I'll never make them feel that way until they try to put me in my place.
Speaker 2:
Confidence and conviction.
Speaker 3:
Well, like I said, I was a miserable failure as a hotel and motel broker, but I found my niche in 2002 selling condo hotels, and after 22 years of doing that and 37 years of selling real estate, you know a thing or two about a thing or two.
Speaker 3:
It's not my first rodeo at this point, so you know I know. When the buyers are BSing me. When they say, oh, cash is no problem until I throw out the first property that starts at a million five, they say, oh, no, no, what do you got for under two hundred thousand? Why are you not being upfront with me? Because I'm trying to be upfront with you and help you and if you're going to give me misleading information, you're going to get bad response.
Speaker 2:
Yep Indeed, all right. Well, joel, we're going to put a link in the description to all of your contact information, so for anyone out there that's listening, if they do want to reach out to learn more, they know where to find you. Joel, thanks so much for joining us today.
Speaker 3:
It's been a real pleasure. Thank you, yeah, that was our pleasure.
Speaker 2:
Thank you, yeah, it's our pleasure, and thanks to our listeners for tuning in and we will catch everyone next time. Take care.
Speaker 1:
Have a great day. Thanks for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast Cooper City. To nominate your favorite local business to be featured on the show, go to GNPCooperCitycom. That's GNPCooperCitycom, coopercitycom. That's gnp coopercitycom, or call 954-231-3170.