During Inman On Tour Miami, luxury agents from Palm Beach, Miami, and 30A discussed how their markets are expanding beyond second-home destinations and how collaboration drives success.
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Since the COVID-19 pandemic, Florida has become a hot spot for second homebuyers and affluent clients seeking a more relaxed lifestyle.
But what many found when they flocked to the beachy oasis — besides tax benefits — was a destination where they could find themselves settling down full-time.
Top agents based out of Miami, Palm Beach and 30A during Inman on Tour Miami shared similar stories of their clients coming to their region for a getaway and deciding to stay for the long haul.
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“I think that Miami is a city that is so dynamic and that it’s grown up tremendously from being a vacation destination to now it’s where tech companies are, it’s where finance companies are,” Jill Hertzberg of the Jills Zeder Group at Coldwell Banker said. “And people are living here, relocating here — it’s no longer a vacation destination.”
Hertzberg’s son, Danny, who is also on her real estate team, added that as people tied to finance or other hubs of industry located in various parts of the country began to move to the area, they ultimately brought their businesses to Miami with them, which created a snowball effect.
“That growth was really tremendous,” Danny Hertzberg said. “So the city went from kind of like a beach, second-home destination, to a primary residence, to a major tech and finance hub that’s driving a lot of the economy here, and I’m very excited about the future of work in Miami.”
Holly Meyer Lucas of the Meyer Lucas Real Estate Team operates in Jupiter and Palm Beach, and noted that the migration of wealth in recent years has brought significant opportunity for real estate agents in the area, because in addition to the swaths of billionaires moving to Palm Beach, all of their staff are similarly moving to the area with them.
“We’re in the middle of one of the most significant mass migrations of wealth and of population in American history,” Lucas said.
She added that agents should take the opportunity to sit on local municipal decision-making boards to help encourage development in these areas of migration to help better serve clients with more inventory.
More people came to learn about the pristine planned communities in 30A where Hilary Farnum-Fasth of Corcoran Reverie operated during the pandemic, she said, and the market subsequently saw “explosive” growth.
“We saw a huge surge,” Farnum-Fasth said. “It was just incredible, because it was just so undervalued because nobody knew about it.”
As new residents continue to look for homes in Miami, the elder Hertzberg said what’s been interesting is that, she’s called up her clients who moved to the area in 2020, wondering if they’re ready to sell (so she can free up more inventory), and “nobody has wanted to sell.”
“That’s the incredible thing here,” she said.
The agents who succeed in these desirable markets are those who are hyper-plugged into the community, panelists at Inman on Tour Miami said, from knowing about country clubs, to local schools, to hair dressers and beyond.
“Then they’re thinking about all things local, particularly people relocating to our markets because we all have people relocating, and you’re plugged in with the city and you know what’s happening in terms of zoning and you’re keeping people updated,” Danny Hertzberg said. “If your clients look to you as a local resource, you’re not going to have all the answers, but you know how to connect the dots and get the right type of attorney for a dock versus the right type of attorney to put an addition off of the home versus the right type for accounting …”
And beyond that, it’s about working well with other agents to get a deal done, Lucas said. She recalled that during the pandemic when she was in the advanced stages of pregnancy with her third child and showing a property to her buyer that was represented by Jill, she was having a difficult day, and ended up asking her to drive her and her client around a bit because she wasn’t feeling up to it.
“And my point with this is, that without missing a beat and without throwing in the bus or without flexing or doing anything weird that I feel like lower-tier agents do, she gave me the opportunity to, she would refer to me if my buyer asked a question to give me the opportunity to answer the question and I referred back to her. It was like we worked just so seamlessly in sync with each other,” Lucas said.
“The way that you can really cannibalize a career is by being sharky and by being aggressive and that’s not how we operate at the top of the market,” she added.
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For more information, contact Lillian Dickerson via email.