A Tale Of Two Real Estate... Moguls, Tycoons or?
Jorge Perez looks like he has aged quite a bit since the real estate boom days when his legacy of changing the landscape and skyline of Miami was coming into fruition. Jorge Perez is the Chief Executive of the Related Group.
This is a story of rising prosperity and into trials that define a person's character. It is a story of triumph in spite of the market and the resiliance along with determination that makes an entrepreneur pick himself up off the floor once he has fallen.
Jorge Perez is born of Cuban parents. I know the industrial nature of Cubans and since my husband and our children are Cuban I am partial and biased. Jorge was born in Argentina. He graduated from the University of Michigan with high honors with a Masters in Urban Planning.
In 2005 Time Magazine named Jorge one of the Top 25 most influential Hispanics in the United States.
The Related Group is the largest Hispanic owned business and had an excess of $10 Billion in development projects in the United States. Forbes had him listed in the top 400 Richest people in America in 2008.
He is a self made Billionaire. He started out building low income housing, moved into building affordable housing and then moved into building high- end luxury condo projects.
Mr. Perez considers the past few years to be his best work. We would watch these amazing condominium highrises dotting the skyline from West Palm Beach to Fort Lauderdale to Miami.
He is 62 years old and is up and running again after taking a huge hit in our South Florida market when it crashed and left Jorge still carrying the bag. There were buildings still under construction when the bust hit here. There were many units that ended up without buyers for awhile. A lot of buyers simply walked away from their deposits because they were speculators and were planning on flipping the condos before they were built out.
Jorge could have taken the easy way out. He did not ask for a bail out and he did not declare bankruptcy. He has been fighting for two years to save his company. He said that you do what you have to do and then at the end of the day, you live with the results. Without risk there is no reward. A combination of the condo crash, the economic meltdown and the recession resulted in his company losing Billions of dollars.
He has been working diligently for the past two years to work something out with all the lenders on his projects. After this time, he has been able to work out deals with at least 10 of his lenders and has negotiated a way out of seven of his debt strapped condo projects in South Florida.
He was on the verge of deep losses and now is debt free.
Jorge is not finished and he is not retiring. His drive to success is something I admire. He is keeping his pulse in real estate and has already made plans to start building middle class family homes in India. He is also planning on affordable rental housing in South Florida and yes, as soon as the market turns, more Miami Condos.
Jorge Perez says that the last two years of these tough negotiations with the lenders were the worst years he ever experienced in business but also considers this as his greatest professional accomplishment.
Jorge and his company The Related Group survived and from that we can each learn a lot about our own business, develop a good work ethic and get back up when we fail.
Stay tuned for tomorrow as we go to the flip side with the story of David Stearns. Lessons in what NOT to do in business and life.
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