Dennis Carvajal is a real estate professional with ONE Sotheby’s International Realty in Coral Gables.
Every week, we ask a Miami real estate professional for their thoughts on the top three stories from the week before.
This week, we talked with Dennis Carvajal, a real estate professional with ONE Sotheby’s International Realty in Coral Gables who, in addition to working in real estate for 11 years, specializes in waterfront properties in Coral Gables and also works with commercial investors.
Miami Agent (MA): One of our recent stories looked at home prices within Miami and the surrounding suburbs, and we found, based on the data that we studied, that prices were rising fast in the city of Miami than the suburbs. Is that consistent
Dennis Carvajal (DC): The luxury market overall, which is what we specialize in, has seen a huge increase everywhere. I can’t really tell you that there’s been one area that has lagged behind the others.
Driving that demand has been a couple factors. Rates, though they’ve gone up, were at record lows, and if you compare what inflations at, the rates are even below that, so I think that’s a big factor. And by comparison, to a lot of parts of the world, we’re still really undervalued. I get people that come in from other parts of the country and other parts of the world, and they all say the same thing. They can’t believe how inexpensive things are here by comparison.
MA: We follow the foreign markets quite closely; are you seeing more demand from foreign homebuyers in 2013, or has demand gone down from years past?
DC: No, I would say it’s gone through the roof. We’re getting a lot more of a variety of foreign homebuyers. We’ve always had the South Americans buying here, but I’m seeing a lot more people from Mexico and Europe. There have been many Russians buying here, and many from France. It’s been a huge difference from what I’ve seen in previous years.
MA: We had a longer feature piece that looked at the three main syndication sites – Zillow, Trulia and Realtor.com – and their benefits for agents. Do you use those sites for your business, or have you found other, more effective methods for online marketing?
DC: Even though I’m young – I just turned 31 – my colleagues always tell me that I have a very “old school” approach, because I haven’t relied so much on social media as much as other people. I’m more old school in that sense, in terms of the marketing and relationships, and getting out there and networking. I think that’s the biggest thing on our business.