MA: One of our most popular articles this week discusses the important of showing your clients the proper appreciation. How do you, and Douglas Elliman, show your clients appreciation?

JP: Me, personally, I’m a major proponent of communication. Since my days as an attorney launching a law firm in this market to today running Douglas Elliman, I can tell you that the follow up and responsiveness of South Florida business professionals is such that if you bring a little bit of a New York state of mind, you’ll shine. I remember years ago a client said to me that they decided to work with me because I returned their phone call, which is clearly a very low level analysis of professional. What I’ve done and continue to do, is be responsive with people and continue to communicate with people, whether it’s good news or bad news. We try not to put people in a position of surprise or avoidance. You almost want to over-communicate with people to make sure they always know what’s going on and what’s the benefits and detriments of their decisions.

At Douglas Elliman, where client value is a pillar of our strategy, we have focused on customer appreciation from a different perspective. We’ve lent ourselves more to relevancy than customer appreciation. For instance, we see a lot of other brokerages buying their clients champagne and token gifts of appreciation, and all that is really nice, and I would call it a little bit fluffy. But what we do to respect our clients and build relationship with them, is focus on relevancy and professionalism.

I’ve come up with the phrases “commission chasers,” or agents who go to bed and wake up thinking about how much money they can make this month or this year. Douglas Elliman is very opposed to these types of professionals, or lack of professionals, in the industry. If an investment banker only thought about how much he’d be making on every trade, he wouldn’t be a very good investment banker. If your lawyer only thought about how much he was billing you by the hour, he wouldn’t be very exciting to you because you wouldn’t know if he had your best interest in mind.

That happens in real estate, and at Douglas Elliman we have shifted the paradigm, removing commission chasers from the equation and providing nothing less than client-focused professionals. We believe in helping agents become a resource of information for their clients, someone who they can go to for news and industry updates. It’s how you build trust and relationships, and ultimately create a successful business.

MA: Florida’s housing market, and particularly Miami, is drawing a lot of attention from both domestic and international investors. What is it about Miami specifically that makes investment such an appealing option?

JP: There’s so much exciting development, meaning change, I could go on all day. The reach and scope of our market has expanded exponentially. Even people who used to look at Miami as a place for a summer home or a second home, people are now starting to look at the city as a place to live full-time.

Diversity is one of the big factors contributing to our growth. We have an extremely strong Italian population, French, obviously Latin, whether their Brazilian, Venezuelan or something else, and birds of a feather flock together – particularly the Chinese, which have a growing presence in Miami.

Chinese tend to stick together when living abroad. They have a very different culture, a very different language, and it’s very rare you’ll see a Chinese person or family moving into an area of the U.S. not already populated with other Chinese buyers who can help them acclimate to the area. We are starting to see more Chinese buyers, but clearly we already have Canadians, Latin Americans, Russians, Europeans, they’re all here, they’ve been here, and I think that resonates in their home countries when people start considering relocating or investing.

Additionally, I think lifestyle has driven people to South Florida, and particularly Miami, in way we’ve never been able to do before. For example, we have events like Art Basel, one of the most notable art shows in the world. We have the Perez Museum of Modern Art, the Patricia and Phillip Frost Museum of Science that’s opening soon, the new world symphony, and the list goes on and on. Ten years ago, it wasn’t like this.

Similar to the expansion of culture, you’ve seen restaurant dining, hotels, educational institutions, hospitals, all stepping it up to be able to not only accommodate the needs of more discriminating investors and tourists, but also meet those needs in a way that makes the move to South Florida that much more palatable.

In regards to domestic relocation, we’re seeing large migrations of people from New York and California because of taxes. Florida has lower taxes than a lot of other states.

Miami has turned the corner as a metropolitan city in Miami, in that we’re not only recognized for nightlife and tourism, but we’re also recognized for lifestyle, culture, art, the theater and the list goes on and on. When I first move here, the saying was that no one was really from Florida. I look around now and can tell you, as one of the board of trustees members for the Mount Medical Center, is that the number of new deliveries we’re seeing at that hospital alone are through the roof. It’s become a real metropolitan city, as opposed to Miami Beach as just a tourist destination.