Maria Alvarez is a partner and Realtor at CWV Realty Group working in Miami

Every week, we ask a Miami real estate professional for their thoughts on the top three stories from the week before. This week, we spoke with Maria Alvarez, a partner and Realtor at CWV Realty Group.

Miami Agent (MA): Your new development promises to be a huge addition to the Brickell area. What can new residents expect from the new property once it’s complete?

Maria Alvarez (MaA):  The site offers tremendous opportunities for development, in particular given its close proximity to Brickell City Center. The development team is still in the market analysis phase, exploring several options, but also keeping several objectives in mind. On one side, this has to be a profitable endeavor for the ownership group, but it also has to blend appropriately with the other planned developments in the neighborhood.

MA: Apart from simply listing a development, what do you do to make the properties you represent stand out amidst an increasingly impressive field?

MaA: Marketing a new development these days clearly presents several challenges, in particular around raising awareness and consideration of the project to potential buyers given all the competing developments that exist in the market. Depending on each development, we work on tailoring a specific marketing campaign. The work usually starts by understanding on a fundamental level who the target market is for each project, and then developing a plan to reach out to that group in innovative ways. One of our particular strengths is also to develop alliances and co-listing agreements with other brokerage firms if we believe they can add value to the ownership group in the marketing stages. We seek to become trusted partners of the developers that work with us, and hence consciously follow a very collaborative process to jointly construct the appropriate marketing and sales plan for each specific project.

MA: In your experience, what is the most important part of making sure a high dollar deal, like the one in Brickell, goes smoothly?

MaA:  Clearly, the first element is having a deep understanding of what our client wants to achieve. And we focus a lot of our effort in making sure we develop that understanding. Still, once we are in the executing phase of a transaction of this magnitude, we believe that clear and uncluttered communications with all parties involved is essential to making sure a deal like this one goes smoothly. Over the last years, we have participated in several multi-million dollar transactions, and from all we have learned how to improve, where to focus the energy, and above all what not to do. One salient issue is communication, and making sure all the issues are raised to the right party, at the right time, and in the right way, so that each can be addressed properly. To that end, in these type of deals, we seek to become the focal point, controlling all communications with all parties (e.g., our clients, lawyers, brokers on the other side, etc) and acting as the quarterback in executing the transaction.