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Adam Gower: Diego Ojeda, I am so happy to meet you. You are a proactive guy. Thank you for being on the podcast. I really appreciate it. Come on, we want to know all about you and your company. Please tell me, what's your name, rank and serial number? What you do over there?

Diego Ojeda: My pleasure.

Diego Ojeda: Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. My name is Diego Ojeda and I'm president of Rilea Group - a full service real estate development company based in Miami, Florida. We've been developing here in South Florida for 40 years and we have developed or are developing 9 million square feet of residential, retail and office products.

Adam Gower: Is there anything left in Miami for the other guys to develop, if you're doing 9 million?

Diego Ojeda: Yes. Miami is still a very virgin market. It's relatively a new city, only one hundred years old. So, there's a lot to be done in Miami. It's the Wild West out here. So, there's a lot of opportunity to be done. That's why you've seen so much - so many people and capital flocking from New York, California, the Northeast in general, just coming down to Miami because there's just so much opportunity. It's such a great place to live, low taxes, great year-long weather and, you know, Miami just speaks for itself.

Adam Gower: Let's drill down on that in a minute. Tell me the story of your company. Tell me, from the very beginning, kind of a brief sweep of the history of the company, if you would.

Diego Ojeda: Right. So, originally we're from Spain. My family's from Madrid, Spain, and the company started in 1981 and, it was my father started the company and it was him bringing European, mainly Spain investors looking to do real estate deals in the US. And, he was pitching them residential projects and office projects, income-producing, rental projects, usually with a longer term horizon and these were people that were looking to invest and diversify, and Miami looked attractive to them. This was early '80s and, as the company grew, it started off in the single-family home space and then grew to several hundred single family homes. And then after that, really started getting into the income-producing properties. And the larger project was an office building, which actually just sits right behind my office right here. It's the Sabadell Financial Center and that's a 550,000 square foot Class A office building, which today is owned by KKR. So. yeah. And ever since then, our main street here is called Brickell Avenue. On Brickell Avenue, we've developed 5 buildings. The first one was Sabadell Financial Center along with JW Marriott. The next was a 371-unit multifamily project called One Broadway, which for 10 years, had the highest multifamily rents in all of Miami. Phase two of that is the JP Morgan Tower. It's JP Morgan's headquarters - 580,000 square foot classic office building. And the last building we built, on this street, is one called The Bond - 328 units, which was a condo project and we sold that after construction.

 

Adam Gower: Amazing story, actually. It's a really incredible story. I'm fascinated by the idea that your father, first came here, with overseas investors. So how is that changed over the years?

 

Diego Ojeda: Yes, so I was born and raised in Miami. So, since I was born - since I was raised on this side of the Atlantic, most of my friends and network is either domestic or South American Hispanic. So, we now have investors from the US, as well as from Bolivia, from Colombia, Venezuela, Mexico and the Dominican Republic. So, it just opens up a whole new network being on this side of the Atlantic and Miami is just such a hotbed for so many cultures that you're exposed to all these different types of people and really, the sky's the limit for meeting and expanding.

 

Adam Gower: Alright. So now you've got to, Diego, you've got to tell me. Your father started to build the business. 1981 - doesn't look like you could have been born in 1981.

 

Diego Ojeda: 1982.

 

Adam Gower: So he really came to  America with a bang, right? Took off with a bang. What's your story in commercial real estate? Tell me about your personal path, as the President of the company now.

 

Diego Ojeda: Yes, so I've been with the company now 11 years and I've been involved with 4 projects - 4 large projects. One Broadway, 1450 which was the JP Morgan Chase Tower. That was a 580,000 square foot office building that we built spec. We built that during the recession and it was a big gamble because it was the most expensive office building of its time. It still has the strongest curtainwall glass enclosure in the nation. It's the only large project in Miami with a second generator and it was a big gamble. We opened up March of 2010. And luckily, it was a home run. We were 100% leased in under 2 years. It was the first LEED Gold Office building, you know when LEED was even a thing yet. We went for the "Gold" and because of all these different attributes that it has, it won the ULI - the Urban Land Institute Vision Award in 2012. So, we are very proud of that. After that, we developed an office tower, another office building in Miami for a  Spanish group. We then built a project called the Monte Carlo, which is in Miami Beach. Beachfront multifamily project - beautiful project. The architect is Luis Revuelta who, here in   Miami is, a really well-known architect. He's done spectacular projects. And, that project has always worked really, really well. We did that for a Spanish family. And then the last one was The Bond, the one that I mentioned - 328 units and a wonderful project to do. It was condo so, I spearheaded that entire project start to finish and it did really well. So, we're really happy.

 

Adam Gower: What was your introduction to real estate development? How did you get into the business? What was the first thing your father had you do?

 

Diego Ojeda: Yes. So, I started working outside of real estate. I was actually -  I came from the film world.  I worked at MTV Latin America and I worked at Universal Studios in Los Angeles and then I left to go do a movie. I produced a movie. We got into Sundance and we sold it to HBO and did a deal with Blockbuster, when Blockbuster was still around. And then after that, I had enjoyed the process but I wanted a change. And, my father had always backed-me on that pursuit, that career, but he told me, listen, if you're looking for something different, you should, you know, developing is very similar to producing. As a producer, you imagine the movie. You hire a  script writer, you hire the talent, you hire the director, you hire the production company, and then you have to sell this product. So, there's all the logistics side and that's what I had loved about producing. And with developing, it's very similar. You imagine a community, a building - anything, and then you have to bring that to reality. If you're the architect, the construction company, you have to raise the money, you have to sell this dream and then, once it's open, you have to make sure it works. And you're renting constantly. So, there was a lot of the same attributes which attracted me to do it. And, I tried it out and 11 years later, here I am and loving every day, so...

 

Adam Gower: Yeah. Well, exactly. It's funny you should say that, you know. I ran a division of Universal Studios. Probably, let me see, after you had been there, I would think. Before you'd been there - before. So, we'll have to talk about that afterwards. But, there is a tremendous similarity between movie production and real estate development. At the end of the day, you're looking at spreadsheets and managing people to produce something tangible. It's a very interesting comparison.

 

Diego Ojeda: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, definitely.

 

Adam Gower: So, what is your company's investment strategy? Describe that to me, kind of, the overall investment philosophy or investment strategy,

 

Diego Ojeda: Yes, so we're long-term people. That's the first thing. We're a family company with family values. Our last name and company name are very important to us. This is something that we value, very much. Reputation is very, very important to us and we work hard to keep it intact. Here in Miami, we have a strong reputation in the city and that's very important to us. So, our investment philosophy, really, that's the basis for it. We then like to find projects that we believe have a long span, and that can be - that could work for many, many years. That doesn't mean that we'll be involved throughout. It doesn't mean that we won't sell a project right from the beginning. But, we want it to be geared in the manner that if people think it's still ours, that it's still performing well. For example, this last project that we sold, The Bond. It's a project that was sold as condos. So, we finished selling 100% during construction. So, once we turned over the keys, it was no longer ours. But many people in the city still think that project is ours because, while we were building it, there was a lot of branding with our name on it. And we're still very proud. I still take people there on tours. I love taking and showing the common areas and the lobby. So, that, you know, being proud of what you build. We want to have that and we want our partners and our investors to have that. For them to come to Miami and be able to take the family and the friends and tell people, you know, I'm an investor in that project - thankfully did really well. So, that's, kind of, our holistic approach.

 

Adam Gower: Very nice. Now, do you only do ground-up, Diego?

 

Diego Ojeda: Yes. We only do ground-up. To date, we have never done, like a value-add deal, where we come in and then we....yeah.

 

Adam Gower: So now that's interesting because most investors these days have become acclimatized to the crowdfunding world where you get paid Day One. Pref is distributed because everyone is doing value-add and so, people have become familiarized with that. So, how do you address your investors and explain, "hey, look, we've got this 2-year build. You're not going to see any Pref. It's all accrued, right? You're in it, until we're done". How do you address that mentality that investors have. When's the next Pref payment coming, right? When's my yield payment, my dividend payment?

 

Diego Ojeda: Right. I just think the value-add space is jam-packed. There's so much competition that Cap rates are very, very low. And sellers, it's a seller's market. You know, we've sold several projects and there's so much competition that the price people are willing to pay is very high, which means, their investors, the returns they're able to get are tight. And they believe that they can turn these projects around and in the neighborhood, they can only pay so much rent. They think because they're going to pour so much money into this rehabbed project that they're not going to be able to jack up the rents to numbers that just aren't realistic. So, the spread of what people are able to make in those projects are not close to the spreads that people are able to make on new development, where you're making a brand new project. And yes, there is the time, the lockout time during plans and permitting and construction where you're not making distributions to your investors but once you do start making distributions, which could happen right when you're stabilized. You can refinance the loan, take out some cash, distribute it to your investors, tax free. And, they'll quickly catch up to those other investments and then pass them. And then, they're just more longer term. When you're later selling these, you'll be selling them for those same cap rates, only your NOI is just so much higher because of the nature of the project that you're just going to be getting a much higher return for it.

 

Adam Gower: Right. It makes for a good diversified portfolio not to have just value-add assets in portfolio.

 

Diego Ojeda: Yes, yes, yes. That's our philosophy.

 

Speaker1: So I'm going to ask you this because this dovetails into the same idea. You have talked about selling a number of projects. So, is your investment strategy to build, stabilize and sell or is it to build, stabilize and hold but, you defer to investors. Tell me what your philosophy is.

 

Diego Ojeda: The ladder, the ladder. Exactly the ladder. So, we have projects that we've held for over 30 years. That's because our investors, early on, told us that they wanted to have legacy assets that they held for the family or for themselves, and they wanted to just see this grow. And then we've had some which are shorter. Which, the investor says, you know, I have a 5-year life, so I need to be out around that time. It doesn't mean that on year-5, exactly, it has to be done. What we will never do is sell a project at the wrong time just because it's that year. That happens a lot in the institutional world.

 

Will, where I know of an example here in Miami where JP Morgan had had to sell a project or a large institution, let's say it had to sell. And maybe the wrong time, because if you watch covid and just to cut their losses and the investors probably got wiped out so well, we'll always sell in the right market and we'll hold the project.

 

Adam Gower: Diego, but Diego, if you were being completely honest, which is what I want it to be, you would prefer to hold everything indefinitely. Is that a reasonable assumption?

 

Diego Ojeda: We would like hold projects. It doesn't mean we do though. For example, at the same time, The Bond, the one that I was talking about earlier. That was a great success and that was a "For Sale" project from the start. So, by the time we were done construction, it was over. So, I think it's good to blend. Some short-term projects, where you have a big access to a quick capital event, blended with long-term assets. So I think the answer, and I'm sorry to say this, is a bit of both. To mix, best of both worlds. Long-term with extremely short.

 

Adam Gower: Fantastic.

 

Diego Ojeda: But, at the same time, with the long-term mentality. You know, we always think, if there's going to be a leak in 7 years, that's going to be my leak. So, I'm going to build this in a manner that is best suited to deal with that.

 

Adam Gower: Perfect. And now, what asset classes? How do you focus on asset classes?

 

Diego Ojeda: So, we do mainly residential, I would say. We also do office and retail. We have some strip malls that we own. On the residential side, some is in - like, right now we're under construction on a 288 garden style, 3-story walk up project, in the city of Sunrise, which is a city just north of Miami. And that is, no elevators, street level parking and those projects perform really, really well. It's very hard to find that kind of land nowadays, to do those kind of projects. For that project, we had to buy half of a failed shopping center, repurpose it, rezone it, and then come to life with this residential project. Coupled with that, which is more "middle of the road" type projects. We do the luxury residential projects - like the ones in Brickell or one that we're looking to develop in a neighborhood called Wynwood in Miami, which is that kind of project. So, you know, we like to do both asset classes. On the office side, which we've done a lot of office, here in Miami. There, we like to stick to class A office building. We like to stick to the center - core, core, great location and really push the envelope. The office building that we opened up - the 1450 Brickell, which is the JP Morgan Tower. We opened March of 2010 and it still has the highest office rent, in all of Miami, since then. So, we believe that when you give people a premier product, there's people out there that will pay for it. People like quality and we consider ourselves modern day artisans of real estate and we take a lot of pride in doing the right product.

 

Adam Gower: Ok. Now you started talking about it earlier but I'm going to let you dive in a little bit deeper. Why Miami?

 

Diego Ojeda: Miami is such an attractive place to invest, to live, to grow family. The live, work, play here is just unstoppable. We first saw it - if you look at it from a macro point of view, during the recession, Miami was one of the cities to first bounce back because we are a US city. Obviously, you're having access to the US market. We also have something that only we have, which is South America. We have the South American market, which is a huge market, which Miami is the capital of the Americas. So, they see us as their "central base" for offices, for investments. So, whenever you have a country in South America/Latin America, that is not doing well, you'll have flight capital coming to Miami. When it's the other way around, when it's a booming economy, you'll have people bringing investments and buying everything. So, Miami is a great place for that to come in. We have then Art Basel. Art Basel has been huge for us. It's the largest Art Fair in the world, which I believe started in the year 2000 and it has attracted so many artistic minds. It's spawned a great art museum that we have called PAMM - the Pérez Art Museum. And, just all this culture, that has started around there. And, which is great because Art Basel, it was an art show that started in Basel, Switzerland, came to Miami, thinking it was only going to be here for a year and it was going to move to the next city. It did so well here, that they decided to stay, indefinitely. So, yeah. And then another thing is, we have amazing year-long weather. The weather here is fantastic. And during COVID, I think we have weathered the COVID storm, really well, in this state overall. It was definitely tough in the beginning. I'm not going to say it wasn't. But overall, businesses have been able to to keep open and grow and that's why you're seeing so much people coming here. And then, we don't have a state tax. We have only federal tax. So, in states like New York or California, you have state-level tax and then you have, in some cities/municipalities, you have - the city level tax, like Manhattan tax. Corporate tax rates are much higher. Death taxes are much higher. Sometimes there's a 13% difference. So people that - we saw it a lot when we were leasing-up the office building. We had tons of hedge funds from New York, moving down. People see that they can work from home. They don't need to be on the trading floor anymore and that's more of a relic these days. So they say, why am I going to live in a city where it's so expensive to live and taxes are so high and half of the year I'm freezing, when I can be in Miami and live a great lifestyle.

 

Adam Gower: Yeah, it's interesting. There's a lot of migration into Florida. We actually have a client in Tampa who is a core-plus office sponsor and he's seeing exact reasons as you're describing, it's this huge inward migration. It's very interesting.

 

Diego Ojeda: Yeah, huge, huge. I mean, it's nonstop. You know, two weeks ago, Peter Thiel announced that he's opening up a Founders Fund office in Miami, in Wynwood where we're looking to do a new project which we'll talk about later. But yeah, it's just nonstop. Citadel, Goldman Sachs. Blackstone opened up an office here, a month and a half ago. And they said... my brother-in-law was on the team that did that deal. The Blackstone deal and the Blackstone folks said that they're super bullish on Miami and that was just the beginning.

 

Adam Gower: Yeah.

 

Diego Ojeda: The Train, which has been a huge investment by Fortress, which is owned by Softbank, you know, multi-million-dollar investment. There's just so much going on. Our cargo and then obviously the tourism industry has been hit hard, but at the same time, people have been flocking here nonstop. We just had spring breaks. Miami was fully open for business and those are dollars coming in.

 

Adam Gower: Diego. So I was very careful when we started to ask you - just to make sure I got the pronunciation of your last name right. I'm glad that I got that right. But, I didn't quite hear the pronunciation of your company. Is it Rilea? How do you pronounce it?

 

Diego Ojeda: Exactly. Rilea.

 

Adam Gower: RILEA, alright good. I got two right. I'm going to stop there and just ask you this. So, what are Rilea's main strengths? We want to go through a quick SWOT analysis. Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. So tell me what your strengths are.

 

Diego Ojeda: Strengths are, I would say, 40-year history. That speaks for itself. We have steady wins and strong values. We're an ethical company, family values, and we've never defaulted on a loan. We've never defaulted on a payment. All of our projects have always made money. We've never had to fire sale anything. So, you know, just a strong, proven track record. I would say, that's our strength. We know what we're doing. We do nice projects. Part of the strength of our company is finding projects and making them winners. Three times before, we have done the highest in the rank and by that I mean, the JP Morgan Tower - highest rents in Miami since 2010, across all office buildings. One Broadway, which was a 371-unit multifamily project we developed, had the highest multifamily rents in Miami for ten years. And then a project we developed in Miami Beach called the Monte Carlo, had the highest multifamily rents in Miami Beach, in the city of Miami Beach, for many years. So, you know, we've proven three times before that we can really be a market leader. So that's our strength.

 

Adam Gower: That is phenomenal. So, I have to ask, what is it? What is the "secret sauce", do you think, that enables the projects that you develop, to command the highest rents in the market?

 

Diego Ojeda: You know, we think it's a combination of things. The office tower, for example. Miami, which is prone to thunderstorms and hurricanes, we thought the most important thing is to have a strong, strong, strong building. And by that, it was the strongest glass curtainwall in the nation. So, even though the code didn't require it, we spent the money to do it. And today, it still is the strongest building vis-à-vis glass, in the country. Another thing, it was - a second generator. Imagine the life safety generator that buildings have, is for life safety and getting out, evacuation, things like that. But we said imagine, for whatever reason, the grid is down and you need to keep working and you're at JP Morgan and you're an American Express, you can't have no power. So, we installed a second generator and paid for it. And then at the same time, LEED. LEED wasn't even a thing. And we said, let's invest in green technology. Let's invest in LEED. Let's go for the Gold standard. There hadn't been any Gold buildings, there hadn't been any Platinum buildings. So, this was an investment that we did. But then, these were all tools that we were giving our leasing agents when they were leasing and trying to attract "A-level" tenants to come to our building. And I think it's why we were able to do such a nice, business-wise project, and why it worked so well because we made those investments. So, we are big believers that, not all products are created equal. We definitely believe that there is an art to this and if you deliver quality, people appreciate it and that turns into people wanting to live there, wanting to renew their leases, etc., etc. and the best ambassadors we have are people themselves just talking good about us.

 

Adam Gower: What are the biggest challenges you face at the moment, do you think, and how are you planning to overcome them.

 

Diego Ojeda: Biggest challenges probably are, not being able to move fast enough on deals. We see many deals pop up in front of us and we can't move fast enough sometimes. So that is definitely something that we need to overcome. I think it's one of the reasons it has opened our eyes to the crowdfunding world, because this now opens up a whole new avenue of investment, which is the gasoline that fuels are our projects. So, yeah. So, I think that's one of them.

 

Adam Gower: Aright. So, I'll tell you what. And that actually dovetails perfectly into opportunities and threats, which you've already talked about. But is the opportunity to raise money from individual investors, phenomenal that you're doing that.

 

Diego Ojeda: Yeah. That opens up a new opportunity. Exactly. You know, out of every obstacle, that there's always an opportunity. And we always say.

 

Adam Gower: Alright. So let me ask you some details about that.  Let's just jump straight into that. What's in it for investors, number one. First of all, this is your first crowdfunded deal, is it?

 

Diego Ojeda: Yes. So this project, which is called Mohawk at Wynwood, is our first crowdfunded deal.

 

Adam Gower: Before you talk too much about that.... we're going to talk about that in a minute and by the way, I do expect you, before we do that, I need you to buzz-cut the sides of your head. You have to do that. A mohawk. But let's start, kind of, general big picture. We'll get to Mohawk in a minute. We're going to do that as a separate line item. But for now, tell me, just tell me the story of how you came to crowdfunding, ever so briefly. How did you come to crowdfunding? Why did you decide to go to individual investors instead of all your current connections?

 

Diego Ojeda: Yeah, you know, we wanted to do it differently. Wynwood is really an "artist" neighborhood. It's the people's neighborhood. And we wanted our project there to be the "people's project" in start to finish. The idea of someone that usually would be shut out of investing in a project of this size, being able to, you know, from the comfort of their own home, learn about the project and invest in the project with a much smaller investment size, which to them is large and it means the world to them. And we respect that. But, allowing them to have access to the project, just, it seemed perfect. And it seemed, this project, in this location, because of what this location represents, it was perfect.

 

Adam Gower: Fantastic, good. I can't wait to talk about that - I'm dying to talk about it. The pitch deck, on its own, is amazing. Straight out of Hollywood. It looks fantastic. I want to move in already.

 

Diego Ojeda: The film producer in me, worked that out..

 

Adam Gower: I could tell. It's phenomenal. Alright, but let's move on. So, minimum investment. What's your minimum investment? Kind of, big picture stuff. A minimum investment in this deal?

 

Diego Ojeda: Thirty five thousand dollars.

 

Adam Gower: What is.. Right, and what's the, what is your? So actually, we've already talked about this. the usual investment strategy. I don't get too deep into Mohawk. In usual investment strategy, how do you address investors? What do you tell them is the likely time scale of their investment?

 

Diego Ojeda: Well, it depends. It depends on the project. It could be - if we're buying land, usually you're in plans and permitting for about a year, year and a bit, and then you're under construction right after, you know, depending on the project size. Right now, we're under construction on a project where the total construction time is 18 months. Another one that we're looking at, the construction is a little bit longer, 24 months. You know, again, it depends on the size of the project. And then once the construction is over, then we open the project, then we start renting right away. We'll pre-lease part of the building before opening. But really, the bulk of leasing occurs once you're open and then money starts coming in. At one point then we start covering expenses and once we pass that, then we start distributing money to our partners and we do that quarterly.

 

Adam Gower: And kind of, general equity size, historically, what's the range of equity...

 

Diego Ojeda: Yes, so....

 

Adam Gower: ....sizes on your deals? Yeah.

 

Diego Ojeda: So, the project that we're under construction right now. I'll use that as an example, just because it's fresh. The equity raise there was: twenty-five million dollars. I believe that project cost is about seventy million dollars, total. And the rest is construction loan. So, yeah. Twenty five million dollars

 

Adam Gower: And, what is the range of sizes of deals that you've been involved in, personally?

 

Diego Ojeda: The range and size of deals is, I would say, the largest deal is definitely the JP Morgan Tower, which was 588,000 square feet of office. I'm blanking-out on that budget, but that's, you know, around three hundred, I would say, around there. I know because I looked it up, before the call, and total development costs to-date for the company, I think is, 1.1 billion, around there. And then on the smaller side of projects, I would say the Monte Carlo was 136-unit apartment building, that's probably, was our smallest one.

 

Adam Gower: Last two questions and then we'll wrap up this Corporate Profile. Diego, what has been the hardest lesson you have learned in real estate, so far?

 

Diego Ojeda: So, I started right, during the recession, which was a good time to start because you really saw everything that could happen, you know, and it happened to everyone. And luckily, our company, we were only income producing, so we didn't have any condos, so we didn't have any foreclosures, or anything like that. So luckily, we actually had growth years during that time. But, it was a very good time to come into the business and see and learn what could happen and just try and be safe and see how to avoid that. Also, jumping now to COVID, we still own hundreds of apartments and during COVID, with many people have lost their job and things like that, we had to really work with people and help them with payment plans and really be there for them and, you know, those kind of moments, it makes things tough. But luckily, there was a large stimulus and luckily people were getting those checks in the mail every week and that really helped them stay afloat. So, in our properties, we were able to, you know, at first we had no idea how it was going to happen or how much vacancy we were going to have or how people were going to make payments and all that. But in the end, you know, it wasn't as bad as we thought at all. And, you know, we were always able to stay afloat. We obviously, always paid our bills and paid our debt and still made distributions to our partners. So, being able to witness those two large events in real estate, opened your eyes, big time.

 

Adam Gower: Very nice. Last question. What gets you up in the morning? What makes you the most excited about your work-life today?

 

Diego Ojeda: I love being able to contribute to the Miami skyline. I love the fact that we are in an industry that when you're creating something, you're creating something first by creating hundreds of jobs, per project. We've created thousands of jobs over the years, and those are long-term jobs because it's jobs during the construction and then later on, once the project is open. People that run the project, the retail, the people that go there, you're creating a neighborhood. So, the idea of "creating". That's what I love doing. That's the idea of creating a project, creating a neighborhood, creating a legacy. So, every morning when I drive towards Brickell, which is downtown Miami, and I see the Miami skyline and I can see our projects, inside of them, and imagine the ones that are coming, that's what gets me excited.

 

Adam Gower: Diego Ojeda, Rilea Group. What an enormous pleasure meeting you. Thanks so much for doing this today.

 

Diego Ojeda: My pleasure. Thanks for having me.