South Florida’s Trump Group Just Reset The Global Bar For Luxury Real Estate—Again

Extremely-high internet price actual property has lengthy been filled with sizzling pictures, narcissists, and bravado.

In flip, unscripted actuality reveals like Bravo’s “Million Greenback Itemizing” and Netflix’s “Promoting Sundown” have minted rankings and superstars out of realtors and builders, a lot of whom had been simply scrapping to get a list or a mortgage just a few years earlier.

Luxurious actual property can be rife with hyperbole: flick thru most multi-million greenback listings in Miami, Manhattan, or Los Angeles, and also you’d be tempted to imagine that each kitchen is match for a Michelin-starred “chef” and that every fixture and end belongs within the Louvre.

In opposition to this background, it wouldn’t be unreasonable due to this fact to assume that the tagline for the lately accomplished Estates At Acqualina in Sunny Isles Seashore—a.ok.a “The World’s Best Residences”—may whiff of somewhat aggrandizement.

When you’re conversant in Florida’s “different Trumps”, nonetheless, you’d even be completely flawed since hyperbole isn’t their model and perfection is what they do.

Seventeen years in the past in 2006, South African-born brothers, entrepreneurs, and actual property builders Jules and Eddie Trump, together with Jules’ spouse Stephanie (none of them associated to the previous President), opened Acqualina Resort & Residences, spanning 4.5 oceanfront acres with 98 visitor rooms, 188 residences, and award-winning eating places and facilities all wrapped up inside a 51-story tower fronted by 400’ of perfectly-manicured Atlantic Ocean seashore 30-minutes north of Miami.

Within the course of, the Trumps succeeded in setting a brand new excessive bar for luxurious actual property and hospitality in South Florida. Extra considerably, Acqualina additionally put Sunny Isles Seashore on the map because the epicenter of Florida’s new “Riviera”.

Over the subsequent few years, Acqualina rapidly grew to become one of the coveted lodge reservations on the earth (no hyperbole right here). It’s earned Forbes Journey Information’s 5 Star and AAA’s 5 Diamond Awards—each luxurious hospitality gold requirements—fourteen years in a row, and lately was ranked the #1 Greatest Vacation spot Resort in America by USA Right this moment.

Consequently, when you name as much as ebook a room at Acqualina on any date aside from a Monday in August, you’ll prone to be met with a typical, perpetual chorus: “Sorry. We don’t have something accessible for these days”—which, when you’re the Trumps, is an efficient drawback to have when your starter rooms go for a median of $1,200 an evening.

“Our preliminary imaginative and prescient with Acqualina was to construct a family-run lodge that had all the parts of the best resorts in Saint-Tropez with the class of an incredible, historic metropolis lodge,” says Jules Trump about their unique imaginative and prescient for Acqualina and the hole they presciently noticed available in the market.

“Stephanie, Eddie, and I all felt again then that what was actually lacking in luxurious hospitality had been nice facilities and creature comforts, notably whereas spending the day on the seashore, together with all the things from eating and drinks to distinctive service and spas. We needed our friends to step into the unique world of Acqualina and really feel as if their each want and want had been anticipated earlier than they even needed to ask for it.”

Utilizing Acqualina Resort’s success as a springboard, the Trumps opened The Mansions At Acqualina subsequent door a decade later in 2015, which consisted of 79 personal residences in an iconic 47-story constructing designed by Cohen Freedman Encinosa & Associates that’s nonetheless the tallest in Sunny Isles Seashore at 643’.

Billed as Florida’s first “mansions within the sky”, The Mansions At Acqualina delivered on nearly each element, end, and amenity that hadn’t beforehand been pushed in luxurious actual property earlier than. It additionally set a brand new normal for what the synergy of world-class design, artwork, structure, and way of life on the seashore may appear to be—one thing which each different South Florida developer remains to be attempting to catch up and outduel one another on.

Not surprisingly, particularly given their good timing nicely after the Nice Recession, The Mansions At Acqualina totally bought out inside months of launching gross sales, additional solidifying the Trumps’ reputation as one of many main luxurious actual property builders on the earth—even when their legendary lack of presence within the press and shouting their success from their penthouse rooftops belies their extra innately modest and humble facet.

Quick ahead one other six years to now and the Trumps’ latest growth—The Estates At Acqualina, which brings to market 245 residences in two gleaming, glass waterfront towers this time on the north finish of the resort—in some way manages to boost the posh actual property bar once more.

The Estates’ finances is a part of that success, which at $1.8 billion makes it one of the costly new residential developments in America. The Trumps’ perfection-at-any-cost ethos ensured that no expense could be spared to surpass patrons’ expectations at each stage, from the world-class architects, inside designers, and craftsmen behind the planning and building down to each materials, end, and fixture and the bolts, screws, and rivets that maintain all of it collectively.

The opposite driver of The Estates’ success has been readability of imaginative and prescient—and equally importantly, the flexibility to execute on it, which not coincidentally has been one of many Trumps’ actual property hallmarks for greater than 4 a long time since they first developed Miami’s Williams Island again within the Eighties.

Since its origin second, the Trump Group’s aspiration for The Estates at Acqualina was to create a luxurious way of life that may set it other than the rest on the earth, and to design a constructing from the within out inside which these particulars, experiences, indulgences, and facilities may very well be delivered to life in a method that may be easy and osmotic.

“Perfection in something isn’t simple to attain,” says Jules, “However The Estates at Acqualina is sort of merely that. After the extremely profitable opening of Acqualina Resort & Residences fifteen years in the past, adopted by the creation of The Mansions at Acqualina, The Estates go even additional than we ever thought we may go. No expense was spared to design and construct the 2 towers, all the things is one of the best in its class, and our high quality is incomparable when it comes to the supplies we’ve used together with mosaics, marbles, and metals. The Estates are additionally a celebration of artwork, structure, and way of life and a pursuit of perfection that you just’ll see manifested in all places, from the grand formal entrance to the signature integration of contemporary and basic structure to the exemplary providers that we provide to our residents.”

Not surprisingly—and with somewhat increase from the pandemic which despatched 40 and 50-something, deep-pocketed patrons from New York particularly fleeing to Florida for bigger ground plans and an upscale work-from-home way of life—each The Estates’ North and South Towers pre-sold out by mid-2021 inside six months of launching gross sales.

The Estates’ facilities and exclusivity had been a giant a part of that, along with the towers’ beachfront actual property and Florida’s tax benefits, says Jules, which helped to draw patrons with youthful households who naturally gravitated to 6 acres of Masters-quality lawns, landscaping, and swimming pools on the ocean, a quarter-mile of postcard beachfront, 5 eating places, and over 45,000 SF of indoor and outside facilities inside the Tuscan-styled Villa Acqualina connecting The Estates’ two towers.

“The Estates not solely gives the world’s most interesting residences,” Jules tells me with a uncommon observe of self-satisfaction, “But in addition the world’s most luxurious facilities for our residents, redefining the usual for stylish residing. The Acqualina model has all the time prided itself on placing our residents first, and Villa Acqualina is an unprecedented providing in a residential growth, together with a spa, an ice skating rink, bowling lanes, a movie show, a children membership, a teen room, an incredible well being and health sanctuary referred to as Acquafit with a juice bar, salt room, and boxing fitness center, and a Wall Road Dealer’s Membership the place residents may have entry to ticker tape, computer systems, and a board room.”

If The Estates At Acqualina has a penultimate pièce de resistance, nonetheless, for Jules, Eddie, and Stephanie it’s the towers’ lobbies, each of which had been designed by German designer Karl Lagerfeld, who was for many years was inventive director for the French style home Chanel. The Estates’ lobbies are Lagerfeld’s solely residential fee within the U.S. (Lagerfeld died in 2019), in order that they maintain a particular place for the Trumps given their reverence for world-class design and structure.

“The Estates architecturally are purposefully a mix of latest parts and design merged with European Previous World model that Eddie and I, together with my spouse Stephanie, personally love,” says Jules. “We’ve discovered that our patrons adore it too. So, after we dedicated to creating ‘The World’s Best Residences’ at The Estates at Acqualina, we knew that needed to be obvious from the minute our residents stepped via the door. Thus, the foyer design was an important resolution. Towards that finish, it was an apparent option to have our lobbies designed by one of many world’s most essential designers: Karl Lagerfeld, the very grasp of contemporary creativity. We additionally take nice delight in the truth that Karl selected Acqualina as his first residential venture in the US to carry his eye for opulence, luxurious, design, and magnificence to.”

On the culinary entrance, The Estates is not any much less world-class in its A-list, pursuit of perfection than its lobbies, structure, and facilities.

Avra—the primary growth of the long-lasting New York Metropolis Greek restaurant—lately opened in Villa Acqualina in November 2022 to nice fanfare and is now one in all Miami’s hottest new eating spots.

“At The Estates, Avra has rapidly change into one of many largest promoting factors,” says Jules. “It’s greater than a $10 million enterprise—the restaurant is 12,000 sq. toes, together with an al fresco eating space that overlooks the ocean. The design consists of an infinity pool, a group of latest artwork and a panoramic bar. The restaurant flies in fish from the Mediterranean day-after-day and has its personal community of fishermen and produces its personal olive oil. Primarily based on my quite a few occasions eating at Avra in New York, eating there may be an expertise that transcends your typical meal out and creates a one-of-a-kind expertise.”

If all the things about all of this sounds interesting, billionaire neighbors are your factor, and you’ve got just a few million to spare, just a few residences at The Estates At Acqualina can nonetheless be yours through re-sale.

The primary is Casa D’ Oro, a two-story, turn-key, single-family dwelling within the South Tower that’s simply re-hit the marketplace for $39,000,000.

Furnished by Fendi Casa, Casa D’ Oro flips the script on the everyday South Florida rental mannequin which for many years has priced properties vertically—particularly that the upper up you go the dearer (and normally bigger) models promote for per sq. foot.

Casa D’ Oro is the anti-penthouse, positioned on the South Tower’s floor ground proper subsequent to the Acqualina resort with direct seashore entry, a personal pool, outside summer season kitchen, a personal elevator, a four-car storage, 11’ ceilings, and 6 bedrooms and seven ½ baths unfold out throughout 11,605 impeccably furnished sq. toes.

The second is an unfinished 15,000-square-foot, four-story residence positioned within the Boutique North Tower that’s now in the marketplace for $85 million—which if it sells for anyplace close to its asking worth could be the costliest rental ever bought in South Florida, besting the present file of $60 million hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin paid for his 12,500 sq. foot Faena Home pad in Miami Seashore in 2015.

Named Casa di Coba after its present homeowners Joshua and Jenni Coba—who made a fortune in haircare and are reselling the rental to reap the benefits of Miami’s nonetheless smoking sizzling actual property market—the residence has seven bedrooms, 9 bogs, six powder rooms, a personal pool and four-car storage, its personal elevator, a three-story spiral staircase, a 3,100 sq. foot visitor home, and a personal oceanfront cabana furnished by Fendi.

As for the Trumps subsequent magnum opus after The Estates, Jules, Eddie, and Stephanie stay coy. However inertia isn’t their factor.

“We’re all the time new alternatives and locations the place we are able to elevate the bar once more and construct one thing that units a brand new normal for luxurious and way of life,” Eddie tells me with a wry smile. “The place and what that’s, you’ll simply have to attend and see.”

Judging from what he, his brother Jules, and Stephanie have carried out earlier than, nonetheless, each different developer must be holding their breath as nicely.