Justin Oates, Vanessa Grout, Fran Scola
Justin Oates, Vanessa Grout and Fran Scola
Senior vice president of Cain International; CEO of OKO Real Estate; CFO at Cain International; OKO Group
For Justin Oates, making a mid-career jump to Miami was a strategic decision that keeps looking better with time.
Growing up, the Boston native moved a lot before enrolling in Boston College, where he got a real estate license and rented apartments to classmates. He overlapped with future NFL quarterback Matt Ryan then, too. (Oates’ brother-in-law played on the Falcons, and they got to see Super Bowl LI. “It was a bit depressing,” Oates said of the Patriots’ storied comeback.)
A decadelong stint in real estate investment banking in New York would follow. During that time, Oates occasionally went to see his grandparents in Boca Raton and his father who retired nearby, and he began to notice the number of commercial projects coming online in the region. By 2019, he was ready to relocate full time.
“You look at the city in the early 2000s to now, and it’s such a dramatic shift,” Oates said. “Miami was already a global city, but it was logical to evolve into a domestic hub for commerce and a place that young professionals want to be.”
At Cain, Oates has worked closely with OKO Group’s Vanessa Grout and Fran Scola on six properties, including two luxury condominium towers in Edgewater and the Brickell waterfront, and a multifamily development in Downtown Fort Lauderdale designed to attract South Florida transplants and natives alike.
“The volume of sales and consistently high price per square foot underscores the fact that there is continued demand for new condo projects that provide desirable waterfront locations, strong ownership teams and iconic design,” Grout said. “As more people choose Miami, emerging neighborhoods like Edgewater are experiencing tremendous growth — both in terms of developer investment and relocation from residents who are seeing the neighborhood come to life.”
Their most significant project is 830 Brickell, a 55-story, 650,000-square-foot office tower that signed leases with white-shoe law firms as well as global finance and tech companies.
Oates believes South Florida is only at the beginning of its growth story as businesses continue to migrate to the region. “We’ve been enormously successful given there’s a lack of true trophy office product downtown and no immediate supply coming online,” Oates said. “Once you land a few of these high-
profile tenants, their peers and rivals are all likely to want to be in the same area.” —A.S.
