Dan Kodsi.
Dan Kodsi
Founder and CEO at Royal Palm Companies
Who’s afraid of the big, bad bear market? Not Dan Kodsi.
The Royal Palm Companies founder turned toward more conservative multifamily projects in 2021 amid Florida’s red-hot housing market, expecting that when the tides turned, he would be in a stronger position in quieter debt markets.
“I’ve been in the business long enough to know that when it gets that hot, it’s gonna get cold,” Kodsi said. “We shifted in 2021 when the market was good so [that] when the market turned, we would still have projects that were fundable.”
Kodsi’s strategy has so far worked. In July, Royal Palm landed $270 million in construction financing to build a waterfront luxury condo project dubbed Nautilus 220 at 220 Lake Shore Drive. It also secured $76.5 million in December to complete The Elevate Apartments, an under-construction rental project near the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.
Royal Palm also scored $61 million in financing on the Paramount Miami Worldcenter, the amenity-
filled 60-story tower Royal Palm completed in 2019, and Kodsi said the firm has sold 98 percent of the Paramount’s units.
Kodsi says he doesn’t see demand for multifamily assets in Florida slowing down, even amid an economic recession. He’s in the midst of designing a 9.6-acre hotel, office and retail master-planned community in Aventura and is always looking for new opportunities in South and Central Florida, he said.
“We continue to have migration to the state of Florida and we will continue to have migration to the state of Florida — it grows,” Kodsi said. “There’s always going to be a certain amount of demand for housing.”
While Royal Palm has focused on multifamily development, it also managed to lease out the retail component of its Legacy Hotel & Residences tower, a 50-story hotel operated by Accor with 310 residential units. Blue Legacy Ventures inked a 10-year deal for a 120,000-square-foot medical center inside the property in 2021. —C.Y.
