The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz - #BecauseMiami: The Relentless Pursuit of the Real Estate Hustle

Episode Date: March 14, 2025

Those who voted for Donald Trump who are a part of the minority majority of Florida are facing a rude immigration awakening as deportation is a real possibility for some. Immigration activist Tomas Kennedy joins the show to talk about how the state is handling the new federal regime's directives. Plus, The Real Deal's Lidia Dinkoda comes on to talk about the South Florida's failure at becoming the next Silicon Valley also failed at bringing in office tenants for what they believed to be the next tech boom. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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believe. Hashtag, you got this. investing. I may be either extra ornery today or extra exhausted because I am in the midst of my colonoscopy prep day. Oh, no. Yes. tomorrow I'm getting the probe. I gotta tell you, this whole process has been a real pain in the ass. I'm waiting on it, I'm waiting on it. I'm waiting here or not.

There we go. Right? Yeah, it's been rough. You have to like, you're on a liquid diet. I've had lime jello. Lime jello? Water and Gatorade. I was allowed to drink coffee, so I did do that.

So I didn't experience caffeine withdrawal, which is pretty terrible. This didn't work out last time. I had a, we had to abort the colonoscopy because the prep day was so bad, like my body rejected the medicine. I was not properly purged. So I went in first thing in the morning

after this miserable day and they were like, and I told the nurse. You still got some stuff in there. I told the nurse what happened and she's like, is your poop clear? And I'm like, clear Pepsi? Like, is that, this is a thing? And she's like, yeah.

And I'm like, no. And she's like, then we can't do it today because I purged the medicine. And so I didn't, the reason why I'm like, no, and she's like, then we can't do it today, because I purged the medicine and so I didn't. The reason why I'm talking about this is because this is extremely important, because it used to be age 50 that you were required to start doing colonoscopies every 10 years.

I think between 2018 and 2020, they lowered the age to 45, which means I'm a little late. And the reason is, of course, because they saw an increase in colon cancer the age to 45, which means I'm a little late. And the reason is, of course, because they saw an increase in colon cancer at much younger ages. Remember, Chadwick Boseman was diagnosed in 2016 when he was just 39 years old.

So he still wouldn't have been in the required or recommended, rather, age range to start. And four years later, at the age of 43 years old, he was gone. So this is pretty important for them to poke around up there and take a look around. And I'll tell you, it's a good thing it got rescheduled though, my colonoscopy, because my colonoscopy

was the morning of the day in which my best friend's son was getting circumcised. His bris was that afternoon. So I was gonna have to go from my colonoscopy to this bris. And I was thinking to myself, so I'm going to be waking up from like a drug induced stupor. My butthole's gonna be hurting

and I'm gonna be looking at some naked white kid, it's gonna be like Andrew Gillum in South Beach. So I'm waiting, I'm waiting, Roy. I'm waiting, go keep us in. Thank you, all right. Hey Roy, speaking of assholes, did you hear about this one? Apparently, this is not kosher,

Miami-Dade City of Aventura Commissioner and bagel shop co-owner has been accused by his business partner of at the restaurant office in front of employees, pickling his cucumber, slapping the salami, greasing his latkes, buttering the biali, slapping the salami in that kosher. Jerking his gurkin, juggling his matzo balls, choking his kishka right there in the deli office. This is Aventura commissioner Paul Cruz, who's being sued by his business partner at Moe's Bagels for allegedly

Oh, not Moe's. repeatedly watching porn in front of employees while, quote, he touched himself in a lewd manner, end quote. Now you know how they get the holes in the bagels, right? So he's also being accused of fraudulent conduct and using the restaurant to provide free food worth over $233,000 to promote his political career. And there's like dueling lawsuits now against each other for stealing dough. Get. So, of course, Cruz denies all of these allegations. He's countersuing. But I would just not use the non-dairy creamer over there. Oh, no. There was, I mean, maybe butter instead of the cream cheese

when you eat there, Roy. They also have a location in, I think, in Hallandale as well. Oh, Mo's. He did say that the first step in the chicken soup is choking the chicken. ["Chicken Soup"] It's weird, on the menu they put the black and whites in the interracial under it, sorry.

I couldn't even get that one. I couldn't even get that one out. Oh, gosh, this is... Hashtag because Miami. It's a resolution that passed earlier today. The majority of Miami-Dade County Commission voted in favor. The language is basically just to comply with federal and state law. Commissioner Roberto Gonzalez sponsored that resolution that says the county must comply

with recently passed state law, which requires the sheriff and the corrections department to enter into an agreement with federal immigration officials in what's known as the 287G program. Activists, residents, and business owners voiced their opinion to the agreement Coral Gables chief of police signed without hearing residents at a commission meeting. The mayor of the city of Coral Gables supports the police chief. To ensure that if there is a person who has committed a crime in this community or committed a crime outside where they illegally entered this country that they're removed. Hialeah is the second city in Miami Dade to enter such an agreement with the federal government.

Hialeah police officers will gain the authority to stop, interrogate, and arrest individuals suspected of violating immigration laws. Hialeah is the city with one of the highest proportions of Hispanic residents in the United States. So, this is a nation of immigrants. I'm not a Native American. You a Native American, Roy? Uh, not by the color of my skin, no. a nation of immigrants. I'm not a Native American. You a Native American, Roy?

Not by the color of my skin, no. But Miami is a immigrant town. I mean, we are a minority majority community. I mean, practically nobody in Miami is from Miami, and very few people in from Miami, in fact, are from the United States. And that's what makes it so unique and extraordinary and colorful and fun. And there'd be very little culture without that factor in this community. And now there is no safe place for immigrants to go anywhere

in Miami-Dade County. As you just saw, the county itself, in addition to two major municipalities in the county, signed this, they call it like a 287-G deal with ICE and the Department of Homeland Security, ICE, ICE baby. And we're gonna talk a little bit more about what this means, but one of those cities was Hialeah. Roy, Hialeah. Really?

Hialeah. Yeah, that's probably one of the last municipalities that I thought would actually cooperate with. I think the stat is something like 97% of residents use a language other than English at home in Hialeah. Hialeah was home to the first Cuban-American mayor ever elected of a major city in this country. It is also Obamacare HQ. It has the highest rate of Obamacare registrants in the entire country.

And it was home to, I think, the only district, or I should say voting precinct, in the 2016 election that Trump won in Dade County. Really an interesting, colorful place. And now immigrants are in danger there. This is so wild to me. It's wild to me because I was born in Florida, but a lot of people weren't. Most of my friends and neighbors, in fact, were not.

And they are in danger. So I guess this is my privilege of being able to laugh about this. But because they voted against their own interests. Tomas Kennedy, they voted to deport themselves, Roy, is what happened. Yeah. I mean, talking about interests, I mean,

or best or worst interest, Tomas Kennedy, friend of the show, is an immigration activist. He's joining us now live from Guantanamo. Sorry, that's not. Kitmo! One of your least esteemed guests. Yes, well, he's in an even worse place than Guantanamo.

Tallahassee, Florida, baby. He is in the state capital. The legislative session is underway. He's trying to keep himself, his family, and his friends from getting deported in the state of Florida. He's there working with the Florida Immigrant Coalition, Tomas. Thanks for coming back.

Might be the last time, for all we know. But I want to ask what is this? Let's make it count. What is this 287G business? And more importantly, how do you respond to some of those politicians who were talking about, oh, this is just kind of a formality. We were required to do this by federal and state law. We're not going to we're not actually going to use traffic stops as a predicate to arrest and deport anyone.

Do you believe any of that? What is going on here? Going into the weeds without getting too into the weeds for, you know, for the listener. 287-G references a section of the INA, which is Immigration Nationality Act, which is the framework that basically structures our immigration policies and law in the United States, that basically delineates contracts that the federal government can enter with municipalities, local governments and other entities to enforce immigration laws, right?

Immigration enforcement. And this is something that was turbocharged actually during the first Obama administration during something called secure communities that was later discontinued, I believe in 2011 or 2012. 2012, yeah. Yes, 2012 because of the amount of racial profiling lawsuits that stemmed from it across the country that cost again, these municipalities and local governments, millions and millions of dollars.

Right. So it was decided to be discontinued and now it is being, you know, revisited under the current Trump administration. And most of these 287 G agreements are actually being signed right here in Florida, where we have more 27 G agreements signed than ever before, even during their heyday during the Obama administration. There's three types of 287-G agreements. There's a 287-G agreement that's basically in its most basic form that basically says

local jails have to hold people an extra set amount of time from when they would be able to post bond to be released for ice to come pick them up if They committed any sort of offense right with that could be a serious crime to driving without a license Which here in Florida is if you're undocumented and you have to get to work. You can't get a driver's license It's not like 18 other states were undocumented people have that option Then there is the warrant service officer model of the 287g which actually is the warrant service officer model of the 287G, which actually deputizes police officers inside of a jail to serve those warrants, right? They don't even have to wait for ICE to come pick them up.

They can just serve the warrants and do the paperwork themselves. And what Hialeah and Coral Gables has signed, which is so concerning, is what's called a 287G task force model, which is what the Obama administration has specifically discontinued, which actually deputizes police officers outside of the jail setting, right? So in our community, police officers can, again, interrogate, question people's immigration status, detain them on the basis of immigration, etc. And the reason why this is so concerning is for a number of reasons. A, municipalities do not get reimbursed

for holding people for eyes for whatever the reason is, right? We already have a criminal code that says that people are detained for committing crimes. So it's not like if you're undocumented and there's no 287-G agreement, you don't get put in jail and deported, right? You absolutely do. There's also the concern about racial profiling,

which will absolutely happen as police officers stop somebody and not all of them, but some are going to say, this person looks undocumented. Let me ask them for their immigration status. And in fact, we've seen that, for example, Puerto Ricans have been detained by ICE in this administration. Native Americans have been detained by ICE under this administration. And as I think we all know, Native Americans and Puerto Ricans, famously US citizens, right? So, and the last thing is,

police officers became police officers to be police officers, right? To police our communities, not to be immigration enforcement. So this adds an extra burden for them in terms of conducting their day-to-day work. Right, that neither they nor the community that they serve are being compensated for doing the duties

of the federal government. Here's the thing though, I'm calling bullshit on some of what I heard in that intro clip and some of what probably wasn't in that clip was said by commissioners and the mayor of Miami-Dade County, the mayor of Coral Gables, the police chief in Coral Gables, this idea that like we're not going to be stopping people and asking them for their papers. Well of course they are. That's exactly what this allows them to do and they also said,

oh this is only for felonies but if you roll through a stop sign, not a felony, and you get pulled over, and the officer is authorized to ask you your immigration status, you just got potentially deported for rolling through a stop sign. That is not what these local officials are promising, nor is it what I particularly think that people in Coral Gables or Hialeah or Miami-Dade County That is not what these local officials are promising, nor is it what I particularly think

that people in Coral Gables or Hialeah or Miami-Dade County want. An organization you're affiliated with put out a pretty strongly worded statement against Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, who I've been arguing for the last five years, has stabbed her base and her voters, not in the back, but directly between the eyes. And a lot of people were yelling at me or privately and publicly going, she's the best, she looks out for us, she this and that, all this frankly bullshit. And now all of a sudden I'm hearing that her base doesn't trust Daniela Levine Cava anymore, that she stabbed them not in the back,

but right between the eyes. Yeah, so let me respond to all your points in order, if I remember that correctly. So on you calling bullshit to what you've heard, and you are correct, because as I told you, you know, previously, police officers, I'm not saying all of them, but some will absolutely racially profile on the basis of identity and ethnicity on who they think is an undocumented immigrant or not when asking for immigration status, right? At stops. The other thing is, yes,

absolutely people will get stopped by running a red light, by running a stop sign, by speeding, or some other form of traffic infraction, and they'll be asked for a driver's license, right? And they won't have one because again, if you're undocumented in the state of Florida, you cannot access, there is no way for you to get a driver's license. Another thing that they neglect to mention is that there are about 700,000 people in the state of Florida with orders of deportation. And orders of deportation are not assigned on the basis of a crime, right?

These are people that may have had an asylum claim, right? And the asylum claim gets denied and they have done nothing wrong. They're here paying taxes through their tax ID number, which is given to them. They're working, they may have a home, they may have family, but their asylum claim might be denied. They could end up with an order of deportation out of that. When a police officer runs their license now as they're driving, right? They will see that ICE warrant pop up

and they will be empowered now to stop them even if they have not even committed a traffic infraction, right? So what this does is, I know their negative aspect of this, it really harms the trust between the community and the police because now people are going to be afraid to call the police to report all sorts of crime, right?

Whether it's a burglary or domestic abuse or, you know, a crime that they saw in their neighborhood, they're going to say, well, I'm not going to call the police because they're going to come here and they're going to ask me for my ID. They're going to ask me for my driver's license, my social security number, and I could end up detained. I could end up with a detainer myself. So we're going to see a lot more crime on reported. Now to your other point about the mayor.

So yes, Miami-Dade County, I believe they signed the warrant service officer model of the 287G, which is the one that I believe that if they signed that one, which I think they did, deputizes police officers inside of the jail setting to serve these warrants. The problem with this is that, look, there are a number of state laws that mandate that

Miami, municipalities that operate a county jail have to sign into a sort of 287-G agreement. But then, you know, the mayor and the Democrats in the commission, with the exception of Marlene Bastien, who voted against, have all at one point or another characterized themselves as defenders of immigrants. And when the in 2017, when the county re instated its 27 G program, which was rescinded by now Congressman Carlos Jimenez, by the way, he's the one that ended the 287G model to begin with in 2014 because we weren't getting reimbursed from it by the Feds and it was costing the county millions and millions of dollars. Anyways, these people, including the mayor, who have characterized themselves as defenders

of immigrants, signed into an elevated, enhanced level of the 287G program, which they didn't have to do, they could have signed into the weakest one and they did so without community input, without notifying the public really to mobilize, to get public comment, whether they support it or not. And they really just tried to rush this with almost no opposition whatsoever. So you know, just to be quite frank, it is disappointing to see the mayor do this to not burn an inch, a little bit of political capital on this really, really serious issue, which is again, burdening and weaponizing our police departments to go after the immigrants that are harvesting our crops, building our buildings, taking care of our

kids, you know, working the jobs that nobody else wants to work, making the city great, as you said, making Miami what it is, and what do they do? They get shit upon by the county and by all of the municipalities because they're too afraid to fight against the governor because he might remove them from office. It's shameful.

It's cowardice is really what it is. Immigrants make us what we are and all of our parents or grandparents or great-grandparents at some point or another if you're not Native American you were you are an immigrant of some kind. Tomas Kennedy good luck up there in Tallahassee I'm sure you have a lot of being welcomed with open hearts and open arms as the Mariolitos were. To learn more, go to floridahimmigrant.org.

Yeah, thank you, sir. I need all the luck I can get, so I appreciate it. Buena suerte, mi amigo. Gracias. Howdy, folks, it's Mike Ryan, one to responsibly speak to you about my favorite time, Miller time. Look, a lot of things are coming back in a season.

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Miami with the goal of turning Paradise City into tech's new frontier. That invitation to come to Miami first came in the form of a tweet. It did. It got about 2.7 million impressions. It was a tweet from Deleon, from the Founders Fund, who said, hey guys, what if we move Silicon Valley to Miami? And I tweeted out, they call it the tweet heard around the world, four simple words, how can I help?

How can I help? How can I help? How can I help? How can I help? How can I help? How can I help? How can I help? How can I help?

How can I help? How can I help? How can I help? How can I help? How can I help? How can I help? How can I help? How can I help?

How can I help? How can I help? How can I help? How can I help? How can I help? How it started, how it's going, it's not going well. Sorry, Roy. I know your dreams of a tech hub and the crypto cowboys, it just hasn't really panned out yet. My heart's broken. Before you down here in Miami. I think you've sold off all your Miami coin, haven't you? Yeah.

I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. What did you get? My grand total is zero. Is that how much you got? You got, wow. So it's gone up is what you're saying. to the moon. Yeah, anybody anything to the moon Wow So you'll all remember that mayor Francis Suarez aka

Or as we knew him around here So mayor crypto bro and his dreams all started with that tweet in December of 2020 in response to a VC tech bro who made the suggestion of moving Silicon Valley to Miami and the mayor said, how can I help? And everybody thought, oh, that's it. This is the next gold rush for Miami. But really what it was, was what everything is in Miami, a real estate hustle. If you've listened to this show for some time, you know we've talked about it here.

If you follow me on social media, you know I was the only person who was publicly talking about what a con this all was. And this mayor was nothing more than a real estate huckster who was looking to exploit his public position for private profit, which is exactly what he did, took his net worth from negative $100,000 to over $5 million thanks to outside employment.

I'm doing air quotes so hard right now, I'm getting carpal tunnel, basically sold his office to tech bros and the Arroz con Manbros as I called them, the crypto cowboys who moved out to Miami during the pandemic because of the lockdowns and Miami and Florida was open for business. They came here because they couldn't buy the government they wanted in other states like California and Illinois. So they came down here with the for sale sign in front of City Hall and in fact, government center.

Danielle Levine Cava was no better. Remember, Roy, they named the Miami Heat Arena the FTX Arena. Who could? Yes. Who could ever forget? All 18 months. Who could ever forget? Just sort of one, it was as Francis Suarez would say, if you put garbage in, you're going to get garbage out. And that's exactly what happened.

But here's the thing. This is how we subsist down here. We only have one business or industry in Florida, and that is real estate. That is growth and that is development. That's why the Real Deal, I would argue, is one of the most important media outlets in the entire state of Florida

and specifically in South Florida. Lydia Dinkova covers commercial real estate in South Florida for the Real Deal. Her latest story, just this past week, the headline is, South Florida pushed to make tech a core part of its economy. This didn't yield new office tenants. This is kind of an interesting fact, Lydia,

in that if you look at the action happening in the condo market or in the commercial real estate market, that's almost our canary in the coal mine of what is happening in this economy and what might the coal mine of what is happening in this economy and what might we be able to predict is happening in this economy. We had this extraordinary, we were on the precipice of a bust.

You know, we had that bust in the Great Recession. Then we came out of it bigger and better than ever. We were kind of about to go down the toilet in 2020 with the pandemic, which would have been like kind of right on time for a boom and bust cycle. But then the pandemic exploded this market. I don't think it did any good for native Miamians

or Floridians in my opinion, but it turns out this whole pitch, this real estate hustle of like tech hub, all this stuff was really just that. Once again, it didn't pan out and maybe we're approaching a bus cycle here. What actually happened here with this whole tech boom? Was it in fact a tech boom? Sure.

And thanks so much for having me. So I think you're right. There was a lot of excitement back starting in late 2020 and it kind of carried on until mid to late 2022. Obviously, the mayor's tweet and every time I spoke to a broker, they were super giddy and excited about all the calls they're getting from techies from California, venture capitalists and so on. Part of their argument at the time was that the South Florida office market would dodge, the South Florida office real estate market

would dodge any trouble that were being seen in New York and elsewhere in the country, partly because of disinterest from tech companies. Obviously they were getting interest from financial service companies and other industries, but tech was a lot of the hype, a lot of the excitement. So I think sometimes starting in 2023, we started looking at data to see

how the leasing was panning out. On the real estate side, were they indeed getting those leases? Back in 2023, we kind of did a story that was a preview of this and just found that tech leasing in South Florida was just a very, very small portion of the overall new leases and renewals signed. I think we got the data from Comstack and not only was it a small portion compared to

other industries signing leases and renewing leases for offices down here. But it was nowhere near what Silicon Valley was getting at the time. Still, we were just not even competing with them. And this was interesting because the phrase was Silicon Valley of the South. And that was the phrase that turned to Miami and Wynwood. But it was just nowhere near a Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley, you can't expect it to just sort of pop up overnight anywhere, let alone in Miami, where there is no infrastructure where there is no beyond the weather and

the aesthetic beauty, very little quality of life beyond that, where there is also no sort of educational base creating a workforce for sophisticated companies like this. But what it seems is that Miami is a, we're a hospitality town, we're a tourism town. So it's cool if millionaires and billionaires come here and buy their second, third, fourth, fifth homes, vacation homes or otherwise.

But what we've been seeing here is the trend that we always see in Miami, which is these were round trip tickets, right? I mean, we saw companies, the old grand opening, grand closing that were coming here, that were allegedly opening offices here, that were hiring up here, and that just didn't happen. If they did, they started to lay people off. If they opened offices, they closed them or reduced them.

Tell me about that. Like what people came and then said, OK, like this isn't a going concern as far as the tech economy or ecosystem is concerned. We're going back out west. Yeah. So this year we did a story because the whole hype just went quiet. Nobody was talking about this anymore. So we just kind of thought, well, let's look back, see, and took a look at a lot of data, VC data, leasing data, and so on. And I think part of the thing was the hype in the beginning back in 2020, 2021 was crypto.

Obviously, like you said, we had FTX arena. I think the crypto conference down here, I wanna say in 2020, because everything else was under lockdown. And, but then the hype and what was cool, so to speak, in tech turned out to be AI over the past year to a year and a half. And just companies like Andy, it's a chat bot, AI company, Delphi, they all, I think, Delphi started here, but went back to San Francisco. I don't know if Andy started here, but they for sure had an office here

and a headquarters here, but then they went back to San Francisco. And it's just AI played a big role in this. And the AI Hub, the true hub, where you find the support, the trained workforce, just the network, it's Silicon Valley. I mean, I was looking at some data before this. for just a network, it's Silicon Valley. I was looking at some data before this,

VC investment in AI per pitch book data for South Florida was just over one billion last year. And that was just like nowhere near, it was like something over 20 or I wanna say more than $20 billion last year for San Francisco metropolitan statistical area. So AI played a big role in this. Right.

So it's growing there and it's contracting here. There's no doubt about that, right? It's growing there for sure. I don't know if contracting here, but just the growth here in terms of VC investment is not, is nowhere near what's in Silicon Valley. And it's just, we're not seeing these leaps and jumps and growth for VC investment here. It's just very slow, it's much, much, much lower,

and it's definitely contracting in terms of real estate leases. But there have been people backing out of leases, people sued over defaulting on leases, there have been people who are subleasing because they're no longer opening the offices or they're closing the offices they had originally planned to. Is that right? Yeah, for sure. People have been, Andreessen Horowitz was the most, is the biggest example.

They backed out of a five-year term in South Beach, I think two or three years before the lease ends. I think blockchain is another one that just never even opened an office. They were supposed to open quite a big office in Wynwood, but never did. I think blockchain is another one that just never even opened an office. They were supposed to open quite a big office in Wynwood, but never did. I think there's a couple other examples. Plug and Play was supposed to come here, but they went to Orlando. I think, you know, talking among the industry down here is that Andreessen Horowitz still has employees working out of co-working spaces or remotely, but it's just in terms of like the real estate impact, it's not really there. Almost everybody in Miami, whether

we know it or not, whether we like it or not, we're in the real estate business because the economy rises and falls on the real estate market, which is why I think this data is so important. And let me ask you though, the impression, what are the propagandists telling you? Because I'm the proselytizers of South Florida real estate, they're obviously not going to let this stand that this tech thing didn't work out. So what are they trying to convince you of that this is, oh, this is the long tail, this is going to grow later, or this is or people are working from remotely, they're just not leasing commercial

office space, what is the the spin? For sure, the most common one with brokers is, they're just not leasing commercial office space. What is the spin? For sure, the most common one with brokers is that they're still getting calls and interest. But then again, it doesn't really like whether or not it materializes. The most solid examples are obviously Amazon, Spotify, Apple expanded. But if you really look at them, they're a couple thousand square feet, like 10,000 square feet or somewhere in that range. It's not a hundred thousand square feet or more that have leased here, but still we did get some gains

following this two years of hype. I think the best thing I heard is that from one local VC firm that's been around since before even this hype is that We're not trying to be Silicon Valley. This is Miami Tech and I think there's some I think there's some good support for that because what is what is Miami? What does that mean? Is there it's a new app. There's a new app called I bribe so you can you can pay off your Politicians, what is Miami? What politicians. What does Miami Tech mean? I guess because there is...

It converts like kilos into pounds. What does Miami Tech do? I think it's more... They're just not in agreement with the idea that we would become the Silicon Valley of the South. It's more focused on what we can do here. So a lot of the examples he gave me are, for example, tech firms and fintech firms that have roots in South America and Latin America and like would open an office here or I don't know, there was like a tax file company, a gaming company, but when I took a look at their leases again,

not huge. I guess the thing that's more connected to the things we have going for us aside from real estate bricks, maybe to Latin America, maybe the healthcare industry, that kind of thing. But this has always been what Miami is for. And the US office of a Latin American company, like you said, healthcare kinds of companies, in this case tech, I don't know. We heard three pitches, it was kind of an evolution

from Miami Mayor Francis Suarez. First was, it's gonna be the crypto capital, didn't happen. Then he said, well, it's gonna be a tech hub overall. Then last year. Then he said, well, it's going to be a tech hub overall. Then last year, he started to say, well, it's not so much a tech hub. It's going to be the capital of capital. Did any of that happen, to your knowledge? Or does the data show that?

OK, no. The short answer is no. I'll take the short answer, Lydia. I'll take the short answer. Honestly, I'm not sure what the capital of capital means. I'm sorry. what the capital of capital But by the way, nobody does it's okay, you're not alone nobody that's why he had to keep evolving it because crypto capital is very specific Tech hub is very specific. Then he's like I'm bro Like I need something like super like bullshitty like even more bullshitty than I than I normally say. How can I help? So my

My last question before we go, have you heard from people about this, I'll call it a contraction, you can call it what you will. What I've been hearing, and let me see if this bears out, that as major duty companies, Ken Griffin's company, Citadel, Andreessen-Harwitz, as they've looked to move here and move some of their executives here, people are not happy here,

whether it's the cost of living, or even if they can't afford it, they can't find schools for their kids. They're not happy with the traffic and the overall quality of life, like I said, beyond the weather and sort of the aesthetic beauty of it. And people don't actually want to be here or live here.

They want to live in adjacent to Silicon Valley in some of the beautiful areas there. They prefer to live in adjacent to Silicon Valley in some of the beautiful areas there. They prefer to live in upstate New York or wherever. Have you been hearing that as well? So I think, yeah, there is some truth to that. And some sources have alluded to this, when I featured this company, Delphi, the AI company, the descriptions for Miami were always like amazing vibes,

melting pot, eagerness, excitement to grow and so on. But when I asked about moving back to Silicon Valley, it was more serious, maybe so to speak, more serious terms like network, support system, growth, workforce and so on. So there is, and there is a notion that we lacks a lot of these things you listed, like you said, traffic, transportation, schools,

a lot of the things that many of the Californians, New Yorkers, Chicagoans are used to. This is a fascinating story that we've been following for so long, and honestly, the only people kind of honestly talking about this. You remember, this is from like the infancy of this show, Roy, when Dan was with us and we were talking all about, and I was like, this is all crazy.

This is just, it's fine that it's a real estate hustle because that's what we do here, but at least let's call it that. And what we've seen happen here, unfortunately, is we have seen it really damage the quality of life for Miannians and affect their cost of living. We've been the most expensive housing market in the country. We've been the capital of inflation. We've been the highest rates for homeowners and renters insurance, highest rates for auto insurance, just like it's been completely out of control. And then the bottom of all the things

you wanna be at the top of, right? The bottom of education, for example. And I was asking from the very beginning, what's in it for Miamians? What's in it for Floridians? And the answer, as it turns out, is not only nothing but less than nothing, because we've seen an exodus of Miami natives

and native Floridians out of this state. And in exchange for what? The promise, the hope of what? Of making the rich richer, and of turning the mayor of Miami, for example, into a multi-millionaire. And I would argue this has been probably one of the worst boom and bust cycles

in the history of this community in terms of its transformative nature. One more short answer, Lydia, is the data showing us that we are on the precipice of a real estate recession here in Miami? Are we overdue for the next bust after this boom? We may very well be. There is a record supply of apartment units

and it's slowing down. The rents have like lowered lots of office projects that were planned during the boom cycle are cancelled or paused. We obviously have some larger macroeconomic headwinds with the tariffs and some of that. Yeah, but those tariffs, they're taxes on China and Canada. That's the cost of local construction materials. You don't say? Oh, okay. Yeah, so we'll see how it pans out and how this year pans out, but we very well maybe do for another bus cycle. It's a very unpromising, it's like, oh, we'll have to see how the year pans out. It sounds to

me like she's predicting, she's predicting it this year. I'm with her. I think that's what's gonna happen. Lydia Dinkova, find her at therealdeal.com. Excellent work. Thank you so much for being with us. Thank you, nice to join you. Before we go, breaking news this week,

Frank Corollo, the brother of you know who. He's a wife, be her wife, dear. Yeah, that's Joe Corollo, the brother of you know who, he's a wife, be her wife, be her, yeah that's Joe Corollo. He just filed to run for Miami City Commission in District Three. Ah shit. Right. Make that a drop.

Frank Corollo was Miami District Three Commissioner from 2009 to 2017. Then in 2017 his brother Joe Corollo was elected and he is now term limited through 2017 through 2025. Now Frank is running to be D3 Commissioner once again and Joe Corollo, breaking news, you heard it here first, is running for mayor again. He was mayor 1996 and 97 then again from 1998 to 2001 when of course he was arrested for being a He's a wife, be her wife, be her

And before that, Joe Carollo was elected as the youngest commissioner in the history of Miami back in 1979. This is why I say in Miami, we don't recycle our trash. We reelect it. That is why we are perpetually plagued by these dynastic political crime families. And the Miami mafia is undefeated. Cocaine's.