Ignoring History Killed The Deal

Today’s episode is a cautionary tale about real estate, memory, and the story attached to a piece of land.

On June 24th, 2021, Champlain Towers South in Surfside, Florida partially collapsed in the middle of the night. Ninety-eight people died. It was one of the deadliest structural failures in American history. Further investigation showed that some of the building columns were showing signs of failure three weeks before the collapse. Not only that, the original design didn’t meet structural standards in place at the time the building was built.

That land was eventually sold through a court-supervised process. DAMAC Properties, a Dubai-based luxury developer, purchased the site for $120 million. From a conventional real estate perspective, you can understand the thesis. Oceanfront land in Surfside is scarce. The parcel is on Collins Avenue, near Bal Harbour and Indian Creek. It is the kind of location that developers dream about.

On paper, it sounds extraordinary.

But real estate is not only land, zoning, architecture, and price per square foot. Real estate can have a history. And that history tells a story.

In this case, the story was not luxury. It was loss.

The mistake was assuming that the story of the future could overwhelm the story of the past.

It could not.

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