This is a local story I've been following, looks like the Trump condos are selling like hotcakes. $700,000 is a LOT of money around here, and this project isn't in a desirable part of town:
TAMPA - Toni Everett, real estate agent to the rich, talks fast, walks fast and whips a laser pointer through a sales presentation like a gunslinger at high noon.
For the past three decades, the south Tampa native has made a name selling multimillion-dollar homes and condos. Buzzing down Bayshore Boulevard in her gold Mercedes, she passes her work history writ large: about a dozen high-rises that she had a hand in bringing to full occupancy - and continues to resell.
With a portfolio ranging from the Pinnacle in 1975, which she bluntly describes as having "awful floor plans," to the Alagon, now under construction and nearly sold out, Everett ranks among a handful of local agents able to sell luxury condos at record prices and record pace when they are nothing more than architects' models and thin air.
Now that she has the exclusive on the hottest property in town, Trump Tower Tampa, Everett's pace has gone from frenzied to dead-run.
On Jan.10, the Monday after plans for the 52-story project at 111 S Ashley Drive became public, people were standing in line at Everett's office, handing over $100,000 certified checks just to hold a unit. Everett and two salespeople scrambled to take reservations while another staffer tracked deals on a master spreadsheet, ensuring the same unit wasn't reserved by multiple clients. Meanwhile, phone messages and e-mails from interested buyers piled up.
A month later, Everett and agents at the Toni Everett Co. on the north end of Bayshore Boulevard still were wading through the backlog of messages, returning calls, setting up appointments. The best they could do in most cases was put people on a waiting list: All but four penthouses in the 190-unit project have been reserved with 10 percent refundable deposits. (Just taken: a $6-million, two-floor unit with spa.)
A more concrete measure of interest will come in a few weeks, when the deals go to hard contract. Reservation-holders will be required to kick in another 10 percent and the total deposit becomes non-refundable. If experience holds, 10 to 20 percent of those holding reservations will drop out at contract time, but Everett isn't too worried about the fallout.
"We've probably got backup orders for 80 percent of the units," she said, with a real estate broker's innate optimism. "We have people who were talking to us long ago and we were not able to get them in."
But Everett - jet-black hair contrasting with a pale complexion and firmly lipsticked smile - has not stopped selling. Presenting the Trump project to a Tampa doctor recently, she moved assuredly through a well-practiced pitch. Flicking her laser pointer over an enlarged photo of downtown Tampa, Everett highlighted the project's site and the surrounding neighborhoods, then let the red dot hover over the word "sunsets" printed on the horizon.
"The living areas start at the 11th floor," she said of the project, which has parking from the second to the ninth floors and communal space on the 10th. "From the front of the building, the view is all the way to Anna Maria Island."
Flipping through a big sheaf of blueprints in her cramped conference room, Everett emphasized the Trump Tower's amenities: two pools, a wine cellar, conference center, fitness center, spa. The doctor asked about tennis courts and Everett said, "No, but..." then quickly moved along to descriptions of the project's floor plans.
When the doctor said he was interested in the lowest-priced units, Everett replied that all the standard units, priced from the high $700,000s to $1.5-million, have been reserved. Lowest priced available was a $1.9-million unit on the 12th floor.
The doctor, late for work, plucked up a photocopied brochure on the Trump project and promised to return. As he left, Everett's tiny silver cell phone rang with a call from an agent with the Trump organization: Someone in New York wanted to reserve one of the remaining penthouses.
"We thought most of the reservations would be coming from out of town, but it's been mostly local or from the surrounding areas," said Everett, as she raced to fax the reservation agreement to New York. "Out-of-towners have shown interest, but it was all reserved before they could sign up."
If reservation-holders become residents when the Trump project is completed in about three years, the high-rise will be occupied by young to middle-age business people, some of whom have moved from as nearby as Harbour Island. Everett said none of her buyers have been retirees, and only a handful intend to use it as an investment.
"On my sites, I like to have more users than investors," she said, doodling in perfect penmanship (thanks to her training at Tampa's Academy of the Holy Names) during an unusual lull in the action. "I ask them certain questions that qualify them and when you've been in the business as long as I have, you know immediately."
It was about a year ago when Everett first heard of the project planned for the dirt lot along the Hillsborough River. She interviewed with SimDag/RoBEL LLC, the local developers who brought Trump into the deal. Though she's used to sitting down with developers who are looking for an agent to market and sell their high-priced dreams, Everett said this meeting was different.
"There were about 10 people in the room, asking me questions," she said, showing only a hint of lingering discomfort. "But they were asking about the market and competitive information, and I can spout that stuff out really fast."
In June she got the assignment, agreeing to keep mum about Trump's involvement. Dr. Howard Howell, one of SimDag/RoBEL's five managing partners, said Everett was one of a handful of real estate agents considered.
"She's familiar with the market and has demonstrated a track record," he said. "Plus she had the ability and client base to sell these units."
Everett, whose business is based on discretion, declined to discuss the nature of her contract with the developers. But she said condo presales generally have lower commission rates than the 6 percent traditionally received from residential sales.
"There's less commission per unit, because you're doing it in bulk," Everett said. "And you put out a lot of upfront time and expenses because you don't get paid until the project is built. But I do development sites because I enjoy it. It's fun."
With Trump, Everett has been involved in everything from helping develop the marketing strategy, critiquing the condo documents and reviewing the floor plans, to designing and staffing the sales center that will open next week on the fifth floor of the office building abutting the site . She also has been closely involved with planning for the invitation-only launch party there on Friday, where Donald Trump will be schmoozing with potential buyers.
Everett has about 35 site agents assigned to her assorted developments - in addition to Trump, she's handling the Plaza on Harbour Island (with Tampa's Smith & Associates), the O2 condos in Channelside, Hyde Park Walk in Tampa and Porto Bellagio in South Florida. Another 35 general agents handle residential and condo resales through her office.
Everett's sister, Patty Clark, handles office operations. Her daughter, Henderson Everett Lee, an agent, is working with her mom on the Trump project. Son Anthony Everett, who is vice president of the Toni Everett Co. as well as developer for Atlanta's Post Properties in Florida, is handling the apartment-to-condo conversion at Hyde Park Walk.
Everett, meanwhile, acts as a slightly scattered ringmaster, flitting from one sales office to the next, blowing into the office for appointments, keeping all the balls in the air.
"I like making sure sales happen," said Everett, who repeatedly ranks among the area's top real estate agents in sales. "The variety of people you're dealing with makes the job interesting."
Having pushed well into middle age without coming up for air, Everett detests talking about her age. "People like young," she said, firmly ending the discussion. Named for her father, Dr. Anthony P. Perzia who died in January, Everett learned early about long hours and love of work.
"My grandfather (an ophthalmologist) would start operating at 2 a.m. in the morning and work until 5 p.m.," Anthony Everett said. "My mom is the same way; she can live on three or four hours of sleep a night. In my teens, when she started working real estate, I remember her always being on the phone. Now she's got two or three cell phones with her at all times."
Everett, who graduated from Rollins College and worked for a few years in the fashion business in New York, started in real estate in the mid 1970s as her marriage to Sonny Everett was ending. One of her early projects was the Pinnacle on Bayshore, where out-of-town developers were trying to salvage the development after the construction company went bankrupt.
"I helped finish and sell out that building," Everett said. "Then a bank came and asked me to help with another building on Bayshore and it just boomeranged."
Pace of sales was steady for decades. Then, about two years ago, condo sales started accelerating.
The Alagon on Bayshore, with 50 units, sold out in three months at prices from $700,000 to $2.5-million. The Plaza on Harbour Island, announced in late summer, has sold 75 percent of its 114 units, at prices up to $3-million, and plans construction in the spring.
Hyde Park Walk, with 134 units being converted to condo, had buyers for all but a few of the units, most priced at under $500,000, within a matter of days.
Such indicators make Everett unwilling to give Donald Trump entire credit for the frenzy surrounding his Tampa project.
"It's a market that was moving anyway," she said, although admitting Trump's high profile may have added some fuel to the fire. "Buyers were already consuming anything that came on the market. There's been so much hype about downtown for so long, it's finally hit."
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