Local Legends And Pivotal People Series: Real Estate In Central Florida With Trevor Hall

Foreign. Hello. Jenny Bowling here with Pivotal Real Estate Investments and the Pivot to Prosperity podcast. And today we are doing an interview of a local legend and pivotal person. Two in one and his name is Trevor Hall. Thank you for coming. Thank you. You're welcome for being available. I came to you.

My pleasure.

We are in his awesome office. He is with Colliers and he has an amazing career. He's the executive vice president of Land Services in Central Florida. And the background would be. Many of the area's larger and more complicated land transactions have occurred due to Trevor's efforts. The needs and goals of the client together with the unique qualities of each assignment direct his efforts as listing agent. A variety of value enhancing efforts have procured sales at the highest and best values for his clients. He has successfully pursued numerous land assemblage efforts. Early on, Trevor learned the business and became a top producer with Florida Ranch Lands, the firm that assembled Disney World. He and his father then worked together as broker owners of Lambert Smith Hampton's Orlando office. Many of Orlando's best agents joined them and built the sales, volume and property management portfolio. He then engineered the firm's sale to the Pizzuti organization and repositioned himself in landowner representation. In 1998, he joined Colliers and has thrived as an integral team member and executive managing director of Land Services. Now on professional accomplishments is the main things that you noted, but I know a lot more you could note Collier's Land Advisory, Urban Land Institute. He's been involved in that for a number of years. Right. How many do you know how many years?

Dates back 20 years anyway.

Yeah, I've been here 25. Yeah. And they're the premier organization on land development. I would say pretty much, yeah. And Naya, he's the past president. That's the. You say what it stands for? Exactly.

National Association Industrial and in my opinion, other properties because there's retail and residential in there as well. Yeah, Industrial office.

Right, right. Okay. And then top producer, Florida ranch lands from 1975 to 1990. Quite a feat. That's a long time.

It was great and nice run.

Yeah. Bachelor's degree in economics with honors from Michigan State University. You follow the games. Former real estate instructor at University of Central Florida, continuing education, current and past community involvement with Central Florida ymca, the Development committee, mensa. Go ahead and explain what that is.

That's supposed to be for the top 2%, intelligence wise. Now the good news is they don't retest. I cooked one exam, it got me in and I've paid the dues every year.

His memory is good enough. I. I would say he's still there. Eagle Scout and former scout master, musical fundraiser and founder of Gazebo Zebras. Oh. Founder of niapp's diversity and equitable access efforts.

Right.

Awesome. Well, you have a lot of.

Well, it's been a wonderful career. You know, Orlando's just such a good town, and I've fit in so well here. The best advice I ever got long ago was to represent important landowners. And I've been doing that for close to 50 years now. And now I drive through some areas and shudder because nothing but sprawl has showed up on the ranch that I sold or whatever. But there have been a lot of wonderful transactions over the years and been able to do it without ever having to litigate anything, ever.

Really. That is astounding. Right.

I've seen litigation just tear people up, and it's never happened to me.

Right. Well, so what would you say was your. I'm going to ask you your most challenging and fastest, easiest deals.

Most challenging was probably the South Chase, 3200 acres. Ranchlands wanted to fire me because I had done something arrogant. And. And I plead with them to stick around, and they let me stay. And then the following week, I got a call from the chairman of the board of Amarada hess, that owned 3,200 acres here, and I got a chance to list it for sale. The president and I worked up a seller's draft of contract, went out to a handful of good developers, picked out Richland, Jack Bray, and we. We closed that sale at close to 29 million. I think we started at 25. Every couple of months or every quarter, terms would change. But he knew that he had all the time he needed to accomplish the development of Regional Impact, which was brand new back then, and we never had to amend the agreement. And he closed. You know, that's amazing. Yeah, it was just. It was just a really good combination of the right piece and the right player and his organization. And. And then we. We just closed a sale that took less than two months. Next to the Pulse Foundation, I handled the 0.63 acres that Craig Matier just bought yesterday, this past week. And that will give the city a tremendous variation as to what they can do with the Pulse Memorial. I think it's just gonna be a very good occurrence because there's an empty office building sitting there and parking and empty land, and it will really enhance what they can do with that memorial site.

Great. Great. Yeah. That's been a very.

That was 60 days start. To finish.

Yeah. Yeah. That's rare. Well, great. Well, so your. Your tenure with Florida ranch lands, how many years was that?

Actually, I was there 15. I showed up in January 75 just as the Disney book bust was in full swing. The OPEC fuel crisis had hit. Gas that I pumped in College for 30 cents a gallon was now a buck, and you couldn't always get it. And so the 80% of the people that were coming to Disney World by were all coming by car, and they couldn't come here. And so that's when Harris Rosen bought a whole bunch of hotels. So did my father's clients. And you couldn't give away a piece of land. So I got a chance to represent the Pillsbury's, William Clay Ford, the General Mills Bell family, wealthy guy out of Indianapolis that had gotten stuck with land here, and they hated the broker that had sold it to him. And so I got a chance to sell the 1250 acres in Osceola county that became Little England and Floriba Center Ida, a little piece of 2,000 acres of Hunter's Creek, and then 2, 800 acres up in Seminole county that became the Yankee Lake Preserve. Up there, there's a large utility facility there. And, you know, I just happened to be the tall, smart white guy with just the right business card at just the right time. And so the lesson is that when there's adversity, there's opportunity. And I was on at the right place at the right time and really enjoyed those relationships and succeeding, getting those people their money back out of the land that they had invested in here during the Disney boom, which was a boom up until 74.

You don't hear many people talk about Disney and bust in the same breath or the same sentence.

It was horrible. But that's when Harris Rosen bought, you know, some of his 4,000 plus hotel rooms. The lenders were taking the keys back and were willing to just pay the back taxes, pay the insurance bill, hand them the keys, and reduce the mortgage. And that's how Harris got his start. He grew up poor in Hell's Kitchen and came through the Navy. And then, yeah, Colgate is. But he got a hotel and restaurant institutional management degree, worked for Disney for a while, and then the Disney bus came, and that was his opportunity to become a hotelier.

Wow.

He's a great story. Yeah, really is. He's just part of the fabric of Orlando that I think is so admirable.

Do you stay in touch?

A little bit. Last time I saw him, he. I complimented him on his health. Care system that he has for all of his employees, which he. And he's really proud of that. And he said, yeah, we just added a thousand people in Osceola County. You know, and I thought that was just the right attitude.

Right, right, right. He helps a lot of people. Yeah, that's great. And speaking of shout outs, any other shout outs you want to do while we're talking here?

I'll have to think.

Okay. Okay. So you have several things on your list there. I want to give you a chance to bring those up in the order you want.

Okay. I was mentoring. I was talking to some college students not too long ago about seeking a mentor. And I advised them that they should just follow my big sister's advice, which is, it's just as easy to marry rich as it is to marry poor. So if you're shopping for a mentor, really helps if they've got 300 acres and some family money to work with like mine did, you know, reach high on a mentor. And that really helps. I'm amused by all the talk about artificial intelligence. AI. To me, some of that seems like artificial ignorance. Okay. And I want there to be. I want there to be ACs, what I call ACs, which is artificial common sense. Because it just seems to me that some of what comes out of the computer is nonsense. I think it's important to volunteer. Well, I have been active in naop. They helped me design my first building. And that was so helpful. It still looks great 43 years later. And I was. And I introduced myself sometimes as a real estate typhoon, which is a reformed developer with a sense of humor the way I. Okay, but. But it. The process of being a developer and overseeing building four buildings as a partner and then another nine with where I was president of the landowner, was just such a worthwhile experience for me in all aspects. So I. I really enjoyed that as much as anything I've ever done. And then I think it's important to volunteer well, find things that you're passionate about. I was raised near the YMCA and was an Indian guide and. And active in summer, you know, programs and this and that. And so YMCA here has been so instrumental in so many lives. And I was one of the ones that came up with the idea of safe start. Dr. Phillips, money influence, women research were the folks. And the YMCA had all the pools, but they. They teach young kids 6 years, 6 months old and up how to turn over and float on their back. And so There are over 100 letters in the file at the YMCA of Parents and grandparents Whose offspring. Some kid is falling in the water, and they find them floating face up, breathing.

Right.

And so I. I just. One of those things, being at the right place at the right time over a glass of wine. Yeah, that worked like a champ. Yeah, with Dr. Phillips.

And the man himself.

No, it was with Jim. Jim Ferber had just joined the ymca, and it was Jim Henson at the. At the Y. But Tom Ross was on. On the board then as well, the attorney. That was before he lost his eyesight. And he. He and I were the ones that came up with the idea and put it together initially. And it's been a wonderful program, you know, and that's. That's the sort of thing that in extracurricular activities, if you can make a difference in this town, it seems to me that that's of real value. In my line of work, I have to deal with attorneys a lot. And I'm fond of saying that in terms of ethics, Orlando is beyond Miami. When I look at law firms, I think Willie Akerman, Stephen T. Dean, Charlie Gray, John Lows. That's the first half of the Alphabet. Those are four locally sourced real estate law firms that are just excellent to work with, and they're highly ethical and highly capable. And I just think that that's part of the strength of this town, is the quality of our law firms here. And the fact. I mean, I was talking to some folks last night at a function, and I asked a number of people if they'd ever been shaken down but for a bribe. And there was one such story, and that public official spent some time in jail. You know, it's just kind of the way we run things here. You got. You got to have high ethics to do well here. And then I'm also fond of pointing out that in my business in particular, but I think in virtually all businesses, what you want is the optimal outcome. And I. The way I get to that is I try to project ahead five years and stand there envisioning the best possible outcome of the activity, and then look back toward today, having standing there five years from now or whenever and just say, well, I sure am glad we did that back then. That is simple. All you need to do is that. Right? But it's a complex equation. To the left of the equal sign, optimal comes off to the right. But we have to define those variables and solve for same and avoid the times zero nullifier, the showstopper. And if done properly, you get an optimal outcome. And my clients are served. An example is, I was on the Orange County Charter Review commission. Roger Chapin was on the commission. I had heard that Mears, the company that he was working with, they failed to buy a piece of land down south west of here. And I had heard about this mobile home park, really defunct 1938 vintage mobile home park next to cowboys on the trail that was going into foreclosure. And so I brought a picture of it to him that started a 20 parcel acquisition effort that I undertook. And we assembled over 20 acres there between Rio Grande and the trail on the north side of Grand Street. And just as Mears was about to write a 25 million dollar check for their new transportation center for their taxi business, Uber came along, right? So we all took a breath and I listed the property for sale and we ended up selling it for that Amazon final mile facility that is there. Complete switch from what was planned. But it's a situation where you have to adapt to the existing conditions and make good decisions for, for the client.

That was a close one too.

Yeah, that really was. And I guess that leads me to one of my favorite sayings. Years ago, Nil Schweitzer was the preeminent architect here in town. He was a Frank Lloyd Wright disciple and had done a lot of the work down at Florida Southern College and elsewhere here in that style was involved in the Orlando library redo. And on the wall as you walked into his office, there was a nice big sign. It just said God is in the details. And what he meant by that is that if you pay attention to the details you can get a righteous outcome. But if you ignore the details, it could be devilish. And the old saying is the devil's in the details. I think that's crap. It's God is in the details and you got to pay attention, you know, and really do it right. And then in terms of the economy that we have here, this is now my sixth correction in central Florida once it gets going, you know, and it too is different every time. There are such different characteristics. You know, the Disney bus, the 1990 which was Zarella, the overbuild.com bust, etc, this one there is just, there's selective debt instruments out there that are going to be troublesome next year, no question. But it's not time for the Resolution Trust Corporation or Amresco or any. We don't have mass panic, especially in this town since Florida is a tax haven, right? We have no state income tax and you don't pay a state estate tax here. And wonderful climate, wonderful business climate here, right? And so the in migration continues. And so we are buffered as far as that goes, I think compared with a lot of other communities around, around the country. Fortunate question about it. Yeah, yeah, but this one, no doubt there's some adversity out there and there are opportunities out there. And I just, you know, I, I spent a bunch of time this year as a land broker postponing sales. I'm going to have a nice year next year because it's just taken more time to get approvals and to get the capital stack squared away on any one project. But again, I say there's a lot of adversity out there right now, which means there's a lot of opportunity.

That's excellent too. Very, very true. And so you talked about the capital stack a little bit and the debt instruments. What, what in particular are you referring to on that?

You know, when we're working with the senior community developer for rental apartments, they've got the ability to borrow 60, 65% of the construction costs straight up non recourse financing. But that other 35% has to be covered with preferred equity, mezzanine debt, something. And a year ago when we were working on this. Right, So a year ago when we were working with this senior housing community development developer, the equity expectations were 5% or thereabouts. And we knew that we could, they could sell the finished product stabilized for a 4% cap rate, which is 25 times net operating income. And the costs, you know, year, year and a half ago hadn't gone crazy. Now capitalization rates are damn near double, which greatly reduces the expected future value. So the pro forma, with all the higher costs involved, interest rate in particular, it just doesn't work. And so an awful lot of projects that we've been working on are kind of stalled, waiting for stabilization. And it's good to see a little bit of a tick down in some of the interest rates, meaning that we might be stabilizing here. And interest rates are such a blunt instrument anyway, you know, it really does affect our business more than many. But it just seems to me as though, you know, as a half assed economist, I always looked at the money supply and one of the variables in the money supply is velocity. There's no doubt velocity is dropping a little bit. There's just a little bit less activity out there which I think will crimp the money supply and help bring about a slowdown. But again, where there's adversity, there's opportunity. And I expect to see quite a few good buys being made here in the next year. In 2024 for one reason or another, you know, if there's a loan that's coming due that it has a 4% interest rate and you can only get 7 on the new money. Somebody's going to write a check.

Right.

And somebody might get hurt. But on a case by case basis. My take and understand I've been wrong before, but my take is that those case by case resolutions will occur and we're ready to make some of those deals close.

Yeah, I'm, I'm convinced and I just actually did a podcast saying that the other day as well that I think 24, 2024 and 25 will be a reckoning for some people that got just a little too bold, you know, appreciation really. Well the. It's been a long time since were high interest rates and there's been decades of, of no real inflation. So a lot of the money at.

11% made money with it.

You know that was in all relative. Yeah.

Rising tide of building values.

Right.

And I didn't have the money. I, I had to borrow it, but I had a good source and making 11% on their money and I was taking the risk. But then when they changed the tax law in 86, I'm still a Republican but Reagan's policies absolutely hosed me twice because I was already a developer in 1980 when the 81 Economic Recovery act was passed which gave us 15 year depreciation write off on ordinary against ordinary income which created a flood of supply that I did not need. I was already underway at the money, the buildings underway and the land and, and a capital stack. We had the ability to build those buildings. And so then in 86, after a huge oversupply had occurred, it was underway. They took away all of my tax children. You had to have passive income. I was an active guy, you know, I was active investor. So it completely hosed me. And so watch out for the vagaries of the irs.

So true.

So when I paid off that last million six, I haven't really borrowed any money since then. I'm pretty well over formed developer. I just don't want that personal liability reform borrower.

Anyway. You kept developing though after that?

No, I didn't.

No. That was the 80s.

Yeah.

Okay.

I built four buildings, then oversaw nine more. But the nine were not my money.

Oh, okay.

Just part of the company that owned the land. I see part of that ranch, part of that. My mentors. 300 acres. Right.

Yeah. And so we were talking the other day. I was an appraiser in the 80s and and got involved with appraising a lot of these developments after the feds came in and shut down the banks. And so the. Some projects that were perfectly fine went belly up.

And it was brutal.

It was. Yeah. The rtc, fdic, all of those acronyms, right? Yeah.

Rescue.

Yeah. Yeah.

You know, these days I get calls from appraisers on a regular basis and I talk with them at different functions. And what I know is that comparable sales are all in the rear view mirror, but what you want to have a clear view through is the windshield. And things have changed. These are being adjusted and some are, I think, going to fare much better than others. And I'm fond of saying that all generalizations are false, including this one. Okay. If you're talking about commercial real estate, I want to know exactly where it is, what's the zip code, product type, what is it, you know, multi tenant office, what is it and how is it financed? You know, and if you have that data, that. And what, what are the rents there? What are the absorptions, what are the vacancy rates in that distinct area? If you have that kind of depth of knowledge, you'll make good decisions if you're just painting in the woods, as we used to say.

Yeah.

Different story all together, you know.

So do you subscribe to some of those, those information services like Costar or Al. Aln's only Family River.

You know, I. I draw from it as necessary.

But no one in particular you would recommend?

No, I just hang around. I. Smart young people is what I do.

There you go. You are quite the networker. Yes, you are. What else is on your list there?

I'm descended from guys who were described as being hail fellows, well met. That means hearty, healthy, you know, drink a few beers, but know a lot of people. I'm a hail fellow. Well met met this generation.

Yeah, it's.

I'm also, I'm a big fan of sense of humor. I use it as a weapon. I mean, it's a real asset for me to make people laugh. And it's just something I think is just so important to keep, you know, if I'm talking politics and I'm smiling and making them laugh and we're not agreeing, it's. It still goes pretty well. Most people just shy away from the subject. Right. I don't. You know, I'm a dissident, left wing, anti war, anti discrimination, Republican, second generation. Right. I can carry that off. And I like, I like discussing things like that without being the least bit disagreeable. It's okay if we don't agree.

Right.

We live in the most wonderful country where it's perfectly okay to have those disagreements.

Totally agree. Yep. Yep. And something else about your pets. Music.

Oh, yeah.

You can't not say that.

I was playing saxophone in about seventh or eighth grade and someone gave me a baritone ukulele, four string. And I've never stopped playing since then. My favorite guitar is my next one, thank you very much. And my band, Jack Bird and I started it with Tom Olson about 15 years ago. And we ended up practicing Tuesday nights in the gazebo. Right. At College park in Albert park there. And so we became the Gazebos. And he. He brought in Sheila and I brought in some Chip and a couple other guys, and we just have a blast. And we've got about 600 songs up on podcast now that we can. Or on Dropbox that we can draw from. And to me, they're. I don't do anything healthier than playing and singing with others at the same time. You know, on pitch, on the beat, good song, good lyrics. That does it for me.

Yeah, yeah.

And I think it really helps both sides of the brain stick together.

I. Yeah, I would say so for sure. What else do you have on your list there? Before I ask you some other questions here, I think. Okay.

We can look at some of my current assignments. It's.

Yeah. Tell us about what you're working on.

We've got a 113 acres up in Mims that was under contract. It came time for the guy to put money at risk. The FDOT was messing with him a little bit. He just backed out. We immediately got five offers from others and put it back under contract for a little more money, a little quicker closing. And that's for single family. The single family folks seem to still have a lot of.