Javier Cervera Jr. moved his real estate firm’s headquarters to Coral Gables from Brickell.
Cervera Real Estate Ventures opened this week at the 4,000-square-foot building at 3132 Ponce De Leon Boulevard, according to a company news release. It nearly doubled its space from its previous 2,300-square-foot headquarters at 1800 Southwest First Avenue in Miami.
The firm paid $3.4 million for its new building in 2022, the release says. The building, completed in 1949, sits on less than a quarter-acre lot, property records show. Cervera invested about $1 million to overhaul the building, including new windows, roof, floors, plumbing and electrical systems, the release says.
“We just left the four walls,” Cervera said. “Everything was redone.”
Cervera Real Estate, which Cervera founded in 2005, is a real estate investment firm that also provides property and asset management services. It has about 18 staff members, including property maintenance employees.
Cervera is the son of Alicia Cervera and the brother of Veronica Cervera Goeseke and Alicia Cervera Lamadrid. The three women lead Miami-based luxury residential brokerage firm Cervera Real Estate.
Cervera Real Estate Ventures, which isn’t affiliated with the family’s brokerage firm, has a portfolio of about 350,000 square feet of South Florida retail space. It’s a long-term asset holder, often seizing on opportunities to increase properties’ values through renovations.
In past purchases, Cervera dropped $11.3 million for the 74,400-square-foot shopping plaza at 3800 West 12th Avenue in Hialeah in 2018, and also $25.3 million for the 83,700-square-foot Tropical Park Plaza at 7931 and 8011 Southwest 40th Street near Westchester in 2022, according to records.
Also, Cervera sold a 1.4-acre development assemblage at 1801 Northeast Second Avenue in Miami’s Arts & Entertainment District for $30 million in 2022. Entities tied to Cervera had purchased the parcels for $5.6 million from 2011 to 2014.
Cervera divested from its multifamily holdings in recent years.
In one of the most recent apartment sales, the company sold the pair of three-story Miami Airport Villas complex with 90 units at 4325 to 4335 Northwest South Tamiami Canal Drive in Miami for $20.1 million in June. The deal was for $7 million more than Cervera had paid in 2020.
Cervera’s divestment from apartments came months before the market made a complete turnaround from the boom times of the past four years. By now, rents are flatlining, though some data shows they are dropping, amid a hefty construction pipeline and slowed leasing.
For the company’s asset management division, it invests in real estate with partners and manages property financials. It only provides asset management services for properties in its portfolio, Cervera said. Its property management arm extends to both its own and other owners’ real estate.
Though Cervera has thought about expanding his firm into commercial real estate brokerage services, that’s not the primary focus currently, he said.
“What we’re really growing now is property management,” Cervera said. “That’s the part of the business that’s just growing organically.”
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