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Show Summary
In this conversation, Marielix shares her journey in real estate, emphasizing her cultural insights and empathy towards clients, particularly international buyers. She discusses her goals in helping families and investors navigate the diverse landscape of Tampa, highlighting transformative developments in the city. Marielix also explores exciting investment opportunities, the importance of building relationships in real estate, and her passion for connecting with the community.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Marielix (00:00)
right now I have an specific opportunity thanks to that development, there is another company and there is other investors from Canada So it’s north of the Amalie Arena. So when I speak about Water Street District, it’s right where the Amalie Arena, which is the home of the Tampa Bay Lighting Jockey Team.What Jeff Madek and Bill Gates built is right next and adjacent to the Amalie Arena. So this Canadian company called ARC Partners and ALRC, they opened a project called Hotel Aura, which is being built, is going to break ground I think in December. So right now investors and buyers have the opportunity to invest there.
It started with as little as 5 % down and it’s going to be a condo hotel, five star with 24 hours concert service. And it’s going to be the first condo hotel in Tampa, which is allow that to have a short term rental. And it’s going to be the only hotel condo hotel in Tampa with helipad.
Quentin (02:36)
Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I am your host Q Edmonds. Super excited today. Super excited about my guest. man, think, listen, we’re to go find a little international here, right? We got someone who is fluent in so many different things, can speak different languages, that can bring us into different experiences and different worlds. And so I am super excited for you guys to get to look.Marielix (02:50)
I’m gonna go.Quentin (03:04)
at things through my next guest lens. And so I am so happy to introduce you to, and I’m going to take my time and say it slow, because I want to some respect on her name, Marielix Marielix Quinones , Marielix Quinones . Help me out. Did I do it? How did I do Marielix? Yes! There we go. Listen, she’s, she’s, listen, she’s been walking me through it. She’s been very patient with me. And so I am so excited, Marielix Quinones to have you here.Marielix (03:19)
There you go, there you go. Yeah, you’re doing perfect.Quentin (03:31)
So how are you doing today, man? ⁓Marielix (03:33)
including yourself Quentin, I’m excitedto be with you as well.
Quentin (03:37)
Absolutely I’m excited. Again, I’m excited to look at things through your lens and through your world. And so I’ll be honest, I really kind of just want us to dive in. I want you to take us, tell us what your main focus is these days. Tell us maybe how you got into real estate and also tell us what markets you’re operating in. So take us on a journey. Tell us about yourself.Marielix (03:59)
Great. So Quentin, I want to tell you that I was born in Florida because my dad belongs to the Venezuelan Air Force. So back in the 80s, the Venezuelan government used to buy all the airplanes to the United States companies like Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics. So it was normal, relationships between the two countries, not only regarding the military, but in other matters like oil and mining.So my dad, after he graduated, he was sent to work in the States several times. So like his third trip was to Pensacola from 1979 to 1981. So me and my other sister were born there. So quickly his mission was over there. So we moved back to Venezuela when I was four months old. And that’s the reason I was raised in Venezuela. So I went to high school in a, to school in a local city one hour away from Caracas, which is the capital.
And then before I graduated from high school, my dad was sent again to the United States to fix the Venezuelan Air Force One in 1997, exactly to Dayton, Ohio. So my junior and senior year, I took it there in Dayton, Ohio. So I graduated there. So we came back because his mission was over and he was about to retire a year later. So I took the Venezuelan SAT and due to my GPA, was a
chosen to study in Universidad Central de Venezuela, which is like the Venezuelan harbor. So there I went to law school there, which is five years in Venezuela, law school is five years. So in five years I graduated as a lawyer in 2005. Then I got married with my high school sweetheart. We had two children. And in 2016, due to the situation in Venezuela, we decided to move to Tampa. And why Tampa? Because we already had, I had my sister,
was living here already and we always said, if we need to move to the United States, it will be to Tampa. That will be the chosen city. So we moved there and at the beginning, we planned for it to a short trip. And when I realized it was going to be a longer trip, I said, you know what? I had to work and I’m going, I’m not going to go to law school again. And I said, well, I mean, we could open a business here, real estate related. So the original idea was for me to become a real estate investor.
So I took a short course in an institution that Robert Kiyosaki owns, which is called Legacy Education. It was a real estate investment course that it was three days. It was on a weekend. And when you take the course, you realize that the intention of the course is for them to sell you a subsequent series of courses for you to become a real estate investor. So those courses are divided like in seven sets.
And it added up to be $40,000. I’m like, I’m not gonna spend $40,000 in education. mean, in law school, I five years in law school. No, no, no. I need to start something right away. So my brother-in-law told me, Marilis, you just have to issue your real estate license. So when I found out, it was eight days from night before. I mean, I could do that all day long. So I took the course, I passed the test on the first attempt, and I started working in January of 2017.
with a brokerage that they were wholesalers. And the intention that I had is like, you know what, I’m not going to spend $40,000 plus the time that it takes for me to have a vacation. I’d rather work with them and I will have the opportunity to learn how to be an investor by working with them. So it was a good idea to begin with. And I did learn something that I couldn’t have learned in any other regular brokerage.
like Keller Williams in Century 21 because they only teach retail. And you know, you of course, you know that the real estate investment world, it’s a parallel world. So I was a real estate agent that her first education, practical education, I received it in that on their world, which is like a parallel market and they call it off market, which is instead of market literally, I mean, it’s off MLS.
Quentin (08:23)
Yeah.Yeah.
Marielix (08:46)
is not of marketing. Everything that is being sold is in the market. But whatever, I I learned that that was the terminology. So I was with them like a year. So I learned, of course, I learned things that I wouldn’t have learned otherwise. But I discovered by working there that I really enjoy working with buyers, traditional buyers and sellers. So you know what? I’m just going to do retail because I like I enjoy it a lot.And I didn’t have to invest money, I just needed to invest the time to learn. So then I switched brokerages. And then I ended up in 2019 in a team in Remax Alliance. So I worked there for two years. I did a lot of transactions because my team leader, he works with Zillow Leeds. So I had the opportunity to handle several transactions at the same time.
So when you handle several instructions at the same time, your curve of learning gets really charmed and you learn our own thing. you have a lot of things that you have, a lot of files that you have to put down, right? But you realize that you grow. And it was a good experience. He taught me a lot. I I learned a lot. But then the family situation got a little complicated because it was, mean, my husband has businesses, so it was very hard to.
you know, like the daily activities and I decided to move back so that my children could spend time with their parents together. So I went back to Venezuela at the beginning of 2022, but things in Venezuela changed. changed the dollar as a currency was being used in economical transactions and this stupid government, they created a law where they were going to create a 3 % tax
Quentin (10:57)
Hmm.Marielix (11:03)
on any transaction done in dollars. So that changed the whole landscape. So the economy that was not good and it was starting to become a little more normal got detoured again. So from that moment, the local currency, which is the Volibear worth, was worth 4.86. So you need a 4.86 Volibear to buy a dollar. Right now you need 174. So in three and a half years, the percentage of theQuentin (11:06)
Mm.Marielix (11:30)
local currency losing value is 3,597%. That’s the inflation rate and the percentage in which the local currency has lost power in that period of time. So, I mean, when that happens, not only that happens, there are other consequences. Like, I mean, you witness how the population in general loses opportunity to have quality of life.So there is people who probably afford eating in a restaurant twice a month, they probably cannot do it anymore. So there is people that was in school and now they just had to quit school because they had to work. So I say, mean, it started getting really scary. And you know what? I don’t have to put up with this. It’s, mean, you start feeling anxious about the future because there’s nothing certain. There is no law that create in Venezuela that says,
Quentin (11:58)
Hmm.Yeah, well.
Thank
Marielix (12:24)
Well, there’s going to be presidential elections this year, so you’re going to be sure that’s not going to be the president anymore. No, because they have, these communist people have been power for the last 26 years. So in 26 years, there’s only been two presidents. So you don’t know what’s going to be your future life. So that’s the reason I’m back. That’s the reason that I have accumulated more motivation to do my real estate business here that I love.Quentin (12:39)
Mmm.Marielix (12:50)
I love the business and I love the city itself. mean the city of Tampa, I don’t know if you’ve been here, it’s unbelievable and you can witness how it has changed, how it has grown over the years. ⁓ Five years ago you didn’t encounter that much traffic. Yeah, because the city has grown in the last five years considerably. So I’m super excited to be in this trend and it’s gonna grow even more. There is some projects taking place in that town that we can talk about more in the podcast.Quentin (13:18)
Absolutely. No, I absolutely love it. I love to use your words. How many tools you have in your tool bag. Like you are well established, educated. You have traveled from Venezuela back to here and you talked about the motivation that you have and that that motivation is back for real estate. And I absolutely love it. I love that you’re on this journey. And I guess my question is going to be, what is the next real goal for you within this real estate space?Marielix (13:47)
So my next real goals is to have the opportunity to take care of several families and investors. I want to, if they are not from Tampa, I want to have the opportunity to show them the city, the dynamic of the city, the fact that the city has so many faces. So you have the downtown area, you have the suburbs, you could live in Hillsborough County. So Tampa itself is in Hillsborough County, but the greater Tampa area is also.It also includes Pinellas County where Clearwater is, where St. Petersburg is. So you could live in Hillsborough County, work the whole week in Hillsborough County. And on the weekends, you can go to the beach, either driving and going like, you know, with your umbrella, or you can rent or buy a boat. Because that part of the Gulf here, Gulf here is unbelievable. I mean, the ability that you…
have here to have a boat in life is immense. You can use your boat the whole year round and you can swim nine months of the year because the temperature is good since March until the third week of November. And I mean, and if you’re from the North, I’m sure you will be okay swimming in December and January because for you it’s going to be warm enough, right?
Quentin (15:05)
Yeah.Marielix (15:47)
and there is something that has taken placein downtown Tampa, starting from 15 years ago. So there is an investor guy, his name is Jeff Binnick. He is from the Northeast of the United States. So when he stole his Fidelity investment ⁓ company, he wanted to move to the South and he wanted to buy a sport team. So he bought the Tampa Lighting Jockey Team.
He established himself with his family here and he became a partner with Bill Gates. So they bought 40 acres of land in downtown, north of Channel Si, so right north of where the Carnival and Royal Caribbean cruises stop in the port. and the reason, one of the reasons that they bought us because they realized how cheap it was if you compare the prices to the northeast of California.
to Chicago they say, we can buy this for for 40 cents on the dollar so let’s buy this. So he bought that and he built hotels and he built condo buildings so there is shopping area he created a new urbanism in in that district which is called Water Still District. So thanks to their vision so the construction has again placed since 2010 I think.
Well, Mar concentrate since 2016. So the first phase was open in 2023, which is already open. when you used to go, when I used to go before to that area, you saw the fences. So you couldn’t, you knew there was a project taking place, but you couldn’t tell why. When they opened it, so it got uncovered. So you see those beautiful modern buildings. So right now who lives there? Like professional young people that graduated from Tampa or that comes.
from the north and they are having the ability to work here and they get to enjoy the weather because it’s like 330 days of sunshine or a little more, even though it gets cold. So you will get to wear your fall and winter clothes, but you are in a tropical city. So the vision that they have totally changed the landscape of the city downtown.
And it’s making other projects to be visible thanks to that atmosphere that has been built. So east of that, there’s another project going on, which is called Gas Works. And a little northwest of that, is, I don’t know if you know, there’s a little town called Ybor where the Cubans settled in the 19th century, where the tobacco factories were settled first.
So it’s like a very particular little part of the city of Tampa. So that part, so the new development of gas works is gonna be integrated with E-War and they’re going to put either the Tampa Bay Race Stadium or a girls soccer stadium. So this part that was in the past isolated and like abandoned is going to be integrated into a whole greater urban district.
Quentin (18:42)
Thank you.Marielix (18:51)
And right now I have an specific opportunity related to that. So thanks to that development, there is another company and there is other investors from Canada building building north of that. When I say north, it’s only a half a mile away, so you can walk in. So it’s north of the Amalie Arena. So when I speak about Water Street District, it’s right where the Amalie Arena, which is the home of the Tampa Bay Lighting Jockey Team.What Jeff Madek and Bill Gates built is right next and adjacent to the Amalie Arena. So this Canadian company called ARC Partners and ALRC, they opened a project called Hotel Aura, which is being built, is going to break ground I think in December. So right now investors and buyers have the opportunity to invest there.
It started with as little as 5 % down and it’s going to be a condo hotel, five star with 24 hours concert service. And it’s going to be the first condo hotel in Tampa, which is allow that to have a short term rental. And it’s going to be the only hotel condo hotel in Tampa with helipad.
So if you are a singer and if you are an artist and you don’t want to get bothered by the paparazzi or you are really like in a hurry to make it to Tampa, cause you have a meeting.
Quentin (20:05)
Mmm.Marielix (20:13)
You can use your helicopter and be there in the helipad and do your business on your stuff there without getting bored. So not only you can own condos that are meant to be rented out there, so you will buy that with the idea of you managing to rent it out for tourism or that you leave the management, the local hotel management company to…Managing for you. So it will be for you literally and hands-off investment but on only that you can also live in the penthouses there the penthouses are gonna be from 436 to 39 different sizes different floor plans so you can have a residence there even if you don’t you don’t see as an investment and Regardless if you see it as an investment or not. It has a projection of appreciation and if you do if you do it as an investor
It has a projected capitalization rate that is worth it. So it’s worth knowing the numbers to know about the project to see if you invest or not. that thing is going to be more integrated in the future with that development. But I cannot deny that the feasibility of that project is related to how the city changed due to Jeff Beeney’s and Milge’s vision.
Quentin (21:17)
Absolutely.Yeah.
Yeah.
Marielix (21:32)
So I’m super excitedQuentin (21:33)
Yeah.Marielix (21:33)
to be in that environment, atmosphere, and economic movement.Quentin (21:39)
Absolutely. No, it’s not like Tampa is thriving. I mean, that’s an amazing opportunity. It’s amazing opportunity that Jeff Bennett and Bill Gates brought to the city. And so it shows the power of relationship and partnerships. And so I think that’s what I want to ask you in transition, you know, for my last question is, you know, I know you’re in a new position. You’ve partnered up with someone. You’ve been there, you know, a relatively short time.Marielix (21:42)
Yeah.Quentin (22:04)
but you talked about her so glowingly. So I guess I want to ask you about relationships and your viewpoints on relationships. So when it comes to building relationships and growing your personal network, what has made the biggest difference for you?Marielix (22:18)
So I really enjoy to have deep connections with people. I enjoy like a lot of conversations and dinners. So I want to have the opportunity to deepen the connections with all my network. That’s what I want.So I genuinely enjoy it. And I want to be able to use all my knowledge to help them in their real estate needs, either if they’re a buyer in general, like to live there to invest or not. Because I have the capability of taking care of them all. So do I want to focus on a specific market?
Quentin (22:30)
So I love you.Yeah, yeah.
Marielix (22:51)
Well, I want to be able to start from the abilities that I have and then I’ll see how the flow goes. But of course I do want to concentrate in what I want to project, which is the ability of believing in the fact that I can take care of them well. I have the ability to help them in the transactions while they feel safe.Because I do have experience.
Quentin (23:21)
Now, we’ve been talking, you’ve told me how you love serving people. And it’s no doubt in my mind that you are an amazing connector. And I love what you’re saying. You just want to be able to create an atmosphere where people feel safe, where people trust you, and also where all of your skill sets get to shine through. And so I’m super excited about what you’re doing, super excited about your journey, so great that you are going.that found that motivation for real estate and you’re moving forward in it. And so let me ask you, before we wrap, if someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, maybe collaborate with you, help me learn more about what you’re doing, man.
Marielix (23:59)
Okay, so my Instagram is homesbylix So lix is because my dad, his name is Felix, and my name is Marielix because my mom is Rosemary, and my dad is Felix. But that pronunciation, that mixture between the I and the E is very challenging to pronounce. So that’s why I’m using the lix So it’s homesbylix. Right now I don’t have much activity, but I will. So follow me and stay tuned so you see the announcement.Quentin (24:06)
⁓ come on.Marielix (24:25)
You had to do that point in two. And yeah. And I mean, if you don’t know Tampa, I love to show you around because I want to, to be able to show you firsthand what I like is so much because he has so many faces. mean, and it has ghoul school district, public or private. So it has made important. So it has the Raymond James, you know, American football team and he has the jokey team.Quentin (24:27)
bro, you got it.Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Marielix (24:54)
It has a lot of universities and colleges. I mean, it is hard in like in a 100 mile radius, there is a lot of sources of new professionals. And it is a good place for healthcare because a lot of people come to this area to be taken care of, of course, running away from the cold. So it’s a good city for empty nesters. It’s a good city to run away from the weather.It doesn’t matter how old you are. And so only in the whole Tampa area, there are at least 25 local breweries. Can you believe that? It’s a lot. And you can live in a modern house, minimalistic or traditional American. You can live in a condo. You can live in a traditional bungalow, either brick bungalow or wooden bungalow. You can live
Quentin (25:30)
Wow. Wow.Marielix (25:46)
away from the ocean or very close to the ocean and you can live and you can witness the sunset because since Pinellas County is on the west coast, if you live in Pinellas, you’re gonna see the sunset from your house depending on the orientation of your house. For example, Hotel Ora has, it faces all the cardinal points. So you can decide on all the cardinal points has any specific interest.For example, the east part of the hotel faces the port. So where the Royal Caribbean and the Carnival boats stop in the port of Tampa. So I’m super thrilled, I’m super pumped to have the opportunity to be here again. And I mean, there is a lot of business taking place. I love movement, it’s so exciting.
Quentin (26:30)
Yeah.Absolutely. Well, I’m excited for you. I’m excited for you. I’m excited for Tampa. I’m excited that Tampa has you and I know you’re going to do phenomenal things in Tampa. so again, thank you so much. Thank you so much for being here, sharing your story with us, sharing your perspective with us. It was a pleasure getting to know you and thank you for your insight and everything that you do and letting us into your world and letting us know about what Tampa is doing. So I thank you so much for being here. Right.
Marielix (26:59)
Thank you, Quentin.Quentin (27:00)
Absolutely. Now, y’all heard her? Listen, she gave you the value. She gave you the nuggets. You do not want to miss out on the future opportunities with the guests that we’re bringing up. And so please go ahead and make sure you’re subscribed. Just hit the bell and we will let, there you go. There you go. And we will make sure that we keep bringing you very, very valuable contacts. So thank you so much again and everyone y’all have a great day.Marielix (27:14)
Homes by lakes,Thank you.
