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The Dallas Dirt podcast with Candy Evans takes you inside the real estate news stories you’ll find daily on CandysDirt.com and beyond, giving you more insight, juicier details, and the inside scoop from one of Dallas’ most well-connected real estate personalities.
Speaker: Hi, I'm Candy Evans,
and this is Dallas Dirt.
I'm so excited and proud to
have here on the podcast today.
Let me introduce you to Abteen
Vaziri, who is the founder and CEO
of Uptown Companies Incorporated.
He is a recent transplant from New York.
He's also starting his own law firm here,
because this is Very intelligent man
has a JD on top of his MBA on top of all
this wonderful experience that he has in
the finance world, which is what we're
going to talk about today is what is so
exciting about Dallas and how Dallas is
really going to be bigger than New York
and even Miami, which a lot of people are
saying, Miami is where it's all at, right?
With real estate and
commercial real estate.
But Abteen says, no, no, no.
It's Dallas.
Tell us about that.
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Well, it's wonderful to be here.
I've been wanting to come to
your podcast for a long enough.
Finally, we made this happen.
Thank you for inviting me.
Yeah, I, I, I moved around as a child
all around, my, yeah, I immigrated
from Iran as a political refugee.
My dad was in the air force.
So we fled Iran in 89, lived
in Germany for a couple of
years, lived in Los Angeles.
Until 95 moved here, went
to Plano Senior High.
So, the whole family's here.
Mom, my mom, my father just
recently passed away, but my
sisters, my sisters and my three
beautiful nieces, they're all here.
And this has been home.
I moved to New York eight years
ago to head up basically the
EB 5 practice for a very large
institutional lender in New York.
And I stayed there,
finished law school there.
I made a lot of connections, met everyone
in real estate lending and some made
some amazing networking connections
in New York, but this was always home
and I just see the opportunities that
Dallas has that I don't think any other
Metroplex in the United States has.
There's been this trend.
People moving out of the blue states
into red states, but, no other two states
have this trend, mainly because of the no
state income taxes as Florida and Texas.
However, a lot of New York City real
estate developers, they're really
like Florida because a lot of them.
are familiar with that market.
They have second homes there.
That's a market that's been
booming, but there's some
really big challenges in Miami.
There's severe infrastructure issues.
There's not enough, Highways.
And, there's not a lot of land to develop.
It's pretty landlocked.
You have South beach, which most
of it, you can't be a build.
They're all art deco historic buildings.
Speaker 4: And
Speaker 2: then, so a lot of
development has gone either north
or, to the, re they rebuilt Brickle,
they were downtown, but there's
not that much more land to develop.
So they have to tear
stuff down to rebuild.
The other thing is, Miami doesn't
have our South Florida doesn't have
the school systems that Dallas has.
At a conference
barry Sterling from
Starwood mentioned that.
It's like, there's not enough
public schools, there's not
enough private schools, there's
not enough, elite universities.
Dallas has all of that.
Speaker: We have all that.
Dallas has,
Speaker 2: I have a friend that suffers
from cancer, he's from Los Angeles, moved
to South Florida, he lives in Miami.
He still has to go back
for cancer treatment in L.
A.
He just doesn't trust the hospitals.
I mean, you look in New York, you have the
you have the various different hospital
systems in California, you have UCLA and,
but, in Florida, you just don't have that.
Here we have the Baylor
system, you have Southwestern.
Speaker: And they
Speaker 2: just announced they're building
another 10 billion children's facility.
This is huge.
Miami will never be.
Now one prediction that I'll make, I
think 20 years from now, Miami is going
to replace Los Angeles as where the 60
million homes are, where entertainment
is, where international people are, where,
arts and fashion and movie industry is.
But not financial.
It's not going to be the financial
capital that New York is.
New York doesn't change their ways
and they don't, change their politics.
All of that, all that middle
class, all the financial
companies, they're all moving here.
I mean, this is a huge announcement.
Goldman Sachs is moving a huge
corporate headquarters in uptown.
And by the way, Bank of America
is building a massive building.
JPMorgan, all these big banks, this is it.
This is where they're
coming in, in 20 years.
And the great news is, In 360
degree direction, north, south,
east, west, there's land.
And you could build and you can
rebuild and you can tear down
old stuff and build new stuff.
The opportunities here
are just tremendous.
And, one of the things that, I've
been focusing on, I wanted to come
back to Dallas is not just to help
build Dallas, Dallas has done great.
In north
there's been a lot of growth, but
to help rebuild downtown Dallas,
to me, it's just an enigma.
It's one of the major cities in the
United States where office rents are.
20 a foot.
You go to downtown New York,
Hudson yards, 200 a foot in
Miami, 70 to 90 a foot in Frisco.
It's 60 a foot.
It's more than Frisco because
all the corporate headquarters
are moving to Frisco because
there's, cheaper homes to buy.
There's better school systems.
So they're moving their
headquarters there.
Downtown Dallas.
Just hasn't been able to compete
with various other cities.
Their biggest competition for
Dallas is really the other suburbs.
And, Frisco has an
economic development team.
That's just, they're writing the
playbook on economic development.
Other cities around the
country are copying them.
They've done tremendous.
That'd be huge tax surplus.
So they could afford to go get
companies to come bring him here
and not pay taxes for 30 years.
There are tax bases in 30 years when
all those companies start paying taxes.
It's going to be crazy.
I remember when I moved here in 1995
in 1996, I was taking a college course
and I would go to the Frisco Collin
County campus to take a drafting class.
And it was, Preston
was a two lane highway.
There was nothing in Preston.
Oh, I remember that.
And there was a dealership on the
corner where that, the mall is.
And then unfortunately, there
was a place that I was 18.
I didn't know what was a brothel I mean,
that's that's Frisco was in 1995 today.
Speaker: Well, it ended it like el
dorado That was the tall way ended.
But today they're
Speaker 2: building 10 billion dollar
project here 10 billion dollar star.
Speaker: Can you just tell
us what is the EB 5 program?
How does that help us in real estate?
Speaker 2: Sure.
There's an EB 5 program
that was passed by Congress.
Ted Kennedy was actually
the champion of it in 1990.
They actually copied
this program from Canada.
Canada was one of the first countries that
had, they didn't have a huge population.
So they started this program and
said, if you invest this amount,
you can qualify for residency.
Speaker: People who are not citizens,
Speaker 2: people who are
residents of other countries.
Well people in the Congress at the
time kind of copied this and said,
Well, we don't want just an investment
program, but we want a jobs program.
If you come and invest and
you create 10 jobs for U.
S.
citizens or residents that at least
work 35 hours or more, you can qualify
for this program and get a job.
Green cards for the entire
family, all qualified under
the same in one investment.
And so, EB five is actually an acronym
for employment based fifth preference.
So in the immigration act of 1990,
which imagine since 1990, we haven't
had in another immigration bill.
But under that they approved something
like seven hundred thousand visas.
The first preference is which is, they
get preference over the other category.
So you'd be five is the last preference.
I think once for religious workers, one
is for people, extraordinary abilities,
all these different categories.
And then the fifth preference,
the only visa category when an
investor sponsors themselves.
So every visa category, whether
it's a family based category or an
employment based category, either
an employer has to sponsor you or
a family member has to sponsor you.
So you don't control your own destiny.
If you get fired, that visa goes away.
Under the EB 5, you sponsor yourself.
. And then in 19, and this
program wasn't very successful.
And in 1993, they passed the EB 5 pilot
program where it said, well, you don't
have to necessarily go build a business
because a lot of immigrants were coming
here, the businesses were failing, and
then they would not get the green card,
so it wasn't doing what it was intended.
So in 1993, they created the EB 5 pilot
program, the regional center program.
They said that as an investor, you
can invest in the regional center.
And what a regional center is either
for profit or nonprofit entity that
basically is like a fund that manages
and puts these investments together.
So then the investor, by virtue of being a
member in an LLC or a partner in LP could
qualify for creating those jobs just by
virtue of voting to make those investment.
So again, this program wasn't very
popular in the early, in the nineties.
Only a few hundred investors did
this fast forward to 2007, banks
stopped lending real estate.
Wasn't happening.
A few lawyers and a few really
smart real estate developers started
thinking, well, this may be a way
that we can, raise alternative
capital to do real estate project.
So 2007, the EB 5 program
started getting very popular.
60 percent or so the money was going
to the state of California a lot of
Projects were getting done in California.
And then the program became very
popular to 2013 to 2017 something
like 15 million a year was coming
through this program Oh, and the money
Speaker: was coming from overseas
Speaker 2: the money was all
coming from overseas and actually
something like 80 to 85 percent
of the money was coming basically
from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and China.
So basically mostly China, right?
Speaker 4: In
Speaker 2: 2019, the UCIS raised
the investment level from 500,
and that along with COVID and the
slowness and response times by the
U S citizenship and immigration
services made the program basically.
In 2011, Congress canceled the
program, and then I worked with
various different regional centers,
a lot of different lobbyists, and a
lot of different folks in Washington.
In 2022, we brought
the program back today.
It's not as huge as it was with,
let's say 2013 to 2027 or 2017, but
there's still about 2 billion a year
coming through the EB 5 program.
And now investors from everywhere, from
China, from India, from Vietnam, from
Hong Kong, Taiwan, all over South America.
So, now it's a lot more investors
from various different countries.
Speaker: And that's good for a business
because the money is not, maybe you can,
you Kind of talk about that a little bit,
but why is capital so hard right now?
Speaker 2: Well, capital is really
hard right now because one, banks
have tightened the lending because
interest rates have gone up to, if a
project, you're doing your, your model.
And now you have 7 percent cost
of capital, Before interest
rates went up now doesn't pencil
out the ones that do pencil out.
Banks are, hesitant in lending,
or banks were lending all day
long and multifamily asset today.
They're, they're very strict
on what they're lending on.
So the entire market is kind of
contracted and the Fed is really folk
forcing banks to not do so much lending.
And so today is actually another
time where again, it's coming to like
2007, EB 5 has become very popular.
Speaker: Because that's
where we can get the money.
Right.
Speaker 2: However, it's
just not as much volume.
And the rules of the program have changed.
When we got Congress to approve on a bill,
they basically set aside or kind of a,
a favoritism towards the rural states.
Whereas today There's a mindset and it's
actually true because it's happened.
Investors were taking three, four
years to get their green card approved.
Now they're going to improve
in seven months if they happen
to be in a rural project.
Whereas somewhere before people
were really interested in New York,
LA, Dallas, big major Metroplex
as in these massive projects.
Today the projects that are raising
money in rural areas, so ski resorts
that you know hotels and ski resorts,
there's a Project in arkansas.
That's a steel plant So these type of
projects are actually getting economic
development, which is good It's good
for these rural areas that don't
have the outside capital Interesting.
Speaker: So that's probably another
reason why we see so many people kind
of leaving I mean, they're wanting to
spread out from the urban areas, correct?
Because there's more out there.
Yeah,
Speaker 2: There was a
lot of that during COVID.
I think people,
In the fifties, there was this, the
trend was everyone was going to suburbs.
Then in the, late nineties, 2001
started coming back from COVID
happens, I could be in the country
and have a lot more freedom.
So now it's kind of going back to the
suburbs and going back to where I was.
I was
Speaker: talking to a developer
down in Cinnamon Shore down in
Southern Texas near Corpus Christi.
And she said that during COVID,
they actually were selling
phases that were planned.
Like they were selling them
without people seeing them.
They just, it was so hot.
And so they said, well,
okay we'll plan it.
Phase three.
Okay.
We'll plan a phase four.
We'll do it now and sell it
And I mean they didn't have to
advertise or market or anything.
It was just so incredibly hot
Speaker 2: I mean i'll
give you an example.
I was living in new york city during
covet and A common friend of ours told
me what would you do if the world ended
and I said, you know Buy some land
live off the land they would do it.
I did a june 2020 I bought a 55 acre
house, you know with a you know, basically
rural house in athens, texas So i've
had this place and I was thinking okay
What would happen if the world ended,
you can go grow some crops and live
off the land And I did that myself.
So
Speaker: yeah, definitely.
I mean ranch land and farmland is
now You It's really gone up and you
Speaker 2: know, the price that I
bought it, I think the the value is
triple just based on the land value.
So it was a good investment.
It's a great investment.
Speaker: Well we are Always excited
to hear about what you think is
in store for Dallas down the pike.
And I know you're here now and
you're living here and based here and
you've got your family here and what
weird pockets of town do you see are
going to be really hot besides down?
Do you think downtown
is going to turn around?
Speaker 2: I think, from my
experience, the 10 years I was here,
I was here for 20 something years
before I moved to New York, but 10
years, I was focused on real estate.
Before that, I worked a couple of
different hedge funds and long, short
equity and focus on equities, but really
the 10 years or so that I focus on
real estate, everything really moves
a lot North here and it's moving East.
Obviously if you go West, you're forward
South, there's some great pockets, great
investment, but historically everything's
been moving East and North because
there's Some really good school systems.
So, it was like Frisco and Celina
and Prosper and McKinney and Melissa,
you're going all the way to Sherman,
but I've been hearing this last
couple of years, Sherman and Texas.
Oh, man, that's been a hot area.
People have been buying land.
I remember 20, 30 years ago, there was
all these rumors that Disney was going to
buy a massive amount of land and build.
Park there.
That's actually now
happening, but it's a Frisco.
Speaker 4: However,
Speaker 2: what's really happening
and it was announced is Hard Rock is,
between Hard Rock and and Margaritaville,
they're building a 10 billion development
and building a, water park resort a
casino right on the border of Oklahoma.
So that's a massive 10 billion project.
But there's so many of these 5 billion,
10 billion, 2 billion projects.
Thanks.
All over the Metroplex that are planned.
Most of them, majority of
people have not heard about.
Speaker 4: I get
Speaker 2: to hear about this stuff
because typically people, two or
three years before they even think
about development, they're going out
in the market looking for alternative
financing or, debt financing.
So I get to hear about the
deals much faster than the
world gets to hear about them.
But the stuff that's coming
to Dallas is just incredible.
I mean, everyone's heard about,
the Adelson's buying the Mavericks.
I mean, the Adelson's are one of
the largest political contributors
to the Republican Party.
The only people that have been
opposing casino gaming has
been the Republican Party.
So it should be a shoe in for them to get.
Casino gaming, whether it's good or bad,
that's going to generate, it's going to
generate a lot of real estate activity.
That's going to generate
A lot of revenue coming here.
And, one of the things that's,
Mark Cuban's actually right
talking about, he doesn't have
a competitive advantage anymore.
Tech, the tech kind of advantage that
he has that the new theme in in, cause
in A stadium development is basically
the copy of the, what they did in Los
Angeles and the staples center, you build
a stadium you build the condos around
and you build the retail around it.
And it's a huge play on real estate.
That's how the team owners
make a ton of money.
Not just, they're all buying
these teams for 200 million.
They're worth 7 billion.
They're doing that.
But on top of that, they're
making so much money.
From the ancillary and like you look at
a market like Philadelphia, they have
like four stadiums in the middle of
nowhere that used to be the old model.
Those stadiums, even though most of
them are new, they're going to tear them
down and rebuild them because they're
not making any money from the retail
around it from the condos around it.
It's like the new concept of, live,
play, work, everything in one area.
And even American Airlines Center, which
is that's our, that's already getting
old and they're going to have to come
up with a new, so, if the Adelson's
bring a massive casino and retail
and, shopping and mall and all of that
to one location, that's going to be
generating a lot of economic activity.
Well, that's what
Speaker: I said when I was
running for city council.
I said, I'm not sure I condone it, but
I, Valley View, that Midtown Perfect.
Right there.
And then have this, a luxurious high
end casino and have Well, I think
the piece of land they're looking at
Speaker 2: is in Irving,
old Texas stadium.
But you know, I've heard rumors that
Mark Cuban's bought some land in
Mustang, Texas and Navarro County.
So who knows?
Speaker 4: But
Speaker 2: the one thing we will
100 percent know now is there's
going to be a lot of real estate
development happening in Dallas.
And that was like, my goal is, I'm
setting up a law firm to, you Help,
real estate developers come, figure
out local state of federal incentives.
There's all kinds of incentive programs
The department of transportation has
tifia funds dot or doe has you know
All kinds of energy related funds
building, electric infrastructure.
Yeah city of dallas has one of
the most sophisticated Districts.
I mean, the tax payment and finance
is something like two and a half
billion dollars in taxes in the
increment is what they fund.
And currently they have somewhere
in between six to 800 million
and TIF funds to give out.
So my job is to help package that
together, work with real estate
developers, show them how to
get these incentives and try to
bring money from New York, from.
Middle East from Asia from all over
to come here and help us rebuild
Dallas, but more important, downtown
Dallas really needs investment.
And, one of the things that's really
interesting about downtown Dallas is this.
About 7 to 10 major landowners and
they're all sitting on land that they
know it's a gold mine because they know
there's a huge arbitrage opportunity.
How can downtown Dallas have
office space at 20 a foot when
Frisco has got office space at 60
Speaker 4: a foot?
Yeah.
Speaker 2: Just doesn't add up.
So they know the land's going to go up.
Some of them have the money to build.
Some of them don't, but none
of them are doing anything.
They're all just sitting on their land.
My job and my goal is to, help bring
this outside capital in, but the
outside capital doesn't want to come in.
Like I talked to very large real
estate developers in New York, they're
building in Miami, they're building in
Park City, they're building in Arizona,
but they're not building in Dallas.
Speaker: Why?
Speaker 2: The reason they're not
building in Dallas is because they need
someone to put the whole deal together,
shovel ready project, all the incentives
ready for them, everything's ready.
And they come and say, come invest.
And no one's done that.
And the landowners, they're just kind
of sitting tight because they know
that their real estate is worth a lot.
They're just, it's just a matter of time.
They have very low carrying costs.
So they have no risk.
They're just sitting there waiting for
somebody to come knock on the door.
So there's a market there.
It's just the ask and the bid
is not meeting in the middle.
I'm hoping me and You're gonna
Speaker: be the middle.
Speaker 2: Well, me and a few other
people that I'm gonna be working with
to, to really help Bring that money in.
But how does that work?
We got to go lobby the city of Dallas,
show him, if you invest X in this
developer, you're gonna get this and you
can have the Convention Center and you're
gonna create this much more tax bases.
This is what you got to do.
At the end of the day what downtown
Dallas, it needs is security, more cops,
they need better, streetscaping, they need
a mall and they need shopping, retail.
And one, one thing that would be the home
run, and that's how Brickell, I mean,
Brickall wasn't no man's land in Florida.
No one wanted to be in Brickall.
And there's a company called
Swire Properties out of Hong Kong,
which is actually British owned.
They came in, they spent 2
billion, build the Brickall Mall.
And then now Brickall is the most
expensive real estate, all that came in.
So what we need is our Swire properties
to come to downtown Dallas, build a
very nice luxury mall somewhere in
downtown Dallas, and the rest of it is
just, it's going to fall into place.
Right now, we don't have that.
Maybe we won't get a Swire
properties that build a 2 billion
mall, but we need something
Speaker: Like something like
Speaker 2: that.
And we just need the catalyst.
The investments are there.
The money is there.
The location is there.
We just need the catalyst.
Well,
Speaker: the convention center help
Speaker 2: the convention
center will help.
But at the end of the day, you
need the private equity funds.
You need the big developers and
you, the sovereign wealth funds
to bring in the capital to invest.
And right now it's just,
we're not on the right.
Cause they're
Speaker: not going to come
for the convention list.
There's something to do there.
They don't want to come
Speaker 2: in.
They're coming to Frisco.
They're coming, they're not paying
attention to downtown Dallas.
Yeah.
Now the city of Dallas has a
great economic development to
have one of the best districts.
They just need some help.
So a lot of, all of us have to roll up our
sleeves and help them make that catalyst.
And the catalyst says, you got to
get the incentives, you got to split
the incentives, you got to split
it fairly where it incentivized
these money sources to come here.
Right.
Speaker: And you have to get people
to stop thinking that this is giving
money away because it's really creating.
Well, I mean,
Speaker 2: that's what
the TIF district is.
You give money away, but
then it generates more taxes.
It just keeps the tax
bases higher and higher.
Right.
And this is the perfect example.
Of a successful public
private partnership, right?
I mean, I'll give you a great example.
There was a there was a bunch
of swampland and run around the
airport in Newark and in New Jersey.
And there was a public private part.
I think it was one of the
cases I studied in law school.
It was a public private partnership.
The city, I forget, Elizabeth
or Newark, whichever it was.
They gave a bunch of land and
incentives to Ikea to come build an
Ikea everyone fought against it is
like Oh, this is corporate favoritism.
You give me money away that Ikea today is
the highest grossing Ikea on the planet.
So it was a home run.
Now, granted, Ikea made
money, but guess what?
It did wonders for that economy.
Speaker: It's like the rising time.
Speaker 2: My theory is always don't
look in other people's pockets.
It's like, it's win.
Everybody won in that situation.
The taxpayers won, the city
won, Ikea won, everyone won.
But sometimes people will be like, well, I
want to win, but I don't want you to win.
That's just bad mentality.
It's like, don't look at
other people's pocket.
If it benefits the economy, if it
benefits the local group, If somebody
else is making money, they're going to
make money anyway, why not make money in
your community and build your community.
Whenever you see
Speaker: an empty piece of land that's
just sitting there and collecting litter,
that's no tax revenue for your city.
That means you're going to
pay more property taxes.
Speaker 2: 100%.
I mean, the Statler project, I
work in downtown Dallas, that was a
project that was built in the fifties.
It was one of the best
hotels in the country.
Everybody, Ike was there, Michael Jackson
performed there, Tina Turner performed
there, it was Sinatra performed there.
And then.
This building was vacant for 30 years.
It's dilapidated and the city
wanted it to be torn down.
We have to think about all these
different finding sources including
EB 5, including Tiff financing,
including historical tax credits.
Now that project is open, and now they're
building other projects in downtown.
Now, but you know, somebody's gotta,
be the kind of the maverick to do that.
And the only way that we're going
to really build downtown Dallas is
we got to get outside capital, and
the way we get outside capital.
Is we have to give them incentives.
We have to make it attractive
for them to come in.
Otherwise, they'll go to other cities
that are giving them incentives.
Speaker: Exactly.
Do you think sometimes, as I do,
and maybe I'm wrong, but I think
sometimes that the problem with DAOs
is there's too many families, local
families, who are like controlling
everything and they don't want.
Speaker 2: That is true.
That is true.
I mean, that was Dallas.
Dallas definitely does have that mindset,
just if the incentives are there, if the
opportunity to make a return for their
investors are there they'll be here.
It's just that.
Nobody is incentivized and no one's
going out there to attract them.
So we just have to do that.
And by the way, the city
of Frisco is doing that.
Other cities are doing that.
Dallas is just doesn't have the resources.
And I think private developers,
organizations, nonprofits, people like us.
I have to help them
because this is our city.
We got, and we have
Speaker: to write about it.
We have to talk about it.
I'm one of my favorite.
I mean, the best story ever is
the stadium up in Frisco that
they share with the high school.
I mean, I talk about that all the time.
It's like, what a smart move
that Jerry Jones made with that.
Well, i'm sorry.
We're out of time, but
we'll do this again.
Totally.
We'd love that.
We'd love that This is wonderful.
You're obvious.
I mean, obviously you know so much
and you're such an expert and this
has been a lot of information.
I wouldn't say that, but thank you for it.
You are.
Very nice gesture.
I know.
Thank you.
Thank you for
Speaker 2: having me, Candy.
It's always a pleasure speaking with you.
Thank
Speaker: you.
Thank you so much for joining us
for this episode of Dallas Dirt.
Stay tuned because there's
always going to be more.