FLCCIM Chapter President’s Message

As we experience the reopening and restoring of our economy, the Florida Chapter of CCIM isn’t missing a beat! Our entire leadership team continues to work to bring you the best programs, services, and value for your membership in our Chapter, while still practicing the proper safety protocols.

I am very pleased to announce the launch of a Young Professional Network. We’ve identified the importance of strengthening the link between our younger members and the commercial real estate industry. The development of our own YPN as a “standing committee” is the first step in establishing the connection between the tools, tips, and tricks that we could provide our members to stay current within the industry. I am humbled by the enthusiasm shown so far and look forward to some exciting programs we can offer. We would like to invite you to be become involved. My thanks to Veronica Malolos, CCIM, Yulia Vargas, CCIM, Larissa Dutra, Carlos Bonilla, and Chris Cucci, CCIM for their efforts in establishing this new group for our future!

For the first time in more than a year, I am happy to announce that the Institute is beginning to schedule in-person meetings.  The Midyear Governance Meetings are scheduled for April 15-21 in Scottsdale, Arizona and will be offered hybrid. In addition, the National Association of REALTORS is hosting the C5 Summit. The C5 Summit is a premier, US based commercial real estate event being held at the center of the industry – New York from September 27-29th. FLCCIM will be well represented and will be sharing a booth with Florida REALTORS!   Don’t miss this event – register today!

Congratulations to Chris Cucci, CCIM for his incredible work as chair of our Mentor-Mentee program. This year we were successful mentoring thirteen (13) individuals – all that expressed a sincere interest in their continued growth as a CCIM designee. We should be proud as an organization to offer this valuable service and I want to acknowledge those that participated.

Your professional success is important to us. FLCCIM commits to providing you with exceptional products, programs, and services. We are bringing you a new member service! FLCCIM is providing you the opportunity to help your business and company earn media coverage within your community.  The Chapter has hired CRE-Sources to write and distribute professional press releases as a member service. Look for additional information on how to take advantage of this marketing tool.

In addition to our very successful “lunch and learns”, we also want to provide opportunities for networking. On May 20th at 5:00 p.m., FLCCIM is hosting “Battle of the Brains” – a virtual trivia social. There will be individual awards and a district award, so get as many of your district members to participate!

In closing, I want to thank Gary Ralston and share the letter he sent me from Dr. Jerry Parrish to the WSJ. As previously mentioned in my first President’s message, we need to be the “source of the source”!

“Size really does matter”

– Dr. Jerry Parrish, Florida Chamber Foundation Chief Economist

Of course, I’m an economist, so I’m talking about sample size. Your recent March 11th WSJ article suggests that almost as many people are leaving Florida as are moving in. That’s simply not true. You used a report from just one moving company that is a small percentage of the market to make a generalization about the entire industry. For 2020, they used a sample of 7,072 moves their company did to generalize about the entire market of interstate moves. While their data may be accurate for their customers, it is far from accurate for Florida’s situation. With Florida growing at around a net of 800 to 900 people per day, their sample is far too small to make reasonable assumptions about the relative size of how many people are actually leaving Florida versus how many are moving to Florida. Most people who move into, or out of, Florida do not use the moving company you source in your story so let me correct the incorrect assertation in the article.

What’s actually true is that substantially more people are moving to Florida from other states than are leaving Florida. That has been true for a long time. All you have to do is check the data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Every year, Census releases state-to-state migration data. That data will show you that since 2012, 278,853 more people moved to Florida from New York than left Florida to move to New York – it’s the number one state for in-migration to Florida. Next in order are New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, Connecticut and Massachusetts. It’s no coincidence that the high-tax states are the ones with the highest net migration to Florida. What is actually true is that Florida is a large net gainer of population in both interstate and international moves every year.

Since 2015, Florida has created more than 1 out of 11 new U.S. jobs. Florida has also kept its economy open during the last several months – something that most states now wish they had done and something the WSJ has appropriately recognized Governor DeSantis for. People continue to come to Florida for the quality of life, the economic diversity, the reasonable tax climate, and the top education system we have. Certainly, some people do leave Florida, but please don’t use a few examples of people leaving our state to imply that Florida is not attracting a lot more people than it is losing. Florida is open for business and we’re growing. Florida’s population will grow by approximately 4 million residents and our job creators will need to add approximately 2 million Florida jobs by 2030. Thank you for the excellent work the WSJ team does and I respectfully ask you update your article so your readers have the full picture versus the experience of one company doing too few Florida moves to accurately tell the Florida story.

(Article reprinted for educational purposes from the Wall Street Journal)

Jose Maria Serrano, CCIM
2021 FLCCIM President

About CCIM

“CCIM stands for Certified Commercial Investment Member. For more than 50 years, CCIMs have been recognized as leading experts in commercial investment real estate. The CCIM lapel pin denotes that the wearer has completed advanced coursework in financial and market analysis, and demonstrated extensive experience in the commercial real estate industry.”