Spanish billionaire Amancio Ortega is on a global summer shopping spree, making a splash in South Florida.
Ortega’s Ponte Gadea real estate investment family office is buying the 30-story Sabadell Financial Center in Miami’s Brickell for about $275 million, and also bought the 44-story, 259-unit Veneto Las Olas apartment tower in downtown Fort Lauderdale for $165 million last month.
Ortega is best known as a retail powerhouse, founding fast fashion retailer Zara. Forbes pegs his net worth at $115 billion, making him the 13th richest person worldwide. For decades, Ponte Gadea has reinvested Ortega’s dividends from his vast retail holdings into real estate in Europe and the U.S., quietly amassing an empire of marquee properties.
This summer, Ortega seized on South Florida’s hot office and multifamily markets with his $440 million in closed or planned purchases. Despite macroeconomic headwinds, Brickell and downtown Fort Lauderdale have healthy occupancies and higher rents. And because Ponte Gadea is an all-cash buyer, it has an edge in the higher interest rate climate –– even if it’s not the top bidder, experts say.
“Companies that are able to close all cash are a preferred buyer today,” said CBRE’s Robert Given, who represented Related Group in the Veneto sale. A buyer financing with debt carries a higher risk, “because most sellers are looking for certainty of closing over highest price,” he added. So Ponte Gadea “has an advantage on pricing right now.”
In fact, the Pérez family’s Coconut Grove-based Related, which completed development of Veneto last year, picked Ponte Gadea as the buyer over four other firms that bid about 2 percent to 3 percent higher and relied on financing, according to Given. “It was the highest certainty of closing,” he said.
Veneto, which was listed for $230 million, or $888,030 per unit, sold for $165 million, or 637,066 per unit. It was 95 percent leased at the time of sale.
For Sabadell Financial Center, New York-based KKR and Orlando-based Parkway picked Ponte Gadea as the buyer, despite receiving at least one higher offer that required financing, according to a source. KKR declined comment, and the brokers who marketed the tower, Chris Lee and Sean Kelly of CBRE, didn’t return requests for comment.
If the deal closes for $275 million, it will mark the biggest South Florida office sale so far this year.
In Europe, Ponte Gadea paid $113 million for the five-star 90-key Hotel Banke in central Paris this month. In May, it paid $284 million for a 290,000-square-foot office building in Barcelona that’s home to Spanish book publisher Planeta’s headquarters. The firm, which also invests in energy and infrastructure, also reportedly is buying a 49 percent stake in Brookfield Asset Management’s PD Ports in the United Kingdom for an undisclosed amount.
Ortega’s spending spree coincides with an expected $3.6 billion in dividends from his retail holdings this year, his biggest ever annual payout. Ortega’s quick deployment of $837 million into real estate in Europe and South Florida could be due to a rush to shield his dividends from Spain’s hefty wealth taxes that could take a sizable chunk of his earnings, Bloomberg reported.
Representatives at Ponte Gadea’s offices in La Coruna, Spain and Miami didn’t respond to interview requests.
Ortega, 89, got into the garment business early on, first learning to make clothes by hand as a youth in Spain. In the 1970s, he and his then-wife, the late Rosalía Mera, started Zara and eventually brought the retailer and their other fashion holdings under their Inditex holding company. Aside from Zara, Inditex’s brands include Bershka, Massimo Dutti, Oysho, Zara Home, Kiddy’s Class, Tempe, Stradivarius, and Pull and Bear.
South Florida has been his prime target for his real estate investments for over a decade. By the time he announced his retirement from Inditex in 2011, he already had a foothold in the tri-county region. (He remains Inditex’s biggest shareholder with a 59 percent stake, with his daughter Marta Ortega Pérez serving as non-executive chair, according to the firm’s website. He’s still listed as a board member.)
In downtown Miami, Ortega and Ugo Colombo of Miami-based CMC Group completed the 54-story waterfront Epic Residences & Hotel in 2008 with 414 hotel keys and 362 condos. Ponte Gadea remains Epic Hotel’s owner.
The adjacent 1.25-acre bayfront lot was slated for the project’s second phase. But in 2014, Ortega, Colombo and Diego Lowenstein sold the site for $125 million, or $100 million per acre, marking one of the top land deals at the time. The buyer, German Coto and his G&G Business Developments, developed the site into the 66-story, 391-unit Aston Martin Residences.
Ponte Gadea also made South Florida’s top office purchase in 2016, paying $516.6 million for the 55-story Southeast Financial Center and adjacent 2 acres of land in downtown Miami. That followed the firm’s purchase of a 75,000-square-foot retail block on South Beach’s Lincoln Road for $370 million in 2015. The properties span 1001 Lincoln Road through 1035 Lincoln Road.
Ponte Gadea made its U.S. multifamily market debut in New York. In 2022, it paid roughly $500 million for the 500-unit 19 Dutch tower in the Financial District. In 2023, it expanded to Chicago’s West Loop, purchasing the 492-unit 727 West Madison apartment tower for nearly $232 million, marking the city’s top commercial deal that year.
In South Florida, Ponte Gadea also owns a pair of cold storage warehouses in Hialeah, paying a combined $156.3 million in 2023. It also owns a 16-story office building in Coral Gables, according to records.
Brokers involved in separate Ponte Gadea deals describe the firm’s playbook as having very specific criteria for investment properties, and meticulously examining an asset and submarket. Once it selects a property and is ready to buy, Ponte Gadea gets to work, executes quickly and is a long-term holder, they said.
“They are particular as to which side of the block in the urban environment the building is on. The walkability of that building within just a few hundred yards is highly important to them,” said Given, who marketed the Aston Martin site on behalf of Ortega and his partners in 2014. “They do not make very many offers. They only make offers on assets they really intend to buy.”
“Very astute buyers,” added Comras Companies CEO Michael Comras, who sold Ponte Gadea the Lincoln Road properties.
Despite his riches and ownership of some of the world’s top fashion retailers and marquee buildings, Ortega has remained a mystery to the general public, preferring to maintain his privacy.
The octogenarian reportedly has only ever given interviews to three journalists. His low-key M.O. is a bit of a rarity in South Florida real estate, where each new purchase or lease is announced via a marketing campaign.
“They buy the best, and they are very quiet in their approach,” Comras said. “They don’t make a lot of noise and are under the radar. You don’t hear about them often.”
Read more
Residential
South Florida
Legal battle escalates at Spanish billionaire Amancio Ortega’s Epic condo-hotel
Billionaire behind Zara buys Walmart-leased warehouse in the Inland Empire
