Loopnet, CoStar, and Ten-X: How Digital Marketing Shapes Miami's Real Estate Landscape with Brian Gonzalez

What happens when Miami’s unstoppable growth meets cutting-edge real estate tech? Brian Gonzalez of Loopnet reveals how search demand is soaring, office space is thriving, and digital platforms are changing the game. Tune in for insider tips and a fresh look at South Florida’s CRE market.

To get in touch with Brian, you can email him at bgonzalez@costar.com or connect with him on LinkedIn. 

Thanks for joining us on CRE Cafecito, the CCIM Miami Podcast where deals, insights, and Miami flavor come together.

For more information on CCIM Miami District please visit:

• CCIM Miami Website
• LinkedIn
• Instagram

You can find Ruben the Cuban on LinkedIn.

Chapters

• 1:20 Brian's Miami Roots
• 4:52 From Teacher to Commercial Real Estate
• 9:02 Miami's Growth and Economic Success
• 10:58 Digital Marketing in Real Estate
• 15:48 CoStar, Loopnet, and 10X Explained
• 21:54 Future Outlook and Industry Advice
• 25:10 Final Thoughts and Cigar Sampling

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:40

CRE Cafecito with Brian Gonzalez from Loopnet. Thank you very much for uh well actually for the drinks, cigars, and for me. Thanks for being here. So, what type of cafecito are we drinking today? What type of cafecito? This is a single doesn't look like cafecito. This is a single malt cafecito. This is the best Miami cafecito. That is a Miami cafecito. Hey, so welcome. Thanks for being here. Thanks for taking the time. I know our our our the audience is gonna have uh great time getting to know a little bit about Brian, a little bit about uh Co-Star Luton net and uh 10x. That's right, and you know, some of the Miami market and some of the stuff that you guys do. And so tell me a little bit about Brian, you know, you born in Miami or Baptist Hospital, baby.

SPEAKER_02: 1:20

Baptist hospital, Baptist Hospital 1982, born and raised in Coral Gables by the Granada Golf Course, two college professors as my parents. So schooling was always very important to them. I myself struggled as a student. I had an ADHD in the 80s, which was had uh I'm still dealing with it. It wasn't a hat, but in the 80s, ADHD was dealt with uh slap in the back of the head. Oh yeah, you know, yeah, you know, this was we're talking about the days with chalkboards, you know, dusty chalkboards, you know. And somehow, you know, you wanted the teacher to pick you to be the guy or girl who grabs the the erasers and you guys to slap them outside and you come back in with the chalk all over your hair, looking like Santa Claus.

SPEAKER_00: 2:01

Yeah, the youngins don't know nothing about clapping erasers. My oh my, it's such a different, different that was a movement. That was an era. Oh, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02: 2:09

That was like MC Hammer Time, another ice time. That was Guns N' Roses. That was that was a different era, but yeah, born and raised here, very proud of the high school I graduated from, Columbus in Westchester. It's an Adelante Brotherhood. I got my oldest son there now. Uh he's a junior, runs varsity cross-country. My other son's in eighth grade. He's a big part of the community too. Playing at Tam Miami basketball. That's a program that's been established for for decades upon decades. So he gets to be a part of the travel team there. I was actually a teacher for 13 years myself. Really? Yeah. Oh. Miami Dave. Miami Dade County Public Schools and Miami Dade College. Really? So the community, Miami, is it it's just it's in my DNA. You know, there's no taking me out of here. We're not gonna go anywhere else uh in the foreseeable future. You know, you never know where God takes you. But being able to then be a part of the commercial real estate game where you're born and raised, you know, all the mom and pop restaurants here. Yeah, you've seen the blockbusters come and go, you've seen the Eckards come and go, you've seen the Woolworths come and go. Like, remember the Eckerd Blue?

SPEAKER_00: 3:13

Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I was born in Chicago, but we had Eckerd's, we had uh a whole bunch of stores that have come and gone, and you know, it's just been amazing. So, how did you make that that transition from education, you know, being a teacher and uh being a professor to to the CRE world?

SPEAKER_02: 3:32

All right, well, what city do we live in?

SPEAKER_00: 3:33

Miami. Miami. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 3:35

How how how's affordability down here?

SPEAKER_00: 3:38

Yeah, yeah. Enough said, enough said, enough said, all right.

SPEAKER_02: 3:41

Enough said. That being said, I'm still I thank God because of social media, I'm still connected to a lot of my older students. They're married now, you know, with children, they're part local zoning boards, you know, they're they're CEOs, they're business owners, some are real estate agents. Wow. So it's really, really cool to know that you had that impact on people that now we get to work together as peers.

SPEAKER_00: 4:04

But did you like seek out commercial real estate as you're being a teacher, or does somebody say, hey, you should look at this?

SPEAKER_02: 4:10

So here's the hustle, right? What we all hustle, right? A majority, like, look, there's so many different avenues you could be in. You could be in private equity, you could be in brokerage, you could be an owner, you could be a developer, you could be an agent. You know, there's there's so many different roles. I work for a corporate company, right? So my role is a little different. We're really much a partner and a supporter of helping you market your deals, whether it's through traditional digital marketing to have the largest online presence, or it's fit even to have a quick transaction with uh, you know, an as-is auction with our 10x platform. So what happened was in the hustle that's natural to the real estate world, I was teaching fifth grade at the time. That's one. All right, two, I was tutoring kids after school. Three, I was coaching cross-country and volleyball. Four, I was an adjunct professor at Miami Dade College. But the fifth one, that's the key.

SPEAKER_00: 5:03

Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 5:04

So a small business owner, friend of mine, they have a company down here called Express Permit Solutions, okay, where they expedite permits. Okay. So he just loved the way I flow. And he's like, look, on your spare time, you want to just like cold call people and see if they need any help with their permits? And I'm like, Yeah, why not? So I just started cold calling on my free time, which wasn't much free time. Went on LinkedIn, started getting people there, started you know, farming there, and next thing you know, like I was generating some good income for express permit solutions, but most importantly, I was part I was providing a solution to people who needed help. Wow, so we're winning. Absolutely. I caught the attention of somebody at 10x, came in for about six interviews. They did not like that I didn't have a real estate background, but they saw the hustle, they saw the educational background, they saw my passion, and they took a big chance on me. Wow. Eight years later, here I am helping and working alongside brokers for just like you. You know, you're part of a big national brokerage, boutique, you know, local brokers, lots of owners, lots of developers. Uh, whether it's a large institutional group or it's a private owner with a one-off medical office building because they're a doctor that have their family practice in there. You know, we're gonna have a conversation and we're gonna see if we have a solution to help them achieve their goals. And we're very transparent. So sometimes, you know, let's say on the auction route, someone wants to transact for three million, but we're saying on these type of terms that are very seller-friendly, you know, we actually advise you to transact around 2 million, but they need 3 million. So then we can't move forward, right? And we have a few options for them, including the fact that looks listen, what you really need is aggressive marketing on loop net, not an auction to achieve your goals. So it's really more like we're consultants and and and help partner up people achieve their goals, and to do it in Miami, what's better than that?

SPEAKER_00: 7:02

Wow, imagine you have some pretty good stories about some of those uh transactions or some things you've seen change or so.

SPEAKER_02: 7:10

Yeah, well, going back to the changes in in Miami, and when I mean Miami, I mean I'm not referring to even like let's say Miami Beach. I'm referring to, you know, Brickle, downtown, um, the southwest part. No disrespect to, you know, Miami Lakes or anything like that, or the northern part, but my main focus has always been a little bit more in the southwest. So you see, like when you travel, right? Let's say you're traveling from Kendall and you're traveling turnpike to A36, then you're hanging an east, and then you're riding parallel for the airport, and you're getting to Brickle, you're talking about growth is phenomenal. You know, we're economic drivers. Yes. So we like the fact that we're sitting in traffic for an hour and a half to get somewhere because that means the economy is flowing. Okay, but yeah, with it comes the traffic. Traffic, yeah. Yeah, with it comes the traffic.

SPEAKER_00: 7:54

A lot of growth. Uh, as uh some people like to say, it's is growth success growth, success pain. So it's been successful in Miami. Yeah, it's gonna be some pain, right? You know, versus some other places that are dying on the vine and uh having a hard time.

SPEAKER_02: 8:10

Yeah, well, well, look, you tee you tee this up perfectly for an alley, right? You couldn't have thrown me a better pass when you're talking about growth, right? And what we do marketing, yeah, right. How do you drive that that that growth? How do you drive that transaction? How do you drive that tenant to your spot, right? Well, one of the things is knowing where we are at in the state of the market, right? So something, I mean, don't quote me to the number, but something about 90% of all consumers when they're looking for that next coffee brand, that next cigar brand, that next Scotch brand, that next shoe brand, that next watch. There's a lot of watch lovers out there, you know. You're going online. You know, saying online presence, yeah, you better have an online presence. That's like a no-brainer. That's I mean, that's breathing. Yeah, you know, it's it's air. You know, no online presence, no air. So we come in as the most established marketing group almost anywhere you go, especially the markets I cover. I can only talk about the markets I cover, right? But if I put lease of space in Doral, lease of space in Miami shores, buy a warehouse in Homestead, buy land in Miami Beach, Lupin's gonna be right at the top. It's the very first thing. It's gonna be the first sponsored thing, it's gonna be the first one that goes up. I mean, we spent a pretty penny on Google marketing because everybody's Googling.

SPEAKER_00: 9:25

Yep.

SPEAKER_02: 9:26

I remember Internet Explorer, remember that? Oh, yeah. I was actually an Internet Explorer type of guy. And when people would be like, you gotta Google it, I didn't I kind of get mad and I'd be like, You mean Internet Explorer it? Yeah, you know, and then eventually uh deleted Internet Explorer, yeah, you know, so I'm Googling it now. So we spend upwards of uh 40 million a year just on Google so that we could uh master I think the numbers around 97 of all searchable words that people would use to find their next space to make sure we're dominating for you because without the brokerage community, without the ownership community, we have nothing to advertise. So Miami gives us plenty to advertise. What do you think is the uh most visited for May of 2025? I know we're already in August, but I have the May uh numbers fresh in my head. What asset class do you think was visited the most in the leasing world? Leasing in Miami office. Office, you got it.

SPEAKER_00: 10:24

Yeah, yeah. Well, because I've done about two or three office deals in the last you know six months. Yeah. I'm getting calls from people in Chicago and New York and looking for I got a call from a group from I think they were in Texas. Yeah. And looking for office, which I know office in Miami were underbuilt. So we have it's kind of like the tale of two cities. We had very little office space, and now we're having these super high-end shiny towers going up that are driving Manhattan, you know, per square foot pricing.

SPEAKER_02: 10:59

Right. So 101, supply and demand.

SPEAKER_00: 11:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 11:02

So what's happening to the the prices when there's such a demand? You know, they're going up. You know, what's the hottest area? Brickle. You know, that's where our office is in 1450 Brickle, the the fifth floor loft. You could always pay us a visit. You know, we got a beautiful view of the church my parents got married at, St. Jude Church in 1971. I see that out my window every single day with Keep It Skein in the background that I've ran that bridge so many times. So it's like if you can't see the smile on my face, I have a smile on my face almost 24-7. Wow, because that's your nature. You're just having fun, you know, like in the 80s when you ran around for hours and your parents didn't ask where you were, and everything was cool. Like, I'm just running around Miami having fun, wow, still to this day. So, yeah, office, like in comparison, office. I think people took in Miami only for the office asset class and only for leasing, something like 120,000 virtual tours. Wow. A virtual tour means somebody clicked into a specific property and they did the whole touring, right? And then that's your top funnel. You know, that's what you want. You want a large top funnel that then bleed that then bleeds to a quality, hopefully, conversation or message, then a tour, get somebody in the space and then get it dotted.

SPEAKER_00: 12:19

Yep.

SPEAKER_02: 12:19

You know, like listen, we can't fix overpriced properties, right? You know, there's no cure for that. Yeah, but you know, we will drive traffic and bring an audience. Now, the beautiful thing is that us as a platform, for you, right? For you, the the representatives of these transactions, traffic for most asset classes is up 60, depending on the the asset class, up 60, 80 percent, sometimes even 100% year over year compared to that same month, because of that massive Google push of advertising that we do there.

SPEAKER_00: 12:54

By the way, we're I love sitting here in the Tabacong in Dural. This is uh we're giving back to the economy of South Florida. Absolutely. This is what we like to do. That's why the smile's on both of our faces. Absolutely. So, so is that that that turn are you guys seeing that? You know, like the through the the searches, uh, people signing up for not just the services for Costa or LoopNet or 10X, but maybe some of the add-ons, like your silver or your platinums and so forth.

SPEAKER_02: 13:19

Yeah, I mean look, when you're when you want a digital presence, when you want the fact that look, we could we help people save budget when they advertise with us because we cre we help you create the offering memorandums, the flyers for the properties, email blasts to our our own leads. So we really help save your budget on other things. But at the end of the day, we really like to track the consumers, right? The buyers, the tenants, and what's their behavior like. So let's stick to office asset class. So one of the trends that we've been tracking is you're seeing a lot of movement going from Brickle West. So you're seeing a lot of movement going to Coral Gables, and then Coral Gables is now bleeding over to where we're at right now in Durral, bleeding over to Kendall because of affordability, you know. And I'm talking to very large groups who pay for those aggressive signature ads because they have multiple spaces available, and you know, they like to talk to the tenants who are coming to tour. Hey, what brought you to the space? You know, and tenants are telling them, well, we took a survey of where most of our employees uh live. Yeah, and guess what? Most of them don't live in brickle per se, right? So we're looking over here in Durham now. Nice, you know, and other people might say, Oh, yeah, we have we have a base that everybody rents condos in brickle, so we gotta be here brickle. We'll pay the 50 plus dollars a foot.

SPEAKER_00: 14:38

Yeah. 50. Well, yeah, they're 50 plus. The nice shiny towers are getting over 100. Yeah, yeah. Uh, two things I like to touch on. How does CoStar relate to loopnet relate to 10x? How do you guys work together? How are you guys a little bit different? Can you kind of explain that? Yeah, on the branding and kind of thing.

SPEAKER_02: 14:56

It's probably the number one question we get, and it's actually a very easy answer to say. Okay, it's co star is for data analytics. Loopnet is for marketing, 10x is for auctioning with the loopnet signature marketing in it. So when I'm trying to find ownership groups, when I'm just trying to find comps, that's what I go to co star for. Okay, that comes with a license, right? That you need to have. Yes. Um, to list on CoStar is free. Anyone could upload their properties on Coastar. Oh, really? But that doesn't mean that they're going to have visibility online because the only way to then view your property on CoStar is if you're a paying member on CoStar, which means CoStar, give or take the time, roughly. Remember, Coastar is not my swim lane. Right, right, right. Have somewhere around 200,000 licensees nationally, while LoopNet is driving 13 million unique monthly visitors to the LoopNet site every single month. One more time. Loopnet is driving 13 million unique monthly visitors. While CoStar yearly has around, remember not my swim lane, around 200,000 licensees. Okay, because why? CoStar, for the most part, if I'm uh if I have a karate, you know, uh place, if I have a nail place, if I have a barber shop, what on earth am I gonna have a co star license for?

SPEAKER_00: 16:24

Right, you know, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02: 16:27

I don't care, right? What I do care about is let me see what's available. So I'm gonna Google. I'm not gonna Google loopnet because maybe I don't even know what loopnet is. So again, let's go back to the nail salon. I'm gonna open up a nail salon, and well, I would never probably open up a nail salon myself. That's a that's tough, that's tough. That's a different conversation. Yeah, yeah, that's a different conversation. Let's go, let's say I'm gonna open up a cigar shop. There we go. Yeah, I like to consider myself somewhat of a cigar enthusiast, not a connoisseur, but an enthusiast. And I'm just gonna go, I want to lease a retail space for my cigar shop, right? Well, loopnet's gonna be the first thing that pops up. So I'm gonna go ahead and click loopnet. It doesn't matter if I have I've heard of LoopNet or not before, it's free. It has all the inventory, and I can start to filter. Well, I can only afford X. I only want to be in this zip code. I want to be next to uh, you know, I want to be next to a karate shop, a karate place, right? Because I know a lot of dads want to leave their kids at the karate and come smoke a quick cigar, you know. So I can find that on LoopNet. The tenants, it doesn't cost them anything to search, you know. So that's the biggest difference. Always remember, CoStar is gonna be your data analytics. It does count as marketing for everybody who has the license because they'll be able to see that, right? But once you're advertising on Loopnet, which the entry level is called a silver advertisement, which means you have that online presence, you have that email blasting, you have that offering memorandum, you have that Google search that you're gonna come out in, that's also gonna get elevated on CoStar. So there's the synergy between both of the platforms, but both very, very different. Gotcha. And the other misconception that a lot of people have is that oh, Loopnet is set it and forget it. No, it's an it's an investment, but you got to be proactive too, right? It it's it's also like if you're not going in there and using the tools you're investing in, which I've said it a few times the email blaster, the the offering member and the creator, the flyer creator, updating your listing to make sure your spaces are are are written out and explained the right way, then you're you're kind of dropping the ball of the potential that you could be reaching. And Miami's a very strong market for loopnet. Miami, again, another reason I love serving the community. Miami's a big loopnet believer. Why should everybody use a professional licensed agent? So you don't get screwed and you get the best deal. If you are an owner or landlord, you want that broker representation. Because guess what? That broker most likely does have co star. And guess what? They can start finding out where that you you may got you may have a guy who wants to open a cigar shop and found the best place possible, right? And he has no idea that three blocks away is a very established cigar store, that you're not going to be pulling away their clients, right? Yeah, with cold star data, you'll be able to find that immediately. And you say, hey, I I I I know it looks like a 10, but it's really not. So when we do a market search for you, look, I could correct, I could recommend these spaces that in Miami traffic don't have another cigar lounge within three months.

SPEAKER_00: 19:35

Looking into the future, not to give any secrets away. Where do you see you guys going?

SPEAKER_02: 19:38

Oh, it's it's a beautiful space. We just had such a freaking large head start, right? And with Loopnet, we got a head start, but we're not complacent. You know, in fact, I know we have competitors out there, you know. In fact, some of our competitors that uh were founded by ex-colleagues of mine, right, on the 10x platform, not the loopnet platform, the 10 auction platform. And they've made a they've made a significant push, and I'm so happy for them, right? Because what you want to do is you want to cheer for your competitors, you just want to beat them. Yeah, right. I want to I want to go up against the best. Yeah, and I'm gonna cheer for you. And if you make a good play, hey, good play, but I'm gonna squash you, right? And that's just me as a as a person. That's right. You know, I'm not speaking at the corporate level here. But that being said, no, we root for our competitors. I think our closest competitor, we still have about on the last data check, I did about 11 million more monthly visitors than they do. So that's number two. And we we have a lot of all a lot of value propositions that they're not offering and a lot of protection and security on our platform, and it's still the the trusted one. But internally, I can tell you that it's an inspiration to always try to improve your product, your service. We have our headquarters in Richmond, Virginia. Everybody knows that they get phone calls from CoStar all the time, wanting to update data so that we can provide the best data possible to everybody else, and customer service. So, where I see the market going is a lot of technology tools. AI is the big one. We met at an AI basically themed conference, absolutely, right? Yeah, so we've taken we we've taken note, we're implementing it, and the the future's bright. Listen, we live in the United States of America, the greatest country in the world. We're in South Florida, which is like its own world within a world, and and people love to come here. It's growing nonstop. You have a lot of young guys and girls getting into commercial real estate. I know a lot of them. I know a kid Francisco, big shout out to him. He earned himself a scholarship to go to the ICSC. He's been to the CCIM trainings, and he's only like 19 years old. Wow. And he's so enthusiastic about learning this industry. And you got a lot of ownership groups down here, you got a lot of brokers down here that are very prideful. A few brokers, a few ownership groups, just like us at LoopNets. You may get a bad rap from one or two people, but then you got you you find that it's a really nurturing community. Everybody helps each other for the most part, and uh and especially once you connect dots, right? Oh, we went to the same high school, oh, we went to the rival high school, oh, we're both from this area, you know. Oh, we both like coffee, you know, whatever it is. You start to connect, man, and you want to root for everybody. Yeah, and if you didn't get the deal, but you got the deal, I'm gonna cheer for you. So that's where that's where the industry's going.

SPEAKER_00: 22:28

As we wrap up, any uh little nuggets that you can leave our audience with. We're all very bullish and positive for Miami because we're here. You have to be.

SPEAKER_02: 22:37

Um, and almost to like a naive state, yeah, right? I'm not I'm not saying just throw your money anywhere, right? But you have you have to be. You gotta believe, man. Yeah, you gotta believe in baseball, you fail 70% of the time and you're making it to the hall of fame, right? You're you're making generational money by failing 70% of the time. So it's don't ever not believe in yourself, don't get yourself tangled up in the emotional waves, ups and downs of real estate. You're never as good as your hottest streak, you're never as bad as your coldest streak. Just keep going, be good to people. Karma is real, cheer for others, add value when you talk to someone. Don't go out there with your hand out, truly add value, understand it's a long game, and and and wake up the next day and do it all over again.

SPEAKER_00: 23:28

That's very inspiring. I want to thank you. Absolutely, it's been amazing. Look forward to seeing, you know, we're a loop net and co-star and the and the fam keeps growing. So I'm a long time uh user, licensee for many, many, many years.

SPEAKER_01: 23:45

You're paying for the drinks then. Yeah, you didn't know it, but you already paid for this.

SPEAKER_00: 23:50

Uh look forward to continued uh relationship. Appreciate your support with CCIM, and thank you for sponsoring this this episode. And uh thanks for the cigars.

SPEAKER_02: 23:59

All right, so cool. Last question. Yes, you never smoked the cigar we're smoking right now, you never drank what we're drinking right now. These are all recommendations I came to to say, hey, this is a nice light entry. Yeah, so it's gonna be a fun evening. So uh what are your what are your thoughts on what we're sampling here today?

SPEAKER_00: 24:15

This my father blue label is delicious. It is, it's really smooth, it's exactly what you said. Yeah, and I forgot the name of the the Dalmor. Da More. Dalmor. Very, very smooth.

SPEAKER_02: 24:29

There you go.

SPEAKER_00: 24:29

Beautiful. There you go, cheerful. Definitely know your thing. Thank you very much. Salute, brother. Thank you.