The condo queen: How a Miami broker closes $1B+ a year

On paper, Maile Aguila’s story reads like a fairy-tale version of the American dream: After 30 years of hard work, a daughter of 1960s Cuban exiles sells $1 billion worth of Miami condos in a single year for a multi-national developer. Then she partners with The Agency, one of the buzziest luxury real estate brokerages in the country, to sell even more of them. She lives on a sprawling farm outside Miami with a menagerie of horses, dogs, cats, a koi pond and an aviary full of exotic birds. A charmed life by anyone’s definition.

Of course, none of it came easy. Even in a once-in-a-generation boomtown like Brickell, Florida, where the best condos get snapped up before construction begins, 30 years of hard work is still 30 years of hard work.

I recently sat down with Aguila to find out how she did it. She walked me through how she helped transform Brickell, a formerly sleepy Miami business district, into a younger, hipper Dubai where you can still get a surprisingly good Cubano sandwich – and gave me her best advice for new agents who want in on the action.

Follow the money, then follow your passion

In my New York City brokerage in the mid-aughts, every agent wanted to work new developments. I did too. Here’s why: While we were schlepping around the East Village in August showing sixth-floor walkups, they were sitting on Aeron chairs in sleek, air-conditioned sales offices. We spent most of our days (and nights) trying to generate leads. Their phones never stopped ringing. We all wanted in. Who wouldn’t?

With competition that fierce, breaking into new development sales can be tricky. Knowing the right people helps, obviously, but agents who get in on connections instead of merit rarely last. It’s a surprisingly high-pressure job, and experience is the only remedy.

Aguila’s advice? Follow the money, then follow your passion. Her path to new development sales was anything but traditional. She spent years working as an accountant, eventually doing the books for a real estate developer. She wanted to understand how his deals actually worked — so she got her real estate and mortgage broker licenses. Not to sell. Just to know the truth. Then, after weeks of lunches with a persistent sales director who kept telling her she was closing his deals for free, she realized she had a passion for sales.

Next steps: Find out what’s being built in your market and which projects you’d actually be excited to sell every day. Waterfront? Luxury high-rises? Golf communities? The key is to find a niche that’s both lucrative and fulfilling. Enthusiasm is a lot harder to fake than you might think. Your buyers will notice.

Become a hyper-local market expert

Educated agents sell more real estate. In new development sales, that’s doubly true. ChatGPT can’t tell a wealthy buyer in town for a week which units have the best morning sunlight or which buildings have the most helpful concierge teams. Only you can. Here’s Aguila:

“It’s all about knowledge, it’s all about learning. You’ve got to learn about the market. The more you know about the market, the better you can serve your client. And then eventually, if you get the opportunity to get into a project, take it.”

Next steps: Tour as many new developments as you can and take notes on everything. Don’t have a buyer who can afford a $2 million condo yet? Go to broker open houses or, better yet, introduce yourself to a sales agent and offer to take them to lunch.

While knowing your local market like the back of your hand is a critical first step, it’s not enough. You also need a strategy to present that data to your leads and clients. Altos makes it easy. They provide automated local market report emails you can send out every week to stay top of mind. Click below to get your first market report for free:

Even if you know your market well enough to rattle off the square footage of every unit in town, landing a spot on an in-house sales team for a luxury building isn’t easy. Every agent in your city wants that job. Why should they hire you?

Aguila’s advice? Start at a traditional brokerage first. Learn the market, build your transaction experience and get comfortable with every stage of a deal from contract to close. Then pursue the development job. But make sure you’re willing to start at the bottom.

Working as an assistant isn’t glamorous, but Aguila believes it’s the fastest way to learn the business. It’s the same advice she gave her own daughter when she decided to get into real estate:

“She started in an administrative role at Sotheby’s, learning the business. They showed her all the different departments and learned the transactional aspects of taking a deal, from writing a contract to closing. Eventually, if you’re good, you will develop into a great salesperson, and you might find yourself wanting to do this for the rest of your life.”

Next steps: Already working in residential real estate? Start reaching out to luxury developers and brokerages on LinkedIn. Let them know you want to be on a sales team and are willing to start at the bottom. Just getting started? Get your license first, then join a residential team that sells the type of real estate you eventually want to work.

Make yourself indispensable

Working as an assistant on a luxury sales team is a bit like going to college. You’re there to learn, but how much you learn is entirely up to you. Treat it like a job, and you’ll earn a paycheck. Treat it like an education, and you will build a solid foundation for a rewarding and lucrative career. The difference is everything.

Here’s how to maximize your educational ROI from your job on a sales team: Come in early, stay late and go above and beyond to help the team close more deals. Learn how to use AI to get work done faster. Do whatever it takes to convince your team that investing the time and energy to teach you their craft will be a worthwhile investment.

For Aguila, going above and beyond was easy. She was the only person in the office who spoke Spanish fluently. Her sales director, through a minor miracle of persuasion, regularly worked with South American buyers who spoke very little English. He spoke no Spanish. He reached out to Aguila to help translate, and then quickly realized she was doing far more than just explaining the details of a contract in Spanish. She was the closer. At lunch the next day, he convinced her she was in the wrong job and needed to get into sales.

Master the art of the soft sell

Selling luxury condos is remarkably similar to selling high-end houses, with one key difference: condo buyers place a higher premium on lifestyle and location. Many are looking for pied-à-terres in the city and nearly all own at least one other home. That means more wining and dining, and focusing more on amenities and local color than the home itself. So ditch the scripts, listen more than you speak and focus on building rapport.

When I asked Aguila how she deals with difficult clients, she didn’t mince words: Kill them with kindness:

“It’s an art of soft selling, but you have to do a lot of listening. Learning to read people is also very important. And when you get the really tough ones, and believe me, some are really, really tough, kill them with kindness. Sometimes you might want to, you might not want to, but if you default to being nice, eventually they’ll bring their guard down.”

Next steps: Before your next client meeting, do 20 minutes of research on what you already know about their situation and preferences. Show up prepared. Let them know you’ve done your homework. Then spend more time listening than talking.

The full picture

Know an agent who is thriving despite the odds and has actionable insights to share? We’d love to hear from you. Reach out to us here: [email protected].