South Florida has extended been a magnet for New York real estate gamers. And when most New Yorkers make a move on the regional market place, they do it in design: With loads of ballyhoo in hopes that even the smallest promotions and tasks turn into the talk of the town.
The Damaghis are not most New Yorkers.
The Great Neck family members has amassed developable sites across South Florida. Even though some of its investments have surpassed people of New York’s real estate royalty, the family’s bargains have remained clandestine.
“They have got some genuinely phenomenal property,” a resource reported. “But some folks just want to preserve it peaceful.”
The Damaghis — designed up of husband-and-wife Nasser and Shahnaz Damaghi and their kids Nader, Kambiz and Babak Damaghi — aren’t complete-time authentic estate players. Nasser and his sons founded paper products and individual care items maker Initially Excellent Enterprises in 1988, which has grown to employ much more than 4,000 employees at minimum 7 services across the U.S. and Canada.
True estate is extra of a aspect gig. The Damaghis have paid out $182.2 million across 15 bargains for developable land according to a information investigation by The Actual Deal.
TRD discovered the household in November as the buyers who dropped $50.8 million on 2.7 acres south of Brightline’s MiamiCentral downtown passenger prepare station as a result of sources acquainted with the deal. State documents for the limited legal responsibility company that produced the obtain really do not explicitly tie the Damaghis to the offer. Neither the family’s identify nor addresses for 1st Quality’s offices or a person of the family’s Excellent Neck properties are shown in the filings. But the documents do record 1 human being of interest: Moshe Oppenheim.
Turns out, Oppenheim is the clue to the Damaghis’ other holdings.
Muzzled
9 entities registered to Oppenheim — the family’s longtime attorney — bought the bulk of the homes from 2019 to 2022.
The Damaghis are powering the bargains, according to numerous sources, nevertheless no a person wanted to converse on the report or even at all, citing the family’s demanding instructions to continue to keep them off the radar. ”Real tough” to communicate about the loved ones, just one source stated they are “very personal,” other individuals held repeating.
Though unwilling, some did budge, presented they continue to be nameless. They explained the family’s true estate perform as a “long-term generational investment.” A different supply revealed that the purchases ended up all hard cash — in fact, no mortgages are recorded on the serious estate. And other individuals stated the Damaghis have searched for additional South Florida investments as not too long ago as last calendar year.
In Fort Lauderdale’s booming Flagler Village community, the spouse and children owns nearly 5 acres on 3 websites: land on the northeast corner of Northwest Flagler Push and Next Avenue, on the southeast corner of Next Street and Northwest Initially Avenue, and straight away west of the federal courthouse at 299 East Broward Boulevard.
South of there, they have amassed the block fronting the New River on the northeast corner of South Andrews Avenue and Southeast Fifth Avenue. They also own nearby parking heaps and tiny industrial buildings, which are likely candidates for redevelopment.
But the family’s to start with investment decision was in Miami in 2013 when they bought a complete metropolis block of land in Edgewater, involving Northeast 32nd and 33rd streets, together the east aspect of Biscayne Boulevard. This is the only non-concealed offer, as the getting entity lists Kambiz Damaghi in state data.
Their other Miami site is the downtown land south of the Brightline station, which has approval for a pair of combined-use household towers with 2,007 models and spanning 4 million square toes.
The family has selected several parcels for growth and are “assessing the opportunities” but can’t share far more specifics until eventually the assignments are released, Oppenheim wrote in an emailed reaction to a record of concerns.
For the Damaghis, stealth method is nothing new, as they have been opaque about their private life. Very first Quality’s website and LinkedIn say loads about the company’s heritage but make no point out of its house owners. In its place, tying the loved ones to the organization is additional effortlessly carried out by reading
posts published in 2019 and past year by Pennsylvania’s The Specific Lock Haven about Kambiz Damaghi’s speeches to the neighborhood chamber of commerce.
Temple Israel of Wonderful Neck’s annals also clearly show the Damaghis have been embedded in the region’s Jewish local community. In 2012, the temple’s The Voice publication declared a bar mitzvah for Nader and Mitra Damaghi’s son. Kambiz Damaghi has also been shown on the board of trustees for the Sephardic Heritage Alliance for 2017-18.
As a result of Oppenheim, the family members agreed to present a minimal about its history for this story, and stated they are accomplishing it expressly for the sake of precision. In 1978, Nasser and Shahnaz remaining Iran for the duration of the revolution with their sons to escape persecution. Even though information show the Damaghi spouse and children includes a lot of cousins, uncles and other kinfolk, it’s Nader, 61, Kambiz, 59, and Babak, 53, who guide 1st High-quality as co-CEOs — and who are buying up South Florida authentic estate
Just one issue the loved ones hasn’t concealed so nicely is its penchant for palatial homes in Fantastic Neck’s affluent Kings Place.
In 2004, Babak and his spouse, Farhnaz, paid $12.8 million for the late comedian Alan King’s dwelling at 40 Shore Push, in accordance to records. Fronting Manhasset Bay, the home was built in 1926 in a combination of Tudor and gothic styles, and by 2012, the couple experienced replaced it with a Colonial-model châteauan measuring extra than 15,000 square toes. They marketed it in 2017 for $22 million, documents show.
Nader and Mitra have been nearby neighbors. They paid $7.1 million in 2002 for the 10 Shore Push manse, which four a long time afterwards they changed, also with a Colonial-type castle that spans a lot more than 10,000 sq. feet on 2 bayfront acres. The pair bought it in 2017 for $20 million, record demonstrate.
As for Kambiz and Haleh’s abode at 26 Dock Lane, they sold it in 2017 for $14 million,
but not just before litigation gave a glimpse of their way of living in the house totaling a lot more than 14,000 square toes.
The couple experienced a 14-person employees of housekeepers, groundskeepers, cooks, personalized assistants and security, according to a 2013 lawsuit filed towards them by previous estate supervisor Christopher Marconi.
Marconi claimed he was illegally fired four months in on the occupation partly in excess of increasing problem with Haleh’s personal assistant’s allegedly racist remarks to household employees. In a non-public meeting, Kambiz advised Marconi to “back off” his thrust to get the assistant fired, insinuating that Kambiz and the assistant had been “sexually intimate” and she had texts that “‘could be perceived’ as inappropriate by Haleh,” in accordance to the lawsuit. Marconi, who could not be achieved for remark, missing, however his implication of an extramarital affair struck a chord with Kambiz.
“That is pretty, extremely erroneous and inappropriate to even suggest,” Kambiz reported for the duration of a deposition, contacting the allegation “shameful,” “despicable” and saying it places his “honor in question”.
New M.O.?
When Miki Naftali and a husband or wife dropped $40.5 million for a Miami Worldcenter development web page final March, information releases flooded journalists’ inboxes with announcements for a pair of supertall residential towers. Namdar Team, also based mostly in New York, also did not shy absent from announcements about its prepare for a 41-tale and a 43-story condominium towers, also in downtown, last August.
But when TRD attained out to the Damaghis in November about their purchase of the improvement web site south of Brightline’s station, a member of the loved ones vehemently denied they ended up the customers and did not want to deliver his first name.
No matter whether the Damaghis’ growing existence in South Florida, in which producing excitement over genuine estate promotions is just as much part of the activity as the precise expense, will push them to abandon their mysterious means continues to be to be observed.
They have, even so, proven signals that they could be rethinking their lengthy-held modus operandi.
In a stick to up get in touch with with Oppenheim, he explained the Damaghis’ arrangement to respond to TRD’s queries in an e mail as “a 1st.”