The deal doctor: How a Miami agent closes $25 million+ a year selling condos to plastic surgeons

Struggling to find a lucrative niche this year? You’re not alone. With leads scarce and deals drying up, you’re probably considering niches you wouldn’t have touched with a ten-foot pole in 2021. Probate, divorce leads, short sales — everything is on the table when you have a mortgage to pay. Leads are leads, right? There’s just one problem: every agent in your office is in the same boat.

Efrain Daza might have a solution to your lead problem. Daza found a niche that launched him onto the Real Trends Verified list after just five years on the job. It worked well enough to make him the number one agent in his office — no small feat in Miami, where the best luxury condos often get snapped up by insiders before construction even begins. Here’s the niche: He sells pre-construction condos to foreign buyers, nearly all plastic surgeons and doctors from his native Colombia.

We recently sat down with Daza to learn how he did it. He walked us through how he generates and vets foreign buyer leads remotely, his white-glove approach to servicing clients and offered his advice for agents considering entering his lucrative niche.

Efrain Daza: By the numbers

• Market: Miami
• Niche: Pre-construction luxury condos, plastic surgeons from Colombia  
• 2024 sales volume + sides:  $25.7 million
• RealTrends Verified state ranking: 381
• Primary lead generation strategy: International networking 
• Real estate coach: Micheal Suarez
• Highest ROI real estate software: WhatsApp

No pressure, no diamonds

Like so many of us, Daza only considered real estate as a career after a rough patch in his life. After filing for bankruptcy in Colombia, he relocated to Miami, where he struggled to find high-paying jobs. He was broke, stressed out and miserable. Then his mother was diagnosed with cancer. Surrounded by gleaming luxury condos and crypto millionaires driving Ferraris,  he wanted in; he just wasn’t sure how yet. His mother suggested real estate:

“Going into real estate was my mother’s idea. I told her I was unhappy, but if I left my job, I didn’t know how I would pay my bills each month. She told me, ‘Efrain, you’re good at selling. Why don’t you try selling houses?’”

Expand your sphere of influence

Getting someone in another country to know, like and trust you enough to handle their transaction isn’t easy. And if you don’t have experience working international transactions, it’s nearly impossible. It’s not like you can just plunk down your credit card and buy international leads from Zillow or Market Leader, and online ads yield mixed results, at best. This is why Daza recommends starting with your sphere of influence (SOI) — a strategy he discovered one fateful day on the treadmill at his local gym:

“I met someone at the gym who was also from Colombia. He told me he was a plastic surgeon. He asked me what I did for a living, and I decided to be honest with him. I told him that I just got my real estate license and didn’t really know what I was doing yet. He told me his daughter was moving to Miami from Colombia and needed an apartment. He asked if I could help her find one.”

While you might not get as lucky as Daza, the first step to building an international client base is to expand your SOI. Having personal connections helps, but setting aside time each week, or even better, each day, to intentionally develop your sphere with expats (short for expatriate: someone who resides outside their native country) can work just as well.

• Next steps: Start with expat Facebook Groups, but in-person networking produces better results. Head to a local coffee shop, restaurant or community center and start meeting people. According to Daza, it’s the best (and only) way to land your crucial first client.