Built World Advisors Podcast: The Definitive Biography of the People Building Our Cities

Hosted by Ben Hoffman & Felipe Azenha

Business Education

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Episodes

141

Latest episode

Aug 2026

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EN-US

About the show

The Built World Podcast is the premier biographical series and educational resource dedicated to the visionaries, risk-takers, and Institutional Operators shaping the landscape of Commercial Real Estate (CRE) , Urbanism , and Property Development . Hosted by Felipe Azenha and Ben Hoffman , active Commercial Real Estate Brokers and Co-Founders of Built World Advisors in Miami , this show is more than a market update—it is a deep-dive exploration into the life stories, personal philosophies, and investment strategies of the industry’s most influential leaders. Each episode is a professional masterclass delivered through the lens of a personal history, uncovering the "good, the bad, and the ugly" of the entrepreneur’s journey from their first deal to their most iconic project. Conversations, Cocktails, and High-Level Banter We believe the best insights happen when the guard comes down. Our signature "Conversations & Cocktails" format creates a relaxed, inviting atmosphere where the banter is light, the humor is sharp, and the drinks are flowing. But don't let the cocktails fool you—the dialogue is profoundly intelligent, offering a tactical look at the Capital Stack , Asset Management , and Market Economics . It’s the kind of high-stakes "shop talk" you usually only hear in a private boardroom or a closed-door partner meeting. Virtually Every Asset Class Explored: While Felipe and Ben are specialists in the Miami Industrial and Warehouse sector, The Built World Podcast explores the entire spectrum of the built environment. We provide high-level analysis across virtually every asset class, including: Industrial & Logistics: From Small-Bay Industrial and Last-Mile Distribution to Flex Space and Cold Storage . Multifamily & Residential: High-rise luxury, Workforce Housing , and Build-to-Rent (BTR) . Office & Mixed-Use: The evolution of the workplace and the rise of Live-Work-Play environments. Retail & Hospitality: The transformation of the High Street , boutique hotels, and experiential retail. Niche Assets: Self-storage, medical office buildings (MOB), and life sciences. What We Explore: If you are looking for an insider’s read on the South Florida Real Estate Market and national CRE Trends , we dive deep into: The Miami Market: Navigating the Miami Skyline , Wynwood , Brickell , Miami Beach and beyond. Capital Markets & Debt: Real-time perspectives on Cap Rates , interest rate impacts, GP/LP structures , and why veteran operators are moving off the sidelines. The Operator’s Playbook: A look at the "Operator" side of the business—scaling income, professionalizing property management, and building high-performance brokerage teams. PropTech & Innovation: How AI in Real Estate , advanced prospecting tools, and new construction technologies are redefining Placemaking . Our Guest List: We feature a "Who’s Who" of the built world, including: Real Estate Developers, Principals, Institutional Asset Managers, Capital Markets Brokers, Architects, Attorneys, and Urban Planners. Who This Is For: Whether you are a seasoned Commercial Broker , an Active Investor looking for a Value-Add play, a student, or an entrepreneur obsessed with the future of our cities, this show offers a front-row seat to the minds redefining the built world.

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60 recent

August 12, 20261 hr 6 min

Matthew Vander Werff, Founding Partner, MVW Partners

Long before Little River was landing on lists of the coolest neighborhoods on earth, Matthew Vander Werff was quietly buying it, nearly 80 properties at a time when the rest of Miami was still fighting over Wynwood. This week the Founding Principal of MVW Partners joins us to trace the whole journey: an Iowa upbringing, a detour through the film and hospitality worlds, a Columbia real estate degree earned at the worst possible moment in 2007, and the decade of patient assemblage that turned a forgotten industrial pocket north of the Design District into the epicenter of Miami culture. We get into the mechanics of buying a neighborhood without tipping off the market, his hand-picked approach to tenants, the $79.9 million deal with AJ Capital, and why he stayed on to keep running the place after selling the majority. Plus the restaurant bets that keep paying off, from Sunny's Steakhouse to Ogawa, the 10-seat omakase that brought a Michelin star to Little River, and building it all in partnership with his wife and co-founder, Ashley Abess. We poured a bottle of Samuel Billaud Les Grands Terroirs 2023 for this one, a Chablis with the kind of restraint and sense of place Matthew has spent a decade building into a neighborhood. It did not survive the episode. Connect with us Want to dive deeper into Miami’s commercial real estate scene? 📧 Get in touch: Built World Advisors 🎙️ Listen & Watch: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube 📱 Follow the show: LinkedIn | Instagram Connect with the Hosts: Felipe Azenha Ben Hoffman Our Partners & Sponsors 🏢 Studio Space: A special thank you to Büro coworking space for hosting us! Proudly sponsored by: Top of Mind PR Vizzda Vinya

August 4, 20261 hr 16 min

Lee Brian Schrager, Founder - South Beach Wine & Food Festival

Some guests build buildings. This one built an appetite for a whole city. Lee Brian Schrager sat down with us at Buró over Pimm's Cups and took us all the way back, to Massapequa, Long Island, where he was bagging Chinese takeout on weekend nights by the age of ten. His father had left the garment business, retired young, moved to Florida, and opened restaurants with his brother that, in Lee's own words, did everything wrong and lost a lot of money. Lee has spent a career doing the opposite. We got the whole arc: the Culinary Institute of America, opening Torpedo as one of the first bars in South Beach in the late 80s, and seventeen years at InterContinental Hotels, room service manager to VP. Then Southern Glazer's handed him a sleepy one-day FIU wine tasting in 2000, and he decided it could be something enormous. By 2002 it was the South Beach Wine & Food Festival, today a five-day, sixty-thousand-person event that has raised close to forty million dollars for FIU's Chaplin School. The part he's proudest of isn't the star power, it's the 1,200 students who work it every year. Thanks as always to Vinya for the cocktails and to Buró for podcast studio and coworking space. Connect with us Want to dive deeper into Miami’s commercial real estate scene? 📧 Get in touch: Built World Advisors 🎙️ Listen & Watch: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube 📱 Follow the show: LinkedIn | Instagram Connect with the Hosts: Felipe Azenha Ben Hoffman Our Partners & Sponsors 🏢 Studio Space: A special thank you to Büro coworking space for hosting us! Proudly sponsored by: Top of Mind PR Vizzda Vinya

July 29, 20261 hr 59 min

Q2 2026 Market Update with Anthony Graziano & Juan Arias

The quarterly market update is back, and this one had no shortage of material. Juan Arias, National Director of U.S. Industrial Analytics at CoStar Group, and Anthony Graziano, Chairman and CEO of Integra Realty Resources, returned to Buró with cocktails in hand to make sense of a quarter that gave everyone whiplash. We started where the whole world started this quarter: the Strait of Hormuz. Juan and Anthony walked us through what the oil shock actually did on the ground, from freight and logistics costs to the inflation spike that had the Fed talking hikes instead of cuts, and what the ceasefire cooldown means for the back half of the year. From there, the conversation turned to the two letters driving everything else: AI. The guys dug into whether the productivity story is real or just a really good pitch deck, and what the data center land grab means for industrial real estate, power, and the markets scrambling to feed it. When warehouses start competing with server farms for dirt and electricity, the math changes fast. Then we brought it home. South Florida's growth story is changing shape. Net migration has turned negative for the first time in memory, but the people leaving are being replaced by a smaller, much wealthier crowd. Juan and Anthony debated what a market gains and what it loses when the moving trucks head north and the billionaires fly south, and what that means for everyone building, buying, and leasing here. As always, we closed with predictions on the record, to be lovingly held against them next quarter. Thanks to Buró for the space, and to Vinya for the pours that kept the forecasts honest. The market may be uncertain, but the glasses were full. Connect with us Want to dive deeper into Miami’s commercial real estate scene? 📧 Get in touch: Built World Advisors 🎙️ Listen & Watch: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube 📱 Follow the show: LinkedIn | Instagram Connect with the Hosts: Felipe Azenha Ben Hoffman Our Partners & Sponsors 🏢 Studio Space: A special thank you to Büro coworking space for hosting us! Proudly sponsored by: Top of Mind PR Vizzda Vinya

July 21, 20261 hr 57 min

Jose Gonzalez - President, GLC Real Estate

Jose Gonzalez was supposed to be a lawyer. Then Hurricane Andrew hit South Florida in 1992, and the entry-level job he'd taken at Miami-Dade's Building and Zoning Department to pay his way through FIU turned into a career. He learned construction and its regulatory side on his feet, in the middle of a region rebuilding itself. At 22, when most of his peers were collecting diplomas, Armando Codina recruited him to work on Dolphin Mall. He never really left that world. When Codina Group merged into Flagler in 2006, he stayed on under Florida East Coast Industries, eventually rising to Executive Vice President of Corporate Development, the person responsible for the parts of development nobody claps for: land use, zoning, environmental, traffic, and the government relationships that decide whether a project ever gets out of the ground. His biggest stage was Brightline, the privately built rail line connecting Miami and Orlando, alongside the industrial buildout through Flagler Global Logistics that reshaped South Florida's warehouse map. In this episode we go all the way back, family, upbringing, the version of Jose who thought he'd be arguing in front of juries instead of zoning boards. We get into what Andrew actually looked like on the ground, what Armando Codina saw in a 22-year-old, the low points he doesn't usually talk about, and what he thinks is genuinely broken about how Miami gets built. He also tells us what it means to have come full circle, back in the Codina orbit where the whole thing started. Recorded at Buró, where we do our best work and drink our best drinks. Thanks to Mike Feinstein for the room and to Nick Garcia and the Vinya team for the pour. Connect with us Want to dive deeper into Miami’s commercial real estate scene? 📧 Get in touch: Built World Advisors 🎙️ Listen & Watch: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube 📱 Follow the show: LinkedIn | Instagram Connect with the Hosts: Felipe Azenha Ben Hoffman Our Partners & Sponsors 🏢 Studio Space: A special thank you to Büro coworking space for hosting us! Proudly sponsored by: Top of Mind PR Vizzda Vinya

July 14, 20261 hr 20 min

Nicole Shiman - Managing Director, EDENS

Nicole Shiman is Managing Director and Regional Head of EDENS Florida, where she oversees one of the most important open-air retail portfolios in the state and leads all new acquisition and development activity, from Fifth & Alton on South Beach to Downtown Palm Beach Gardens. She joined us over a Maestro Dobel 50 Cristalino Paloma, and the conversation went down just as smooth. We trace her path from growing up in Toronto to the Richard Ivey School of Business, consulting at BCG in Toronto, New York, and Miami, an MBA at Harvard, and deal-making at 13th Floor Investments before EDENS tapped her in 2016 to run Florida. Along the way we get into why everyone who wrote retail's obituary was wrong, how she picks the restaurants and brands she bets on, and what "enriching community through human engagement" actually means when you're underwriting a shopping center. And because nobody runs a statewide portfolio alone, we close on the person behind the deals: a proud Canadian, a mom of three, and someone who still believes a great shopping center should feel like the center of a neighborhood. Pour yourself a Paloma and settle in. This one's a fun one. Connect with us Want to dive deeper into Miami’s commercial real estate scene? 📧 Get in touch: Built World Advisors 🎙️ Listen & Watch: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube 📱 Follow the show: LinkedIn | Instagram Connect with the Hosts: Felipe Azenha Ben Hoffman Our Partners & Sponsors 🏢 Studio Space: A special thank you to Büro coworking space for hosting us! Proudly sponsored by: Top of Mind PR Vizzda Vinya

July 7, 20261 hr 22 min

Andy Ansin, CEO, Sunbeam Properties

Andy Ansin is the third generation of one of South Florida's most enduring families. His grandfather Sidney founded Sunbeam in 1953. His father Ed turned WSVN-Channel 7 into a Miami institution and built the Miramar Park of Commerce. Now, as CEO of Sunbeam Properties and owner of WSVN, Andy is writing the next chapter at a pace that feels a lot like the newsroom he grew up in. Over a cocktail, we trace the whole arc: a Miami Beach kid running camera cable in the WSVN newsroom as a teenager, coming back after Brown, and stepping into the CEO seat in 2020. Then we get into what he is building now. Miramar Cove, the 125-acre lifestyle center he broke ground on this year, on land his grandfather bought for about a hundred dollars an acre. The Isle of Dreams towers rising in North Bay Village. And the family philosophy behind it, including why he builds with cash instead of debt. This being a biography show, we also get the side most people never see, including his passion for spearfishing. Turns out the guy running two megaprojects at once finds his head clearest underwater. Grab a drink and settle in. Connect with us Want to dive deeper into Miami’s commercial real estate scene? 📧 Get in touch: Built World Advisors 🎙️ Listen & Watch: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube 📱 Follow the show: LinkedIn | Instagram Connect with the Hosts: Felipe Azenha Ben Hoffman Our Partners & Sponsors 🏢 Studio Space: A special thank you to Büro coworking space for hosting us! Proudly sponsored by: Top of Mind PR Vizzda Vinya

June 29, 20261 hr 18 min

Camilo Miguel Jr. - Founder & CEO, Mast Capital

Camilo Miguel Jr. is the Founder and CEO of Mast Capital, a vertically integrated real estate investment and development firm he established in 2006. He got his start in 2004 when industry acquaintances took him under their wing on his first project — an experience that instilled a strong belief in mentorship that he actively pays forward today. Before launching Mast Capital, Miguel founded Vertica Group, a land investment and strategic development firm, and co-founded Clear Title Group, a real estate title insurance company. Those early ventures gave him first-hand exposure to every corner of the industry — from structuring bridge loans and buying distressed debt, to developing and renovating hotels, multifamily buildings, office, and retail. Over nearly 20 years he has grown Mast Capital into one of South Florida's most prominent developers, with a portfolio worth more than $3.5 billion concentrated in high-barrier-to-entry markets. He leads a team of ~40 people entirely focused on premium residential, commercial, and hospitality properties. Connect with us Want to dive deeper into Miami’s commercial real estate scene? 📧 Get in touch: Built World Advisors 🎙️ Listen & Watch: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube 📱 Follow the show: LinkedIn | Instagram Connect with the Hosts: Felipe Azenha Ben Hoffman Our Partners & Sponsors 🏢 Studio Space: A special thank you to Büro coworking space for hosting us! Proudly sponsored by: Top of Mind PR Vizzda Vinya

June 17, 20261 hr 53 min

Eddy Arriola - Founder & CEO, Arriola & Co.

We sat down with Eddy Arriola at Büro over gin and tonics for a conversation about building, scaling, and trust. Eddy founded Apollo Bank during the financial crisis and grew it into one of the Southeast's most respected banks before a successful sale in 2022. He's served on boards across banking, fintech, and healthcare, and was appointed by the president and confirmed by the US Senate as chairman of the Inter-American Foundation, serving under three administrations. Today he coaches CEOs through his firm, Arriola & Co. We dig into his new book, It's All About Relationships , which lays out the six arenas every CEO must master and a practical method for turning relationships into a strategic advantage. His core point: trust, not authority, is what holds leadership together. A great talk about navigating a bank through a crisis, the isolation of the CEO seat, and the relationships that make leadership work. Connect with us Want to dive deeper into Miami’s commercial real estate scene? 📧 Get in touch: Built World Advisors 🎙️ Listen & Watch: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube 📱 Follow the show: LinkedIn | Instagram Connect with the Hosts: Felipe Azenha Ben Hoffman Our Partners & Sponsors 🏢 Studio Space: A special thank you to Büro coworking space for hosting us! Proudly sponsored by: Top of Mind PR Vizzda Vinya

June 11, 20261 hr 35 min

Daniel "Danny" Diaz Leyva - Partner, Day Pitney LLP

In this episode, we are joined by a true Miami OG, Danny Leyva, partner and head of Day Pitney's Florida Real Estate practice group. Over a glass of Jose Cuervo Reserva de la Familia, Danny shares his unique, boots-on-the-ground perspective on the incredible evolution of the South Florida market. From navigating complex transactional structures and land-use regulations to tracking the massive influx of commercial real estate investments driven by Latin American family offices, Danny has a front-row seat to the region's growth. We dive deep into where international capital is flowing from, which submarkets are absorbing it, and what the future holds for the Miami landscape. Whether you are a developer or investor, Danny’s insights offer an invaluable look into the legal and financial mechanisms shaping our built world. In this episode, we discuss: Danny’s journey and his role leading Day Pitney’s real estate group in Florida. The mechanics of local land-use, zoning, and navigating complex transactions in a mature market. The rise of Latin American family offices and their shifting strategies toward Miami commercial real estate. A macro view of current capital flows and where the next wave of investment is headed. Connect with us Want to dive deeper into Miami’s commercial real estate scene? 📧 Get in touch: Built World Advisors 🎙️ Listen & Watch: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube 📱 Follow the show: LinkedIn | Instagram Connect with the Hosts: Felipe Azenha Ben Hoffman Our Partners & Sponsors 🏢 Studio Space: A special thank you to Büro coworking space for hosting us! Proudly sponsored by: Top of Mind PR Vizzda Vinya

June 10, 20261 hr 42 min

Carlos Lago, Shareholder, Greenberg Traurig LLP.

Carlos came in with a beautiful bottle of Jose Cuervo Reserva de la Familia on a Friday afternoon. As a land use lawyer at Greenberg Traurig, he's spent his career navigating the intersection of development, politics, zoning, and city-building; he is one of the attorneys behind many of Miami's most impactful real estate projects. We discuss how major projects actually get approved, the evolution of neighborhoods like Wynwood and Edgewater, and get a behind-the-scenes look at the deals, negotiations, and public processes that are shaping the future of Miami. Connect with us Want to dive deeper into Miami’s commercial real estate scene? 📧 Get in touch: Built World Advisors 🎙️ Listen & Watch: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube 📱 Follow the show: LinkedIn | Instagram Connect with the Hosts: Felipe Azenha Ben Hoffman Our Partners & Sponsors 🏢 Studio Space: A special thank you to Büro coworking space for hosting us! Proudly sponsored by: Top of Mind PR Vizzda Vinya