Damaghi Family’s South Florida Authentic Estate Acquiring Spree

South Florida has extensive been a magnet for New York true estate players. And when most New Yorkers make a move on the regional industry, they do it in design and style: With heaps of ballyhoo in hopes that even the smallest discounts and projects develop into the chat of the town. 

The Damaghis are not most New Yorkers. 

The Fantastic Neck relatives has amassed developable web sites throughout South Florida. Although some of its investments have surpassed those people of New York’s real estate royalty, the family’s offers have remained clandestine. 

“They have obtained some genuinely phenomenal belongings,” a source mentioned. “But some individuals just want to hold it silent.” 

The Damaghis — produced up of spouse-and-spouse Nasser and Shahnaz Damaghi and their kids Nader, Kambiz and Babak Damaghi — are not whole-time serious estate players. Nasser and his sons started paper solutions and individual care items producer Very first High quality Enterprises in 1988, which has developed to use additional than 4,000 personnel at the very least seven amenities throughout the U.S. and Canada. 

True estate is extra of a side gig. The Damaghis have compensated $182.2 million across 15 discounts for developable land according to a information evaluation by The Authentic Offer. 

TRD recognized the family in November as the potential buyers who dropped $50.8 million on 2.7 acres south of Brightline’s MiamiCentral downtown passenger educate station via resources common with the offer. State data for the limited liability business that manufactured the obtain don’t explicitly tie the Damaghis to the offer. Neither the family’s name nor addresses for To start with Quality’s offices or one particular of the family’s Fantastic Neck houses are detailed in the filings. But the data do listing a person human being of curiosity: Moshe Oppenheim. 

Turns out, Oppenheim is the clue to the Damaghis’ other holdings.  

Muzzled

Nine entities registered to Oppenheim — the family’s longtime attorney — bought the the vast majority of the properties from 2019 to 2022. 

The Damaghis are powering the specials, according to many sources, however no a single required to converse on the history or even at all, citing the family’s rigid guidelines to keep them off the radar. ”Real tough” to talk about the spouse and children, a single supply explained they are “very private,” other folks held repeating.

While unwilling, some did budge, supplied they stay anonymous. They explained the family’s genuine estate perform as a “long-term generational investment decision.” Yet another resource uncovered that the purchases ended up all dollars — indeed, no home loans are recorded on the genuine estate. And some others reported the Damaghis have searched for a lot more South Florida investments as not long ago as last yr. 

In Fort Lauderdale’s booming Flagler Village community, the loved ones owns almost 5 acres on a few sites: land on the northeast corner of Northwest Flagler Push and Next Avenue, on the southeast corner of Second Road and Northwest Initial Avenue, and right 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 Street. They also personal close by parking loads and tiny professional structures, which are very likely candidates for redevelopment. 

But the family’s first financial investment was in Miami in 2013 when they bought a whole metropolis block of land in Edgewater, between Northeast 32nd and 33rd streets, along the east facet of Biscayne Boulevard. This is the only non-concealed deal, as the acquiring entity lists Kambiz Damaghi in point out data.

Their other Miami internet site is the downtown land south of the Brightline station, which has acceptance for a pair of combined-use household towers with 2,007 models and spanning 4 million square feet. 

 

  

The spouse and children has decided on various parcels for progress and are “assessing the opportunities” but simply cannot share far more particulars until the assignments are released, Oppenheim wrote in an emailed reaction to a checklist of thoughts. 

For the Damaghis, stealth method is nothing new, as they have been opaque about their personal lives. First Quality’s website and LinkedIn say a good deal about the company’s background but make no mention of its entrepreneurs. Instead, tying the family members to the corporation is a lot more conveniently completed by reading 

posts posted in 2019 and past year by Pennsylvania’s The Convey Lock Haven about Kambiz Damaghi’s speeches to the regional chamber of commerce.  

Temple Israel of Great Neck’s annals also exhibit the Damaghis have been embedded in the region’s Jewish neighborhood. 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.

By way of Oppenheim, the loved ones agreed to provide a little about its qualifications for this tale, and claimed they are performing it expressly for the sake of accuracy. In 1978, Nasser and Shahnaz remaining Iran all through the revolution with their sons to escape persecution. Although documents show the Damaghi relatives involves a lot of cousins, uncles and other family, it is Nader, 61, Kambiz, 59, and Babak, 53, who lead Very first Good quality as co-CEOs — and who are shopping for up South Florida serious estate 

A single thing the spouse and children hasn’t hidden so effectively is its penchant for palatial houses in Good Neck’s affluent Kings Level. 

In 2004, Babak and his spouse, Farhnaz, compensated $12.8 million for the late comedian Alan King’s house at 40 Shore Generate, according to information. Fronting Manhasset Bay, the property was built in 1926  in a combination of Tudor and gothic models, and by 2012, the few had replaced it with a Colonial-design and style châteauan measuring far more than 15,000 sq. ft. They offered it in 2017 for $22 million, records present.  

Nader and Mitra had been nearby neighbors. They paid $7.1 million in 2002 for the 10 Shore Drive manse, which 4 yrs afterwards they replaced, also with a Colonial-type castle that spans extra than 10,000 sq. ft on 2 bayfront acres. The pair bought it in 2017 for $20 million, report demonstrate.  

As for Kambiz and Haleh’s abode at 26 Dock Lane, they marketed it in 2017 for $14 million, 

but not before litigation gave a glimpse of their life-style in the household totaling additional than 14,000 square ft. 

The pair had a 14-person employees of housekeepers, groundskeepers, cooks, individual assistants and security, according to a 2013 lawsuit filed towards them by former estate supervisor Christopher Marconi. 

Marconi claimed he was illegally fired 4 months in on the career partly in excess of elevating concern with Haleh’s individual assistant’s allegedly racist remarks to family staff members. In a private assembly, Kambiz told Marconi to “back off” his drive to get the assistant fired, insinuating that Kambiz and the assistant experienced been “sexually intimate” and she had texts that “‘could be perceived’ as inappropriate by Haleh,” according to the lawsuit. Marconi, who could not be reached for comment, shed, though his implication of an extramarital affair struck a chord with Kambiz. 

“That is pretty, quite improper and inappropriate to even counsel,” Kambiz explained through a deposition, contacting the allegation “shameful,” “despicable” and indicating it places his “honor in question”. 

New M.O.?

When Miki Naftali and a spouse dropped $40.5 million for a Miami Worldcenter development website very last March, information releases flooded journalists’ inboxes with announcements for a pair of supertall residential towers. Namdar Team, also based in New York, also did not shy away from bulletins about its system for a 41-tale and a 43-story condominium towers, also in downtown, previous August. 

But when TRD reached out to the Damaghis in November about their purchase of the improvement site south of Brightline’s station, a member of the family members vehemently denied they ended up the buyers and didn’t want to supply his first name. 

Irrespective of whether the Damaghis’ increasing existence in South Florida, the place generating buzz in excess of authentic estate bargains is just as a lot part of the game as the real expenditure, will push them to abandon their mysterious approaches remains to be found. 

They have, even so, revealed symptoms that they could be rethinking their very long-held modus operandi. 

 

In a observe up get in touch with with Oppenheim, he described the Damaghis’ settlement to reply to TRD’s inquiries in an e mail as “a first.”

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