Category: Finalist: Dealmaker of the Year
Name: Mark Pordes
By: Legacy Development Sales & Marketing Sales & Marketing
Mark Pordes has built his career as a dealmaker. He credits his success – most recently selling out more than 400 units at the Veer Towers at CityCenter in Las Vegas – to reinvention.
“You always have to just keep reinventing yourself to stay up with the times,” he says.
Pordes was in his 20s and signed on to sell condos at Mystic Pointe in Aventura. He then took his sales talents to Williams Island, later becoming VP of Latin American sales with Jules and Eddie Trump, and opening sales offices in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.
In 2010, he launched Legacy Development Sales & Marketing Sales & Marketing to handle sales operations for some of the era’s leading luxury condos. That year, he negotiated the sale of 150 units at the 2700 North Ocean condominium on Singer Island in a deal valued at about $120 million. When he saw 50 units in the Fontainebleau condominium come on the market after prospective buyers had defaulted with the crash, Pordes and a group of investors bought the inventory – and quickly sold it all. It changed the trajectory of his career.
He earned a reputation for bulk sales. Across the region, Pordes and his investors were buying up remaining units at luxury condominiums and reselling them. The 427 units at the Veer Towers, done in partnership with a New York hedge fund, remains his largest success to date. It sold out in under five years.
“My success has come from trying to find a niche in the business,” he says. “Not following the leader, but always creating value and coming out with creative new ideas to market and sell.”