Instant mansions: CEO Noah Breakstone's formula for creating custom-built, million-dollar homes is like a web site where you can pick out the components for your computer—except there is nothing virtual about it - Real Estate

South Florida CEO, March, 2003 by Johanna Marmon

Call it the ultimate one-stop shop for the well-heeled home. Quietly ensconced on Ponce de Leon Boulevard in Coral Gables, in a large round building that could easily pass for a bank office (which it once was), Breakstone Homes has assembled what amounts to a luxuryhome candy store, a Willy Wonka's of custom mansion building.

For customers willing to spend anywhere from $750,000 to $5 million for a Breakstone home, it's all here. Pass through the huge glass and wrought-iron doors, and the world of luxury homes is at your finger tips, literally. In the center of the huge, circular space--150,000 square feet with a 30-foot atrium--is a "wheel" of small rooms, each filled with choices. In one you can pick out the pieces of your master bedroom. In another, kitchen components await. Others contain media rooms, children's bedrooms, bathrooms, and so forth, offering up choices with swatches of carpeting, panels of custom wood cabinetry, types of tiles, etc.

Upstairs, in a perimeter of offices that ring the open space, in-house architects and interior designers are waiting to make a buyer's dream leap from concept to reality.

"We try, under one roof, to help people go through their wish list of what they want in their home," says CEO Noah Breakstone, who created his mix 'n match custom building concept three years ago. So far, the idea has hit home: with revenues of $40 million last year, Breakstone built 24 luxury homes across Miami-Dade County.

A third-generation homebuilder--his father, Israel, started the current company more than 50 years ago--Breakstone says that his custom-made-concept came from his experience of the pitfalls customers face when building a home. Between brokering a deal for a lot, finding an architect who can draw up the right plans, and outfitting the home, it's difficult to get all the pieces to fall into place correctly--or at the same time.

"It's a 'buyer beware' kind of situation," says Breakstone, a Miami native. "There are no guarantees or warrantees ... it's usually never on time and never on budget." That's where he enters into the picture, with his company's hassle-free process. After making their picks, "We quote them one price up front--and stick to it," he says. The process takes anywhere from 8 to ten months to complete, at an average cost of about $1.5 million. "We're the biggest in Miami-Dade County, and build from Pinecrest to Golden Beach," he says.

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Breakstone--and his 25 employees--accommodates buyers in several ways. For example, you can come to the company with architectural plans already in hand and be quoted a price to build that home. Or, Breakstone can find the lot for his buyer and supply the design. The customer can also buy one of Breakstone's spec homes (the company builds a few of those each year too).

"His method has certainly made him very successful in the Miami-Dade market," says Brad Hunter, a real estate analyst with Boca Raton-based Metrostudy. "I would say that they have their niche and their method of appealing to the market."

That said, Hunter cautions that the luxury segment of the single-family housing market across South Florida is being impacted by the threat of war, a still-soft economy and general global uncertainty. "The luxury segment is definitely weaker," Hunter says. "Taken as a whole, the segment is showing some softness, a bit of erratic behavior from month to month. In the second quarter of 2001, for example, 54 homes were started in Dade County in the $750,000-and-up price range. In the fourth quarter of last year, we recorded only seven starts in the same price range."

Hunter says a scarcity of empty lots east of I-95 is also a problem--though a buyer could simply buy an existing home, raze it and start over. In fact, that's something that happens quite often; about 60 percent of the homes Breakstone built last year were on lots that already had homes on them. And as for the vicissitudes of the world economy, says Breakstone: "We've got confidence in this market. No matter what's happening, people are always going to want to buy peace of mind."