Sharing The Torch: How Family-Owned Real Estate Businesses Prep The Next Generation

Making it in commercial real estate means dealing with adversity, and industry moguls who want to pass their companies down to the next generation are making sure to prepare their kids to take on the family business. 

For many, that means starting to bring their offspring into their world at a young age.

“The clock is running on me, so I need him to be able to be the new and improved version of me,” Peebles Corp. CEO Don Peebles said of his son, Donahue Peebles III, who joined the family business while he was still in college. “The sooner the better.”

The Peebleses spoke at Bisnow's Family-Owned Real Estate Business event on Tuesday, held at the Hotel Colonnade Coral Gables. They were joined by panelists including the father-daughter duo of Ian Bruce Eichner and Alexandra Eichner of The Continuum Co.

For the Eichners, the partnership took more time. Alexandra Eichner built her own career in fitness product marketing, so when she joined Continuum in 2020, she said it didn’t feel like a handout.

Continuum has developed large-scale mixed-use projects in New York and Las Vegas, and Alexandra Eichner is now in charge of the company's Florida projects as the firm's president. She said her dynamic with her father revolves around mutual support. Even as things get heated, the sharing of a common goal makes it easy to not take things personally.

“We can scream a lot and then go have a drink two seconds later, and it’s fine,” Alexandra Eichner said. “We’ll laugh about it.”

Most recently, they expanded on a recent project, buying Shuckers Waterfront Bar & Grille and an adjacent hotel on 2.3 acres in North Bay Village for $75M in June. The Continuum Co. ultimately plans to redevelop the site with a hotel, condos and retail space, as Bisnow previously reported.

“We have pretty awesome plans we are working on to make it the most amazing project we’ve ever done, and I’m glad we get to do it together,” Alexandra Eichner said.

The pair is working on other hotel projects, retail and apartment buildings for their next ventures, and Alexandra Eichner is leading the charge, her father said.

“I should say that all of the approvals we got in Bay Harbor for our projects, all of the approval that I’ve gotten in North Bay Village, all the presentations were not made by dad. They were made by the daughter,” Ian Bruce Eichner said.

Don Peebles, one of the nation's most prominent Black developers, ensured his son was no stranger to the real estate business growing up, but he also introduced him to different workplaces at a young age.

By the time he was 17, Peebles III had worked in the office of the D.C. mayor and in Congress. Even while going through school, Peebles III reflected on how his real education often coincided with real estate education.

Peebles advised his son to build competitive skills through basketball, politics and other opportunities, believing early exposure to the workforce would accelerate his path to success.

“So I put him on the fast track and curated where I thought he should learn to work for it,” Peebles said. “So I felt that I could prepare you to go out into the world and compete at a younger age so he would have a very strong advantage.”

Peebles III has progressed to become executive vice president of Peebles Corp. and founded his own Miami-based company, Legacy Real Estate Development, in 2017 during his time at Columbia University.

Peebles also highlighted the advantage of having his son under his wing — a Peebles can effectively be in two places at once, the elder said, because of how he has trained his son to represent his interests.

The Peebles team has conquered projects in Miami, Miami Beach and other spaces across the U.S., highlighting that the pair has explored different avenues of commercial real estate.

“I started the company based on doing Class-A office buildings and luxury residential. It was Donahue, as a student at Columbia, that said we needed to be a part of a solution towards affordable housing,” Peebles said. “It allows us to be invested in our communities and make communities more accessible. If I was going to say what I was most proud of, I would probably say that.”

Peebles III isn't the only member of the next generation at the event to discuss bringing a fresh perspective to the family businesses.

Dalton Easton, a sales representative for South Florida-based brokerage and property management company The Easton Group, is a third-generation member of his family's business. He said he learned the importance of sticking to what made his family mentors successful, but he also emphasized that the transition between generations has its own challenges.

“The cost to buy 300 acres, the first big project our family did back in the '90s, was $20M. Now, today $20M only gets you 7, 8, 9 acres,” Easton said. “We’ve had a few deals, and it’s a constant struggle back and forth just trying to get them used to today's pricing.”

Navigating these complexities becomes a balance between personal and professional relationships, a challenge that shapes every aspect of working together. The building of those relationships evolved through childhood, making for a seamless transition to a business setting, Easton said.

“Being in a family business is a unique position because you have direct access to your CEO or the owner of the business, which is good and bad,” Easton said. “You now have information that people wouldn’t otherwise have, but that also puts a lot of pressure on you to perform.”

These interactions take endurance, like for MG Developer CEO Alirio Torrealba’s son, Diego Torrealba, who joined the company as vice president in 2023. The industry has allowed him to work under his father and learn through trial and error.

“Being there with him and seeing how he says no to one of my respective decisions, and at the end of the day, I realize he is probably two or three steps ahead of everyone, and that’s why he is where he is today,” Diego Torrealba said. “It just takes time and takes patience.”