No one from the Jills Zeder Group’s core eight-person team named a single client who’s bought and sold any of their million and multimillion-dollar listings in interviews with The Real Deal.
The South Florida team is No. 1 in the country. In 2019, when The Jills team — Jill Eber and Jill Hertzberg — merged with Judy Zeder’s Zeder Group, they announced they’d sold a combined $5 billion, but that was seven years ago, before the billionaires rolled into their territory. Last year, they were involved in deals totaling about $1.4 billion in dollar volume, according to The Real Deal’s ranking, not counting the sizable off-market business. RealTrends, which allows agents to submit their transactions and include proven off-market deals, ranks them as No. 1 in the country with about $1.9 billion in dollar volume.
The client list, of course, isn’t really a secret. On it are: Ken Griffin, billionaire Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, singer-songwriter Julio Iglesias, singer Phil Collins, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, hedge funder Dan Loeb, businessman Orlando Bravo, the Related Group’s Jorge Pérez, golf great Greg Norman and Tommy Hilfiger.
The Jills, blonde petite women who’ve been known to favor a bright dress, both present peppy. Zeder is competitive, both at tennis and golf, and at philanthropy and baking. Their way of speaking without client names isn’t just the discretion of those in high-net-worth client services. It’s part of their power play.
Climbing to the top is one accomplishment, but staying there is another. To do so, the group has deployed tried-and-true strategies of empire: keeping other power players close, making loyalty more profitable than rebellion, using force judiciously, solving the problem of succession and defining the narrative. Hertzberg, Eber and Zeder gave rare sit-down interviews to The Real Deal, but stuck to boosterish comments.
They beat the extreme influx of wealth to the market, and in many ways the real estate universe that Miami buyers and sellers exist in is calibrated to their beat, and the price tags on their listings.
When they ignore something — an introduction, an offer, a scandal — it’s like it didn’t happen.
In 2015, an agent named Kevin Tomlinson said the Jills were systematically manipulating their listings on the Multiple Listing Service and threatened to make them pay $800,000 for his silence. Tomlinson was found guilty of extortion, sentenced to probation and banned from working in the industry. The twists and turns of the case made national headlines, like Vanity Fair’s “How a Real-Estate Scuffle Turned into a True Tale of Miami Vice,” then faded from the news. Some believe the scandal catapulted them into another level of dealmaking. Many agents would crack under the pressure, but somehow they seemed to end up ahead.
(“This matter took place more than a decade ago,” the Jills said in a statement. “Mr. Tomlinson was convicted of felony extortion and ultimately served significant time in jail. It was a difficult experience for us and our families, but that chapter has long since passed and we have focused on moving forward.”)
“Working with them can be a ‘necessary evil.’ You need to work with them if you’re going to sell high-end single-family homes.”
After Covid shutdowns, Miami began to experience its biggest boom ever, positioning the megateam to take advantage. The team’s inner circle is made up of family members: Eber works closely with her sister Felise; the Hertzberg kids, Danny and Hillary, joined in 2009 and 2011; Judy Zeder works with her son Nathan and her daughter Kara. Her daughter-in-law, Meredith, is now on the team, while Kara took a step back to raise twins.
Post-expansion, no wealthy waterfront market in Miami-Dade lacks a Jills Zeder Group presence.
Due to new political and economic realities pushing more high-end buyers into South Florida, they now serve a wealthier, more domestic market, increasingly made up of transplants from the Northeast, Midwest and West Coast. In this world, you don’t have to do business with the Jills Zeder Group, but choosing not to means you’re missing out on top listings and buyers.
“They have great clients and they know how to get deals done,” said Coconut Grove agent Riley Smith, who leads one of Compass’ top teams.
Can’t live without them
In 1993, Jill Eber was working out of Framer Realty, a small brokerage firm in Miami Beach, when Miami native Jill Hertzberg walked in. Hertzberg was returning to work after her third child, Hillary, began preschool. She had previously worked for Burdines as a buyer but quit when she got pregnant. She needed something flexible, and at the suggestion of a friend (none other than Lennar CEO Stuart Miller), she got her real estate license.
Jill sat next to Jill. They did not know each other. The Jills nickname stuck.
Hertzberg’s goal her first year was to earn enough money to pay for her kids to attend Miami Country Day, a private school across the bridge in Bay Point. Tuition was $22,000.
Eber, who had spent part of her childhood in Tarrytown, New York, moved to Miami Beach with her family when she was 7 years old. She graduated from the University of Miami with a bachelor’s degree in fine arts. “I always loved singing and acting,” she said. Then, she lost her voice. “I was traveling around with a band up and down the East Coast, and I got nodes on my vocal chords, and I couldn’t speak for four months,” she said.
Eber also got her real estate license at a friend’s suggestion. She began by securing listings in her parents’ condo building in Bal Harbour.
The duo sold homes and condos all over Miami Beach and the barrier islands, including on ritzy Fisher Island. Brokerage Wimbish Riteway acquired Framer, and it was later bought by Coldwell Banker, where they have remained.
Hertzberg’s big break came in 1998, when she sold the Sunset Islands house of Tony and Connie Ridder, of the Knight Ridder newspaper dynasty, for $2.25 million. She got the listing the old-fashioned way.
“I was scared to go ring the bell, and I finally said to myself, ‘you’ve got to do it,’ and I rang the bell, and Tony answered,” Hertzberg said. “And I got that listing.”
Jill and Jill’s back and forth was natural. They shared an assistant, and if one Jill wasn’t available, the other would handle a client. The moniker also made for good marketing.
They formed alliances as they grew — some warmer than others. Many agents respect their hustle, possibly because they have no other choice. Working with them can be a “necessary evil,” one top broker said. “You need to work with them if you’re going to sell high-end single-family homes.”
Unlike other partnerships that fizzle out, end dramatically or get pushed out by competition, the Jills have remained constant figures in Miami’s luxury scene in the 33 years since they banded together. In 2018, the Jills met up with the Zeders at one of Judy’s listings, where the Jills were representing a prospective buyer.
Zeder is the middle child of seven accomplished siblings who grew up in Detroit and moved to Miami in 1979. Her father, the late Forrest Hainline Jr., worked for the American Motors Corporation and helped negotiate the company’s merger with Renault. He was also an avid tennis fan and player who chaired a number of tennis association boards. Judy inherited the networking ability and the tennis — she’s the kind of player who hates pickleball — and she and Hertzberg also play golf. (Eber doesn’t golf but she said she scuba dives with “lots of sharks.”)
(Jill Zeder Group)
The trio and their families kicked around the idea of a merger for weeks.
Eventually, they combined to form a team that is essentially peerless. They had dinner at an Italian restaurant to celebrate, though no one remembers its name, then spent months ironing out the details. The founders were less sure of the arrangement than their kids, the Hertzbergs said.
Together, “we’re one person removed from almost anyone we want to contact in the world, and while we had a serious business before, the synergy of putting that together really changed [everything],” Danny said.
They all talk every day and work together on a number of deals. But despite the merger, they maintain certain internal boundaries. The Jills primarily work in Miami Beach, and the Zeders dominate on the mainland, in Coral Gables, Coconut Grove and Pinecrest, though there are Jills signs in Coconut Grove, where some of the team’s recent big deals have clustered. The geographical spread, from relatively laid-back Coconut Grove to more manicured Miami Beach, gets them past the limiting factor for many agents: getting around to enough listings in the day, especially as traffic has gotten worse.
“They remind me of the Blue Angels,” Nancy Klock Corey, their longtime manager who also holds a regional position with Coldwell Banker, said, referring to the small team of U.S. Navy and Marine Corps who demonstrate military fortitude to the American public.
Compounds, estates and private islands
In 2022, Jill Hertzberg represented Ken Griffin when he bought Adrienne Arsht’s estate in Coconut Grove. The property, 4 acres with two historic homes and about 400 feet of frontage along Biscayne Bay, was asking $150 million.
The Jills Zeder Team is known for pushing pricing upwards from the sell side — manifesting, as the kids say — as Miami-Dade records keep getting set. But rivals say they are tough negotiators when they’re on the buyer side.
The final sale price for the Arsht estate was $106.9 million, 29 percent below the original ask, saving Griffin $43.1 million. (The price was still a record for single-family homes in Miami-Dade County.)
The records have become routine.
In December, Google co-founder Larry Page, the second-richest person in the world, paid $101.5 million for the 4.5-acre waterfront compound at 3585 Anchorage Way in Coconut Grove, the first of three local purchases. The Anchorage Way assemblage includes two homes, one built for former Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan, who served under President Woodrow Wilson, and the other for the late Progressive Insurance CEO Peter B. Lewis, plus a century-old Banyan tree. Danny and Jill and Nathan and Judy, in that order, brokered the deal. They had the listing priced at $115 million.
“With most of the ultra-high-net-worth people we work with, they’re not looking for somebody to be their friend, to entertain them, to be a tour guide,” Danny Hertzberg said. “They can tell within seconds or minutes of speaking to you, are you adding value? Are you going to make this process more efficient for me? Do you have an ultra high level of expertise? They work with the best lawyers in the world, the best accountants in the world, the best tax advisers, and the best doctors in the world.”
Still, Zeder can give a good tour. On a recent drive through Gables Estates, Cocoplum and other gated communities, she explained the history of the neighborhoods, including why certain lots facing west are less desirable, since the stillness can make the heat unbearable.
“These canals were all blown out,” she said. “They just wanted to make waterfront property to the Biltmore, so they dynamited this canal out, which is part of the problem with the way we move in this part of the city.”
Defending the territory
Judy Zeder and the Jills are competitive.
“What you learn when you come in second, you learn how to win,” Zeder said.
Eber and Hertzberg have long had friendly competition, Corey noted. (Hertzberg calls Corey their “spiritual leader.”)
Eber, in particular, is “probably one of the most persistent people I’ve seen in this business,” Corey added.
Hertzberg is also tough. But she’s a “natural driver in a very balanced way,” Corey said. “The first time I heard her negotiate a deal, I was like, ‘Oh, I get it.’”
(1 Oak Studios)
Holding onto the territory is the work of succession, which is why the Jills and Zeders have prioritized training their kids.
In empires, empresses do best when they delegate some power to the locals, and the principal brokers have done this for tech and social media. Danny and his sister figured out the Jills’ digital marketing, starting in the 2000s.
“At the very beginning, [Jill and Jill] sort of understood social media. But I distinctly remember the first time I did a video and got a direct message from someone we ended up selling to,” Hillary said. “My mom said ‘that’s not going to happen, that’s somebody who’s a scammer, it’s not going to go through.’” But it did.
The Jills Zeder Beach and Gables’ Instagram accounts have more than 100,000 followers combined. Danny has almost 28,000 followers and Hillary has about 16,000. The Zeders are more low-key online. Now that Coldwell Banker is under the Compass International Holdings umbrella, the team has access to Compass’ tech.
“They came from the generation of no email and no cell phones,” said Dora Puig, a top ranked agent and broker-owner of her own firm, Luxe Living Realty. “Where they have taken their business in an era of technology is amazing.”
Miami nice
The succession has put Danny, Nathan, Hillary and Meredith at the forefront.
Agents say the “kids” are a pleasure to work with.
But next to Eber, Hertzberg and Zeder, who are still very active, this could sound like damning with faint praise, since real estate brokers have to be ruthless and sometimes difficult.
When The Real Deal asked Zeder if she ever expected to be where she is today, Nathan answered for her.
“For her, there is no stop,” he said.
Even with succession solved, the empire-building goes on. The team has mastered capturing buyer information and is working on more deals where they represent both sides, an ever more lucrative proposition. Each family promotes its own members on social media and in print marketing, a habit that has sparked rumors of a split. The team consistently denies them.
They’re poised to beat the record they helped set when Zuckerberg paid $170 million for a 2-acre estate on Indian Creek.
Led by Eber and Zeder, they have the listing for the most expensive home on the market in Miami, the 2.4-acre property at 485 West Matheson Drive in Key Biscayne. The price tag? $237 million, just shy of the closing price for the most expensive home ever sold in the U.S.