All-black Miami firm brings investment to black neighborhoods

Miami Millennial Investment Firm, formed by 12 young black professionals in Miami-Dade County in 2015, is doing a rare thing: helping black people grow wealth through real estate, by bringing black investors to neglected black communities.

The firm buys properties, rehabs them, and sells them, focusing primarily in gentrifying neighborhoods like Brownsville, Liberty City, Overtown, Gladeview, and Little Haiti.

With two single-family homes under its belt, the group is looking to add commercial and industrial properties to its portfolio, WLRN reported. The first home was purchased in 2016 for $87,000, and is currently under contract for $175,000.

“We decided we wanted to make this a black project,” one of the group’s founders, Fabiola Fleuranvil told WLRN, “People were saying, ‘How are you going to find young professionals who can put that type of money on the table?’ And we were able to find it without a problem.”

Fleuranvil said the inaugural investment was raised by finding 12 individuals with $10,000 each.

Another one of the firm’s investors, Kevin Smith, told WLRN that it’s not enough to say “this is a black neighborhood because black people live here.”

“Do we own commercial? Do we own the industrial? Do we own the banking?” he told WLRN. “We have to have ownership in our community. If we don’t have ownership we are spectators in what someone else decides to do with our community.” [WLRN] — Gabrielle Paluch