Insurance king Ivan Herrera is jumping into commercial real estate development after partially selling his Univista empire for $700 million, The Real Deal has learned.
His new firm, Unicapital Asset Management Group, is developing a new office building near Doral, and is planning a multifamily project in Hialeah and mixed-use project in Allapattah, Jose Cueto, a Unicapital vice president, told TRD. Unicapital also took over ownership of a $200 million portfolio spanning more than 500,000 square feet in South Florida that Herrera acquired in recent years.
In addition, Unicapital plans to submit a competing offer for a 16-acre former trailer park in El Portal that currently has a $35 million stalking horse bid by Miami-based Melo Group, Cueto said. A courthouse auction is set for next week.
“A couple of years back, Ivan sold an initial stake [in Univista] and went on a real estate buying spree,” Cueto said. “This is part two, but at a much larger scale.”
Univista Insurance, the Miami-based insurer co-founded in 2009 by Herrera and his wife Ania Herrera, was partially sold to a private equity firm, according to a company statement. Ivan and Ania Herrera will continue in their roles as CEO and president of Univista, respectively, as well as retain their current management team.
Cueto and Univista, which employs 400 people and has 200 franchisees, declined to name the private equity firm.
Unicapital will use proceeds from the $700 million partial sale to ramp up the new firm’s development operations and fund several strategic acquisitions in the coming years, Cueto said.
The firm’s first ground-up development, a 60,000-square-foot office building at 4343 Northwest 77th Avenue near Doral that is currently under construction, will house the headquarters of Univida Medical Centers, a chain of clinics also founded by Herrera, Cueto said. Four other commercial projects are in the planning stage, he added.
Unicapital’s current portfolio includes existing buildings acquired in recent years by entities managed by the Herreras and Univista CFO Luis Castro, Cueto said. Some of the properties are Univista’s and Unicapital’s headquarters: an office building at 850 Northwest 42nd Avenue in Miami that was purchased for $47.5 million in 2021, as well as another office building along the Miami River that Herrera acquired in 2017 for $10.2 million.
“We are about to break ground on a mixed-use project with 95 apartments in Allapattah,” Cueto said. “And we are looking to build more than 10,000 multifamily units in the next 10 years.”
If Unicapital wins the bid for the El Portal site, the firm would consider developing a mixed-use project with retail, office and 2,500 to 3,000 apartments, Cueto said.