What we talked about
Paola Marulanda joins the PreVetted Podcast to share how she went from seeing real estate as a “necessary evil” to becoming one of South Florida’s top luxury brokers and founder of Luxury Homes Connect.
Paola grew up watching her mother rebuild their family through real estate after her grandparents’ development business. Though she initially aimed for law or banking with firms like J.P. Morgan, she realized those paths would demand a lifestyle that clashed with her desire for freedom and family time. Real estate, by contrast, offered flexibility and no income ceiling.
Show notes
Paola Marulanda turned down JP Morgan to test a theory: could she make the bankers who were recruiting her into her real estate clients instead? Within a year, she had done exactly that, and built the foundation of a career that would eventually rank her in the top 30 of over 1,500 agents at ONE Sotheby’s International Realty. Three weeks before this recording, she gave birth to her second child.
What we covered
- Paola started in real estate during the 2008 financial crisis without the pressure of needing income, which let her focus purely on being a trusted advisor, connecting distressed clients to the right lawyers, CPAs, and resources rather than chasing commissions. She describes walking into a crisis as the perfect way to start, because “everything is downhill from there.”
- She reached the top 30 under 30 ranking at age 29, a milestone she expected to hit closer to 40. Her strategy for maintaining that rank has never involved watching competitors, she competes only against herself, investing in business coaches, marketing coaches, and ongoing training in negotiation and technology.
- Luxury Homes Connect, her independent brand, exists alongside her Sotheby’s affiliation because she identified services the brokerage couldn’t provide: hyper-personalized relocation support covering schools, doctors, lawyers, CPAs, restaurant reservations, and even concierge drivers for medical appointments. She describes real estate as “so intimate”, she sees her clients’ finances, their marriages, and the gap between how they present publicly and who they really are.
- On Miami’s condo market, she issues a direct warning: if you own a condo and might sell within seven years, “you need to sell it like yesterday.” New construction, rising HOA fees driven by post-Surfside safety codes, and the commodity nature of identical units make the condo sector far more volatile than stocks. Single-family homes, by contrast, are protected by uniqueness, no two houses have the same view, neighbor, or light.
- Her advice for the single-family market is the opposite: buy whenever you’re ready, don’t wait for rates to drop. “You marry the house, you date the rate”, refinancing later is straightforward, but waiting costs you time on a market that historically only trends upward.
- She manages the rhythm of her career around market cycles deliberately: she went hard during the pandemic boom, then slowed down to get married and have her children when the market softened. She was on the phone with clients from the hospital delivery room, with open houses still running, her clients never feel when she steps back.
About Paola
Paola Marulanda is the founder and CEO of Luxury Homes Connect and a top-ranked agent at ONE Sotheby’s International Realty in South Florida, specializing in luxury residential and waterfront properties across Key Biscayne, Coral Gables, Miami Beach, and Bal Harbour.
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/paolamarulanda
- Website: https://onesothebysrealty.com
Episode 80 of the PreVetted Podcast.