Early this year, as Jorge Perez struggled to restructure more than $1.5 billion of debt on mostly vacant Florida condominium projects, doctors discovered a golf ball-sized tumor on his pancreas.
“You understand how vulnerable you are,” Perez, 61, said while sitting in his Miami waterfront office, with a view of the skyline shaped by Related Group of Florida, the real estate company he founded in 1979. “You’re here on a loan and you never know when they’re going to call it.”
Perez, known locally as the “Condo King,” survived the medical scare. In January, after nine hours of surgery to remove the tumor, doctors determined it was benign. Related Group, after absorbing $1 billion in losses, is still standing.