The Dealmakers’ Edge with A.Y. Strauss

Strategic Growth in Urban Real Estate with David Berg

• A.Y. Strauss • Episode 59

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David Berg is a Partner at Infinity Real Estate, where he oversees acquisitions, investment ventures, and the firm’s overall investment strategy. Since joining in 2011 as Investment Director, David has led Infinity’s expansion into the Philadelphia and Miami markets while managing key lender and investor relationships. Under his leadership, the firm is currently developing or repositioning over one million square feet of commercial and residential property.

David has played a central role in shaping Infinity’s growth, executing transactions totaling over $750 million across multifamily, retail, hospitality, and mixed-use assets. His entrepreneurial approach and deep expertise in capital transactions have made him a driving force behind Infinity’s diversified portfolio. Prior to Infinity, he worked at Monday Properties on high-profile Class A office towers, including 230 Park Avenue and an 11-asset portfolio in Rosslyn, Virginia. He also served as Vice President of Acquisitions at Mermelstein Development and began his career in investment banking at JPMorgan and RBC Capital Markets.

A graduate of Emory University’s Goizueta Business School, David holds degrees in Finance and Real Estate. He is a Vice President of the Ocean Drive Association, co-chair of the South Beach Business Improvement District, board member of the Washington Avenue BID, and Vice President of the Española Way Association. A lifelong athlete and devoted supporter of the ASPCA and Jewish National Fund, David lives in Miami Beach with his wife Maya, their son Elijah, and their dog Roux.


Insights from David Berg on Scaling, Strategy, and Urban Market Expansion

David Berg shares how personal roots and deep local networks have shaped Infinity Real Estate’s expansion into Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and Miami. Markets where on-the-ground experience and community alignment have led to successful redevelopment strategies. He explains how Infinity identifies value in historic properties, avoids the “dumb tax” of new market entry, and remains responsive to shifting dynamics through a nimble, entrepreneurial approach.

In this episode, David also discusses Infinity’s return to New York City’s retail sector and why today’s volatility is creating compelling opportunities for disciplined, contrarian investors. He offers a candid look at how he manages the emotional demands of high-stakes development, and shares the personal routines that help him stay grounded, focused, and effective in a constantly evolving industry.

1:30 – David’s roots and path to real estate
4:15 – Early career moves
7:00 – Joining Infinity Real Estate and the firm’s early focus on workforce housing in D.C.
9:45 – Strategic expansion into Philly and Miami 
12:00 – The Clay Hotel project and how COVID catalyzed a move to Miami
14:50 – Community involvement and leadership in Miami Beach redevelopment
17:10 – The Garden Court Towers project in West Philly and Infinity’s preservation-first approach
19:45 – Why Infinity is re-entering the NY market after nearly a decade
22:10 – Managing stress, staying agile, and how Infinity builds a resilient team culture

Mentioned In Strategic Growth in Urban Real Estate with David Berg

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Aaron Strauss: You're listening to The Dealmakers’ Edge with A.Y. Strauss, diving deep into stories behind commercial real estate leaders.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to The Dealmakers’ Edge. Today, we are really excited to be joined by my good friend Dave Berg. He's a partner at Infinity Real Estate. Dave oversees the firm’s acquisitions, investment ventures, and overall strategy, helping to grow their expanding portfolio.

Since he joined in 2011, he’s led the firm’s expansion into Philly and Miami, playing a key role in transactions totaling over $750 million. With a background in investment banking and real estate, his expertise spans acquisitions, capital transactions, and large-scale development projects. Beyond his work, he’s an active leader in the Miami Beach development community.

We’re really excited to have him on. In this conversation, we’re going to talk about some of their development projects, the nuances, life as a developer, finding that critical balance, and the overall state of the market and his deal flow.

So here we are with my good friend Dave Berg. We go way back, and I’m really excited he made the time to be on, to really educate all of our listeners. You’ve got a tremendous career to date. We’re going to learn about your background, about your deal flow, and what makes you tick, and what makes Infinity tick.

And just want to thank you for being on. And Dave, maybe you can kick us off with some of the earlier career points, where you went to school, where you grew up, and then sort of how you got started in the industry?

David Berg: Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. I grew up in Philadelphia, outside of Philadelphia, where I became a die-hard Philly sports fan. And I still, to this day, will watch almost every Sixers, Flyers, and definitely every Eagles game. So, for all the listeners, you do not want to attend a Philly sports game with me. I'm one of the obnoxious Philly fans that you all read and hear about.

After growing up in Philadelphia, I went to school at Emory University in Atlanta. My mother grew up in Atlanta, she was actually a Cuban Jew. So she's a Jewban that made her way to Miami and then eventually Atlanta. I had cousins that went to Emory who were from Atlanta, and grandparents who lived in Atlanta when I went to Emory.

After school, I moved to New York, where I spent nearly 15 years living throughout the city, Greenwich Village, East Village, Midtown. I started working out of school in the CMBS market, right before the 2008 crisis tanked the home market.

And then shortly after starting in CMBS, I moved to investment banking at RBC Capital Markets. That wasn't for me. After about a year, a little over a year and a half stint in investment banking, I moved to the buy side of real estate.

Aaron Strauss: I think you were at Monday before you joined Infinity. So you worked with a couple of other large groups before you found your prominent home, as it were.

David Berg: That’s right. After RBC Capital Markets, I went to work for two brothers, Edward and Yuri Mermelstein. It was called Mermelstein Development at the time. Yuri’s been fairly active the last five years, he’s a great friend and a mentor.

At the time, it was really still the heart of the recession, 2010, I think, and 2009. But his position on the market was that there was going to be a double dip, so we were pretty inactive. I think he actually started focusing a lot of his attention and time on the diamond industry, because the diamond industry was 70% distressed at the time.

So, me being young and inexperienced and less entrepreneurial, I was like, “Oh, I want to do real estate,” and my boss is focusing on diamonds, so I gotta get out of here. Meanwhile, if I had invested alongside him in the diamond industry, I would’ve been much, much better off.

So I went to Monday Properties and oversaw the D.C.–North Arlington office portfolio for them for a little while. Lehman Brothers, at the time, had hired Monday Properties to asset manage what was called the B3 Portfolio, which was a portfolio of assets in San Francisco, L.A., Boston, and D.C. that Lehman Brothers owned when they were winding down their portfolio.

Monday was asset managing. I also worked on some iconic properties with Monday, 230 Park, and the recapitalization of that building, which was a well-over-a-billion-dollar transaction, and then some Midtown South buildings as well. But ultimately, I found my way to Infinity.

It was a little more of a parallel environment, back to a smaller team and various different asset classes. At the time, Monday was focused strictly on Class A office, and so I wanted to get more exposure to multifamily and retail, and Infinity offered me that opportunity.

Aaron Strauss: Very well said. I think that’s when we first met, when you were at Infinity. And I know you and your colleagues have awesome chemistry and have done some tremendous deals. And beyond that, you’ve also touched hospitality, retail, multi. So you’re seeing the full gamut. You guys have a beautiful track record.

Maybe we could talk about some of the earlier years at Infinity, because I think you started right coming out of the GFC, it was like 2011 or so. So the market wasn’t crashing, but it was also very challenged, right? But there was a lot of value creation in those coming years.

Maybe talk about those earlier years at Infinity. Do you see some similarities today to those earlier years when you were there?

David Berg: Yeah, absolutely. Steve started the company in 2005, and it was primarily a retail-focused company, shopping centers across the country, invested alongside partners, mostly grocery-anchored shopping centers.

He started focusing a little more on urban real estate in maybe 2008 or 2009, when he did the hotel on 26th Street and some retail in New York City. And then about a year before I joined, ATN, who was his partner on the hotel on 26th Street, the first large transaction that Infinity had done, ATN was at Citi Property Investors, and he was the LP on that deal.

He left Citi to join Steve and form a separate entity under the Infinity Group. At the time, it was called Infinity Group under the Infinity Group umbrella, which was Infinity Urban Century. That separate entity was really focused on urban multifamily investing, primarily in Washington, D.C.

So I think part of the reason that I joined Infinity, and part of the reason why they wanted to bring me on, was because I had some D.C. experience and North Arlington, Virginia experience. I was already familiar with that submarket and some of the players, having been at Monday. A lot of the growth that the company was exploring was in Northwest D.C.

When I first joined, the business plan was to really rapidly expand in workforce housing and pre-war buildings in D.C. We accumulated dozens of properties in 2010 and 2013 in the district.

Aside from that platform, our focus was heavily driving more urban investing outside of multifamily. It was in the retail sector. So quite a bit of properties in New York, in Brooklyn and Queens. We did some urban investing in Boston, and then really towards 2013, 2014, 2015, that’s when we started investing in Philadelphia and Miami.

Those additional markets, every market we’ve expanded in comes from a place of really either homegrown or local-based or family-oriented experience and knowledge of the submarket.

So having a ton of family in the Miami market, and having traveled to Miami Beach half a dozen times a year for most of my life, I was very familiar with the Miami market and felt comfortable with a lot of the players, the architects, the contractors, the other developers and owners down here to develop a network and feel confident in our investing, especially with the location know-how.

The same thing with Philadelphia. Growing up in Philadelphia, having lived there my entire life, knowing the submarkets and the pockets and where to focus our time and attention, and also having a really deep base of a network there, so that when we enter a market, we’re not paying what we call the “dumb tax,” which is every time you enter a new market, you end up meeting all the wrong people and then eventually find your way to the right people.

So that’s really how we expand into each and every market. ATN, of course, being instrumental in the D.C. expansion. Steve and his family had a really deep and embedded network in New York, which helped us grow that platform. And then Miami and Philly followed with my network.

Aaron Strauss: Certainly when Miami's gone and you moved down there, what year did you actually make the formal move down?

David Berg: I moved down in 2020. So it was the heart of COVID. We had purchased—at the time it was called the Clay Hotel—and it was a two-and-a-half-star to three-star, basically hostel, on Española Way. It encumbered the entire Española Way block on the south side. So it was 500 feet of frontage of pedestrian-only traffic. It encompasses nine buildings. So it was just such a great assemblage to purchase.

We purchased it from a horse breeder out of Ocala, Florida, who was at the time in his 80s. He bought the property for next to nothing in 1980 or 1982 or something like that. We just felt it was a tremendous opportunity to assemble such a large piece of real estate and own a real piece of Miami Beach. Because, how else are you going to accumulate two blocks of contiguous real estate across nine buildings—right across from Ocean Drive and the Loews, and really in the heart of South Beach?

So when we bought that, it was a cash-flowing machine. The thought process was, “Well, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Hurricane Irma came through in 2018—I think ’17 or ’18—and really caused some significant damage to the building. We had already received historic preservation approval, and we had already teed up a renovation program to renovate this hotel from a three-star hostel into a four-star quality boutique hotel. We just had not hit “go” on it because it was cash flowing and performing.

When the hurricane came through—I think it was October 2017—it really forced our hand to start work around June or July of 2018. So we were really towards the later stages of finishing up the project when COVID hit.

So we're constantly on these Zooms in April–May of 2020, when no one could leave their homes. We’re talking to our team, and this is a very large renovation for us. It's a $45 million renovation program. We're on the call, and we're discussing the project, and I’m looking around, and I’m saying, “When was the last time anyone saw this project?”

Because we're all New York developers developing in Miami, and just dead silence. Crickets. Everyone’s like, “Well… February.” And I said, “Well, that’s not great.” So since we weren’t in the office, I flew down with my family in May or June of 2020 with the intention of being in Miami for six months to finish the project.

Funny story is that I ended up calling my partner Steve probably August or September of that year, very shortly after I moved down. It was like 10 o’clock at night. We were catching up on a lot of business. And I said, “Hey, by the way, I think I’m going to buy a house down here. I may probably not come back to New York. What do you think about that?”

It’s just dead silence. Crickets on the phone for a very long period of time, like 15 to 20 seconds. I won’t curse on the podcast, but he says that and then out of nowhere, “What the hell is going on in this world?” basically because he's dealing with COVID, and we’re dealing with all this triage we’re in, he was just shocked that like, “Oh, my God, you're moving to Miami after 60 days of a temporary move?”

We all realized it was really the best thing for us, because we've done a ton of expansion in the Miami market. We have New York covered with ATN and Steve living there and being there. Now we've opened up a Miami office, we've moved employees down here, and we’ve really planted our flag in Miami Beach and become a part of the community. We've done dozens of deals down here since, because of the local presence.

Aaron Strauss: Outstanding. And the timing was fantastic. I mean, think about COVID and what it did for that market, and how it opened up. Just looking back, very fortuitous. Berg, you’re lucky to have that very, very strong, solid foundational partnership as well. I'm glad everything worked out.

I know, with respect to that project, you’ve also done a lot of work with the city. I mean, you've created this Espanola Way Association, and you're the VP of it. And you're a board member of the Washington Avenue BID, the South Beach Business Improvement District. So you’ve really had to enmesh in these very kind of public, municipal roles to enhance the community. Because you're an ambassador for your own project.

But it speaks to the difference between saying, “I'm going to buy a cash-flowing building,” to, “I'm actually going to create a community and work with the city and make it vibrant and add value to everybody else.” That’s not all easy to accomplish, so congrats on continuing to do those types of transformative projects.

David Berg: Thank you. Yeah, I think it's a very critical part of our business. We've done 40 historic redevelopments, and so when you're doing surgery to historic buildings, there's a ton of sensitivity to it, not just from a preservation standpoint and the historic preservation boards that you go in front of, but also the community that surrounds it, and ensuring that you're building within the character of what was initially envisioned by the original architect and developer, and keeping in character and in line with the community.

So it's been a significant ground game for us, always engaging with the local activists and community members, always engaging with the political parties to ensure that we're being socially responsible in our development. It's been really the driving force that's allowed us to continue to grow our platform and our portfolio in a responsible manner with the support of the community.

I'll give you an example. Our project in West Philadelphia in University City, Garden Court Towers, which we just finished in December, that building was a 13-story historic property, and it came with a 52,000-square-foot piece of land that, in the 1920s, the original architect had envisioned building two 13-story towers. But the Great Depression hit, and he only got one off the ground before he was unable to do it and finance the second one. So he built a parking garage at the ground level that was supposed to satisfy two towers. It was 270 parking spaces.

Then, for basically 80–90 years, the garage had a green roof with a pond because nothing could be developed on it. And since then, zoning changed, and that area was downzoned, so there was no more ability to build any more residential housing there.

We bought that property in July of ’19 after the prior developer was unable to get approval to build residential housing. They went out to the community, they went out to the politicians, and they got rejected.

In July of ’19, we purchased the property. Throughout the second and early third quarter of 2019, we met with all the community RCOs, the Registered Community Organizations, garnered support, met with the councilwoman of the area, and by December, we had approval for a 220-unit project.

So our intentions of recreating the past, our intentions of preserving and paying homage and showing respect to the historic building, as opposed to a new construction-looking building with a ton of glass, we built out a replica of the brick as close as we could get to the historic tower. So it looks like it's always been there.

In addition, we created a central lobby that connects the building. So they're all one asset now, as opposed to having this new construction component next to the historic tower.

So I think that’s been a part of our DNA and our approach that’s helped us be successful.

Aaron Strauss: That certainly helps you win deals too, when you have to engage municipalities and you have to show up with that track record, preserving the look and feel and the vibrancy and enhancing the community. You guys have a great reputation for that.

It’s certainly a higher level of development than, “Here’s a parcel, I got approvals to build this out of the ground.” It's much more complex to deal with what's there and what could and has to be blended together.

Maybe we'll jump a little bit. When we were speaking a couple of weeks back, you have a lot of roots in Philly, you’re doing a Philly project, you've done deals in a bunch of different states, but there’s a lot of talk about New York, where maybe now some opportunities are presenting themselves.

Maybe you could talk about what you see in New York now. What’s exciting for you to sort of dig into some acquisitions there? And what are you looking forward to accomplishing there in the next several years?

David Berg: New York was always our primary market in terms of deal volume of number of transactions. That felt like it was always our highest volume market. We really haven’t bought anything in New York since probably 2015, ’16.

We became a lender in that market because, around that time, we started coming in at 70–80 cents on the dollar for every transaction we bid on. We were seeing in our own portfolio, which was relatively sizable at the time, expenses outpacing income growth across the board.

It didn’t matter what asset type it was. If it was retail condo, the taxes were creeping up significantly with the tax treatment. If it was office, it was payroll and union payroll. If it was residential, maybe the same or different. Local 11 or operating expenses that were coming down the pipeline, you had to do to your building.

That’s what really started our lending platform. We started lending on deals in New York and realized that we still liked the market, we still liked the collateral, but the risk-reward proposition just wasn’t there for us on the equity side.

It wasn’t until December of 2024 that we actually reentered the market on the equity side. So it was a pretty significant seven, eight, nine-year pause for us on buying there. We did transactions in New York primarily on the pref for the senior debt side, but not in the common equity.

So we’re excited to be reentering that market. We think the dynamics have changed quite a bit. There’s a lot of liquidity that’s exited out of New York. So, in some ways—and almost in a funny way—it’s like a contrarian approach to be investing in the best city in the world.

But there’s a lot of liquidity that’s flowed out of New York because of the rent laws that passed in 2019, because of where the office component is, because of hotel unions, because of the combination of the retail apocalypse that occurred in 2017–18, followed by COVID.

So a lot of capital has flowed to secondary markets, The Smile States, The Sundial States, and we’re finding opportunity in reentering New York primarily on the retail side.

Aaron Strauss: Great. I’m sure you’ll pick up some real gems. I think as the market improves, you guys understand retail better than anyone, and that is your backyard. So it’ll be fun to watch you pick up some projects there as well and continue to develop what you have going on.

Let me switch gears as well. We call the podcast The Dealmakers’ Edge, and we always try to hit slightly on the mental health side of the business, because it’s very stressful. It almost sounds easy the way you’re describing it. I know there was enormous work and enormous risk and enormous capital deployed and enormous talent.

But when you’re managing development, when you’re managing real estate deals, you’re dealing with investors’ money, your own money, it’s stressful. Very stressful.

So how do you kind of manage that voice in your head, as it were? What do you keep telling yourself when you hit a roadblock, hit a bump, have that bad day, week, or month? Obviously, you’re a young guy, you’ve been in for a long time, and you will continue to, but managing the mindset is a big part of dealmaking. And maybe you could talk to that.

David Berg: Yeah. I mean, there’s quite a bit to touch on there. So first off, we have an annual Infinity board meeting, which is basically a sounding board for a two-day offsite with people that are not involved in our organization, people that are highly intelligent, very successful in their careers, have been doing this a long time. One of the board members is based in London, another based in California, the other one based in Boston. So really different perspectives.

We are trying to get outside of our foxhole and get perspective from people. I think that’s very helpful from a strategy perspective and a macro perspective of how we look at our business. It’s almost like an annual reset that is highly creative to keeping us focused and getting outside of the minutiae of the day-to-day business.

I have great partners and colleagues at our company, Infinity. The average tenure of our team is probably 10-plus years, and so there’s a ton of collaboration within our team. It’s not just the day-to-day workload, but it’s really strategic thinking. We take a lot of pauses on a whiteboard or in a conference room and just throw out ideas. We constantly re-evaluate our thesis.

Oftentimes it changes, and it can change in a given year. What may have been the approach six to nine months ago, maybe some dynamics changed, and we want to shift that a bit.

That’s the benefit of being at an entrepreneurial shop like Infinity, whereby we can shift gears and change our investment thesis. We were thinking about doing common equity here, now let’s think about debt. We looked at deals as a common equity buyer and said, “You know what? I have a great group for this, let us be the pref for this group, or let us be the debt.”

Because the workload for that deal isn’t worth the resource drag. It’s not that it’s a bad deal by any means, and on those deals, everyone’s done successfully and done great for their risk-reward proposition. It’s just a function of managing the resources and the time and attention that certain things take.

So we’re constantly evaluating that. We’ve got a great sounding board. Steve and I talk probably three times a day, mostly early in the morning or late in the evening, so that we’re dividing and conquering but always checking each other on the strategic thinking.

Then for me personally, I would say, very critical for my mental health and keeping focus and staying on top of things is sports. I play sports hours upon hours a week, and not necessarily during business hours.

So Saturday mornings, I have a weekly soccer game with the same eight guys every single Saturday. Tuesdays and sometimes Thursday nights, I’ll play hockey at 10 o’clock at night. Other times we’ll play, Padel and paddle tennis have become very popular here, so you’ll play early in the morning or at night.

But these are two-hour blocks, hour-and-a-half blocks where the phone is completely off or I’m not focused on it. I won’t look at it in between breaks, especially in hockey. Forget about it. If you’re thinking about something else, you might get your head taken off.

These are really important for me, at least, to have these mental breaks, to focus on my mental health, to disconnect, to collaborate, to have conversations with people that I don’t work with on different topics in the world or about families, things that just aren’t work-related. That’s important.

Also, we’re not observant, but we really embrace the traditions of Shabbat. Friday nights, coming home, focusing on your families. Really focusing on family time and the kids on Saturdays and Sundays, that’s a great reset for me.

I tend to always find a few hours on the weekend to work a little bit, but for the most part, we pay high attention to the kids and family and always prioritizing that for two, two and a half days a week. That’s also been really helpful for me to be awarded the privilege and opportunity from my family to focus on work Monday through Friday during business hours, without a ton of interruption, and still feel that I’m getting the connection and the time with my family that is important to me.

Aaron Strauss: Well said. I think that’s a struggle that people of our generation deal with all the time.

You may experience some success, and you’ve experienced a ton of success, may you continue to experience that success, but you do need to have pieces of your life that are completely disentangled, unobstructed by work. Whether that’s the family space, sports space, whatever you need to do, but it creates a holistic person which lets you show up stronger to your partners, your investors, your deals, and everything else.

Dave, I won’t keep you. I could talk to you all day, but I love the insights you’ve shared. I love what you’ve done. I really respect you and your partners, the brand you’ve built, the reputation that you’ve developed.

David Berg: Thank you.

Aaron Strauss: I guess on that note, we’ll wrap here. But Dave, you’re doing fabulous. I’m really glad to get your story out.

David Berg: Thank you so much for having me.

Aaron Strauss: I’m going to watch your career very closely, my friend. Thanks for being on today.

David Berg: Thank you. Have a great day.

Aaron Strauss: Thank you for joining The Dealmakers’ Edge. Don’t forget to follow us on your favorite podcast platform. Please give us a five-star rating so more people can follow the conversation.


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