Miami female entrepreneur finds her calling in real estate, jiujitsu

On Tuesday afternoon, Ana Bozovic stood eye-to-eye with a professional boxer at a time when most of her real estate peers would be out for lunch. Tight blue yoga pants hugged her toned legs. She donned an oversized black T-shirt that said in bold white letters MMA Masters, the Hialeah gym where she trains six days a week.

An aspiring jiujitsu champion, Bozovic embraced contact in this training session with Ultimate Fighting Championship winners or trainees. Her arms closed over her assigned partner’s neck or torso, allowing her to maneuver her hips so she could slam them to the ground. She did this routine over and over again, for about 20 minutes in the two-story gym on West 20th Avenue, across from the busy Palmetto Expressway.

In the gym, jalapeño red mats cover most of the first floor and half the wall, and music like Guns N’ Roses “Paradise City” blares through speakers. Air-conditioning provides some relief from the unrelenting South Florida heat. Sweat is everywhere — thick enough to taste it. Sweat beads rolled down Bozovic’s face, causing wisps of her brown hair to cling to her forehead and her mascara to smear under her eyes.

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Bozovic is one of four women in the 22-member class that day, the only one allowed to train with men. Weighing 155 pounds and standing 5-foot-10, Bozovic is the only woman there matching the weight and height of her male counterparts. Many of the men walked around the gym with bare chests decorated with tattoos.

After being thrown to the mat, the 42-year-old rose and smiled at her 26-year-old training partner, Sean Stant, who is training for UFC competitions. Ready for another round, Bozovic hunched across from Stant, narrowed her gaze with a determined look.

This is the story of a strong Serbian woman, who despite dropping out of college, has made a name for herself in the business of Miami real estate. During the pandemic, when South Florida landed on the map as a top U.S. housing market where buyers and developers seek reliable information of where and when to buy, invest or develop, her career has taken off. She combines the hard work, with brutal martial arts training.

Six years ago, Bozovic started Analytics Miami. She’s a one-woman team, overseeing transactions as a real estate agent on residential and hotel transactions, consulting with developer’s pondering the profitability of a project on a particular property and creating weekly market reports.

“I call it training for life. Succeeding at a high level in sports and business is the same. Sports training with world-class people puts you in a mindset for success in everything,” Bozovic said. “It gives you great belief in your own power to create a reality you want in your head and your own power to focus and roll with things as they happen. It trains your mindset.”

Riding a real estate wave

The pandemic that emerged in March 2020, triggered a real estate boom in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties. People have come here in droves from across the country, seeking refuge in a land of lax COVID-19 restrictions, a warm climate and Florida’s low taxes. Corporations have followed.

Developers and real estate analysts wondered if the fierce real estate demand would last. Bozovic has provided many of them with data and sharp analysis. She has earned the respect of North Beach investor and developer MatisCohen, Crescent Heights co-founder and managing principal Russell Galbut and Jack McCabe, owner of Jack McCabe Expert Services in Deerfield Beach, a real estate and economic research firm.

Through word of mouth in real estate circles, Bozovic’s star has risen. Most of her clients hail from New York, Germany and the United Kingdom. When she first started, she sold residential real estate hovering around $500,000. Last year, she only sold houses and condominiums worth at least $3 million in prime spots like Miami Beach, downtown Miami and Brickell. Her consulting fees start at $10,000. Obviously, she’s earned a small fortune in a short time. Bozovic declined to reveal her 2022 earnings, saying that would take the “focus away from what I’m doing.”

She runs her business from the living room of her 30th-floor, two bedroom South Beach apartment she shares with two cats. She splits work time between the dining table and L-shaped gray couch, where a blackboard covers the flat-screen TV. Her apartment has a wraparound balcony with views of the bayfront and ocean.

Ready for the next challenge, Bozovic plans to launch later this month Miami Dealsheet. The venture will allow Bozovic to vet and recommend new construction projects each month in Miami-Dade County, based on the likelihood they will get financed and built. She’ll post her recommendations online, and prospective buyers will pay a fee to view them. She’ll also be offering recommendations on home listings for buyers to consider.

A Balkans transplant

Born in the Serbian capital Belgrade, Bozovic left in 1984 with her parents to relocate to Riverdale in the Bronx area of New York when she was three years old. Three years later, the family grew with the arrival of Bozovic’s only sibling, a sister. The duo attended private school where Bozovic found her refuge on the soccer field. She got hooked on sports in elementary school.

“I was the girl playing soccer with the boys,” she said. “That was me. Much like today.”

She cruised through school, eventually taking the college entrance exam once and gained a high enough score to land at Columbia University, an Ivy League college in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, when she was 17.

In her first year at Columbia, she fell into a daily rhythm and steady coursework of math and physics. She ate lunch with friends hailing from Russia and across Asia, peers she met while crunching numbers and math formulas in the classroom. She landed two summer internships with professors conducting research, thinking she might pursue a doctorate in math or science. But she realized she wanted a different game plan. To her parents’ horror, Bozovic dropped out of college her junior year.

She proceeded to lead a vagabond lifestyle. Bozovic paid for one-bedroom apartments as a freelance website designer and creator in New York City and, in 2009, for a four-year layover in Zurich.

In 2013, Bozovic returned to the United States. Why not try someplace new and warmer, she thought? That line of thinking brought her to Miami.

Birth of Analytics Miami

Bozovic got hooked on real estate when she took a look around Miami.

“I was fascinated by how new this city was,” she said. “I thought, ‘Wow, this city has so much potential. It’s still in its infancy.’”

She started a real estate firm in 2017 and decided to name it Analytics Miami, being inspired by one of her running mates. Before jiujitsu, Bozovic aspired to become a track star. She often ran at Flamingo Park, minutes from her apartment. While running, she often dropped insights about the real estate market and details from her research. One fellow runner started calling her Analytics. Seeing her first name in the first letters of the word, Bozovic decided to call her company Analytics Miami.

“Ana is the new star of real estate analysis of South Florida,” said McCabe, the veteran Deerfield Beach real estate analyst.

He tried recruiting Bozovic to work with him. “She’s very sharp and she’s got her finger on the pulse of the market. It doesn’t surprise me from when I spoke to her six years ago as an unknown that she’s become well-known in real estate.”

With the launch of her firm and landing her real estate license, Bozovic joined one of Miami’s largest industries. The Miami Association of Realtors, an organization for which Bozovic volunteers, reported it has 61,000 members in Miami-Dade and and Broward counties, and 58% of them are women, according to data from the association and Suzanne Hollander, a lawyer and professor at Florida International University’s Hollo School of Real Estate.

The rise of women like Bozovic sets an example in Miami.

“We see women in power who can make real estate decisions. It’s going to increase more opportunities for women,” Hollander said. “Seeing these women in power is going to make younger generations of women think it’s possible to walk in their footsteps and increase the respect that is given to women.”

New frontier or slippery slope?

Through her new venture, Bozovic plans to recommend a new housing development every month in South Florida. The first project she plans to back is Five Park, the Crescent Heights and Terra Group condo tower at 500 Alton Road in Miami Beach. The project includes a new community park and a 48-story tower with 98 residences, where prices will start at $1.5 million for a two-bedroom condo.

The project presents a potential conflict of interest for Bozovic, given her friendship with Crescent Heights co-founder Galbut, a mentor. Galbut and Bozovic met in 2021, after he signed up for her weekly real estate newsletter and asked to connect with her.

“It was her data that got us back into Miami and Miami Beach,” he said, highlighting developments in Edgewater and North Beach. “She got us to rethink the opportunities of South Florida, by showing the influx of wealthy people coming to South Florida. You realize South Florida has a great future.”

Galbut and Bozovic meet nearly every week during his morning bike rides in the exclusive South of Fifth pocket of South Beach where he lives. Galbut invites eight to 12 friends to bike with him every morning at 7 a.m. During some of those rides, Galbut and Bozovic talk real estate.

Bozovic insisted she remains objective with her recommendation of Five Park, and will do the same with other projects. For Five Park, in particular, she said its developers have a reputation for delivering quality homes.

Still, McCabe warns money will be a growing temptation for her.

“It sounds like developers might pay her to say good reviews for developments. If one or two of these fail, she could tarnish her reputation,” he said. “Hopefully, she doesn’t go for the money and lose her great reputation.”

Going to the mat

Bozovic plans on competing at the World No-Gi Jiu Jitsu Championship in December in California. It’s one of the biggest competitions in the country for jujitsukas. Daniel Valverde, MMA Masters co-founder and co-owner, thinks she should compete.

“She is training really hard. I believe she is going to do very well with the competition,” Valverde said. “She can be a champion. That’s my goal with all of my students.”

After her two-hour training session Tuesday, Bozovic ended her time at MMA Masters at the Cave Nutrition, a smoothie bar tucked away at the gym. Married couple Alex Estrada and Rhina Angel run the bar, whipping frothy fruit drinks. Bozovic trusts Angel to prepare her a surprise.

After a quick shower and change into a black top, jeans and heels, Bozovic returns and drinks a piña colada protein smoothie in minutes. She then glances at her phone, pondering whether she’s ready to call an Uber ride, her only way to get around Miami since she doesn’t drive.

“It’s safer for Miami, if I’m not on the road,” Bozovic said before leaving.

This story was originally published March 05, 2023 5:30 AM.