A 20th new condo tower has been completed east of I-95 in the tri-county South Florida region since this real estate cycle began in 2011.
Late last month, developer Harvey Hernandez began recording closings in his newly constructed 46-story, 374-unit BrickellHouse condo tower located in the 1300 block of Brickell Bay Drive in the Brickell submarket of Greater Downtown Miami, according to Miami-Dade County records.
The condo sales come about a year after BrickellHouse was hit with a $15.8 foreclosure lawsuit filed against the project by the private lender that sold Hernandez’s group the land for the new tower. The case was ultimately resolved.
Hernandez’s group later initiated its own lawsuit against the former lender for filing a foreclosure action that it claimed was “malicious prosecution.”
As of Monday, 10 BrickellHouse transactions totaling nearly $3.1 million have been recorded at an average price of $410 per square foot, according to government records.
Individual condos have transacted between prices of less than $150,000 and nearly $550,000 per unit.
At least three of the first 10 condos are already on the resale market at an average asking price of nearly $650 per square foot as of Monday, according to data from the Southeast Florida MLXchange.
Overall, about 16 condos in BrickellHouse are on the resale market at an average asking price of $615 per square foot with individual units priced between $300,000 and $2.5 million.
Additionally, one condo unit in BrickellHouse is listed on the rental market with an asking price of $6,000 per month for an average of $4.14 per square foot.
BrickellHouse – which began construction in July 2012 – is one of 69 new condo towers totaling nearly 18,400 units announced to date for the Greater Downtown Miami market since this cycle began some three years ago, according to the preconstruction condo market website CraneSpotters.com.
(For disclosure purposes, my firm operates the website.)
Overall, developers have proposed at least 288 new condo towers totaling nearly 40,000 units east of I-95 in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties during this cycle.
In Greater Downtown Miami to date, four new condo towers totaling nearly 700 units have been constructed, 16 towers with nearly 4,850 units are under construction, 28 towers with nearly 5,750 units are proposed and 21 towers totaling nearly 7,100 units are planned.
The unanswered question going forward is whether Greater Downtown Miami – which already has nearly 14 months of resale inventory available for purchase – has a deep enough pool of buyers to absorb any additional condos that could be coming onto the market from BrickellHouse speculators who are looking to resell units just days after closing on their new condos.
Peter Zalewski is real estate columnist for The Real Deal who founded Condo Vultures LLC, a consultancy and publishing company, as well as Condo Vultures Realty LLC and CVR Realty brokerages and the Condo Ratings Agency, an analytics firm. The Condo Ratings Agency operates CraneSpotters.com, a preconstruction condo projects website, in conjunction with the Miami Association of Realtors.