🏖 Beach Bummer

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Happy Sunday Highest & Best! Here’s a rundown of the South Florida real estate week that was:

🚫 Miami Beach’s new tourism message: Go away

💰 A $100 million oceanfront flip

🚚 The forage for (self) storage

🤷‍♀️ Your million dollar home is not special anymore

🥂 Ultra-lux condo status checks

Let’s get to it!

Miami Beach’s New Tourism Ad: Stay Away

Have you ever seen a city pay for a tourism ad that promotes how awful it is to be there? Well, Miami Beach just did. 🌴🚫

In a reality-show-style public service announcement straight out of Jersey Shore, a group of excited spring breakers arrives in Miami Beach—only to be met with a parade of buzzkills: $100 parking, curfews, security checkpoints, DUI crackdowns, and police presence everywhere.

The message? Maybe don’t come.

It’s part of a city effort to crack down on chaos in this well-worn Spring Break hotspot, after years of shootings and stampedes on Ocean Drive—including a state of emergency declaration in 2023 at the peak of the madness.

Miami Beach is calling its 2025 campaign ‘Reality Check,’ and if you show up in March, expect a heavy dose of it. 🚫🎉

The city’s promising $516 towing fees, a full shutdown of golf cart and scooter rentals, and liquor stores that shutter at 8 pm. Basically: a rebrand of Miami Beach as Spring Break’s least fun destination.

⏪ Catch up on recent Highest & Best issues:

• Lease and Desist!, February 1, 2025

• The Roaring Renties, January 25, 2025

• Sticker Shocked, January 18, 2025

• Not Your Grandpa’s Boca, January 11, 2025

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If You Flip it, They Will Come?

While spring breakers might think twice about Miami Beach, some developers are thinking four times—as in, four times the price. 💰🏖️

Kolter Group and BH Group are seeking to sell a 1-acre oceanfront lot at 6985 Collins Ave for over $100 million, just a year after buying it for $24 million, according to a LinkedIn post by a broker marketing the site. (That’s a markup of over 300% for those keeping score at home. 🏆)

The site, now home to the Crystal Beach Suites Miami Oceanfront Hotel, is zoned for a 200-foot tower with up to 150 units, according to the sales brochure, which describes the property as the “last remaining developable beachfront acre in Miami Beach.”

The current owners are seeking permission from the city to increase what may be built there, from 139,000 square feet to over 230,000 square feet. It’s a move that could make the site even more attractive to developers who can pay up.

And the 1950s-era hotel that sits there now? It’s headed for demolition no matter who ends up owning it. And it’s more than likely that ultra-luxury condos (think $4,000-per-square-foot) will be built in its place, per the property listing.

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The Forage for (Self) Storage

Even places to store junk can be premium real estate in South Florida.

An industrial lot in Delray Beach, zoned for a warehouse that doesn’t exist yet, just traded for $10.3 million—more than three times what the seller paid in 2022, according to property intel firm Vizzda.

The buyers are 1-800-Pack-Rat and Zippy Shell, both moving and storage firms known for dropping portable containers outside one’s cluttered garage.

But this time, they picked up 8 acres of land along State Route 7, complete with pre-approval to build a 116,000-square-foot warehouse, according to marketing materials for the site.

Your Million Dollar Home is Not Special Anymore

Once upon a time (okay, 2019), a $1.1 million home in South Florida meant luxury, with bragging rights for being in the top 5% of the market.

Today, that number looks quaint. The luxury threshold has soared to $2.6 million, meaning in South Florida, a million-dollar home isn’t high-end anymore. It’s just... a house.

That’s according to a report by the Miami Association of Realtors, which found that homes priced at $1 million and higher account for an ever-larger share of South Florida’s sales market.

💰 In Palm Beach County, 24% of all single-family homes that sold last year did so at $1 million-plus, leading the region in its share of high-dollar sales. Miami-Dade County followed at 23%, and Broward County saw 18% of its home sales come in at or above the million mark.

💸 And it’s continuing: In December, Palm Beach County saw a 56% jump in million-dollar-plus home and condo sales compared to the previous year—the largest annual increase since May 2021, according to data from appraiser Miller Samuel and brokerage Douglas Elliman Real Estate. The surge continued last month, with such sales rising 55%.

The increasing share of pricey homes “is indicative of the wealth flowing into Southeast Florida,” according to the Miami Realtors’ report.

💵 It’s also indicative of folks who can pay cash and not have to rely on a mortgage, in a year when rates topped 7%. Over half of 2024’s million-plus home sales were in cash, Miami Realtors said. The highest cash share was in, yup, Palm Beach County, at 71%.

Ultra-Luxury Condo Status Checks

Let’s check in on some of Miami’s high-priced luxury condo developments, shall we?

🥂 The Residences at Mandarin Oriental, a two-tower development on an island just off Miami’s financial district—where units start at $4.9 million—announced this week that it’s booked $800 million in condo sales. Since launching sales last April, the project, on Brickell Key, has been moving units at an average of $2,500-per-square foot, with some commanding as high as $3,000 per foot, according to a press statement from developer Swire Properties.

Swire also unveiled a slate of amenities at the project: 11 pools, a “forest yoga lawn,” and a hammock garden are all part of the future resident offerings.

Completion date will be in 2030, the developer said.

(For more details on this project, and an interview with Swire Properties President Henry Bott, go here).

🥂 Four Seasons Private Residences Coconut Grove, the first Four Seasons-branded residence in Florida without an attached hotel, has buyers for 45% of its 70 units, according to Christine Martinez de Castro, chief marketing and sales officer for CMC Group, the project’s co-developer.

The big surprise? Most buyers aren’t flying in from New York or L.A.—they’re already here.

“We have a lot of people who are right-sizing,” Martinez de Castro said of the buyers from South Florida. Others, she noted, just want a weekend retreat.

Though they’ll have to wait a few more weekends before moving in. Demolition at the site is underway, but construction won’t be complete until 2027.

Condos at the project, by CMC Group and Fort Partners, start at $6 million for a two-bedroom unit. The biggest penthouse will top out at nearly 9,700 square feet. Residents will have access to housekeeping, butler service, and a 10,000-square foot spa with a circuit of saunas dubbed the “Caesar Experience.”

Apparently, even "right-sizing" comes with perks.

That’s it for today!

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