💰Big Deals Appeal

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Happy Saturday Highest & Best! I took last week off but am back today with news of the BIG: Big Loans. Big Sales. Big Moves. Here’s the playlist:

💰 Witkoff gets a big loan (and a big new gig)
🤫 Is billionaire Ken Griffin secretly buying up old Miami condos?
🏢 WeWork co-founder nabs a deal on an office complex
📝 Condo Chronicles

Let’s get to it!

A Large Loan for the Links— and Mideast Peace?

It’s not every month that you lock in funding for a luxury golf resort — and take on the role of promoting Middle East peace.

For developer Witkoff Group, November 2024 checked both boxes.

Witkoff, with partner PPG Development, secured a $273 million construction loan this week to build out their Shell Bay project on 150 acres in Hallandale Beach. The loan (from J.P. Morgan and BDT & MSD Partners) will fund the construction of a 20-story luxury condo tower and a 60-room Auberge hotel, along the grounds of a Greg Norman-designed golf course, an exclusive club, and a 48-slip private marina, according to a statement by the developer.

The new loan comes just one week after Steven Witkoff, the co-CEO of Witkoff Group, was tapped by president-elect Donald Trump to become a special envoy to the Middle East in the next administration. (That’s some month, isn’t it?)

Witkoff may still need U.S. Senate confirmation for his Middle East role, but for the middle of Hallandale Beach, it’s a total go:

Shell Bay’s condo tower, called Residences at Shell Bay, is expected to break ground soon and will be complete in 2027, according to Witkoff. Its 108 for-sale units range in size from from 900 to 4,000 square feet and prices start at $2 million, the South Florida Business Journal reported. About 55% of the not-yet-built condos have buyer commitments.

Residents get access to the Shell Bay Club, the private golf and racquet club where the cost of membership is $1.35 million, the most expensive in the U.S.

⏪ Catch up on recent Highest & Best issues:

• Billion Dollar Bay Boom, Nov. 10, 2024

• Office Sours?, Oct. 26, 2024

• Leaping Listings!, Oct. 18, 2024

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A real estate whodunit is unfolding in the center of Miami's financial district, near one of its most prominent development projects.

🧐 A mystery buyer has been scooping up units inside the 22-story Solaris condo building, a property smack in the middle of a waterfront site owned by billionaire Ken Griffin, who’s planning a 54-story headquarters for his hedge fund, Citadel.

🔍 Nearly half of Solaris’ condos—67 so far—have been purchased with cash by anonymous, Delaware-based LLCs over the past two years, the Wall Street Journal reported. A buyer who captures 80% of the building’s units (or roughly 110 apartments) would gain full control of the property, and with that, the capacity to force remaining owners to sell, and then, eventually, demolish the building.

😲 So the rumor mill is grinding: Is the stealth condo buyer Griffin himself, looking to tie up the last loose end of his waterfront empire? Or has another savvy investor beaten him to the punch, with hopes of selling the billionaire his missing piece— for an ungodly price?

💰Many Solaris residents — recently saddled with a $2 million special assessment for major repairs to the 18-year old building — suspect Griffin is the man behind the curtain. And they see an opportunity to push back, demanding far more than the $750,000 offered for some of the building's two-bedroom units, the Journal reported.

 🤨 All told, it’s a high-stakes face-off, like a real-life game of Clue: Will it be Griffin, with the LLC, in the Solaris lobby?

Adam Neumann’s ‘Flow’ Streams Through an Aventura Office Complex

‘Flow’ — the apartment startup firm by WeWork co-founder Adam Neumann — is trickling further into Miami’s real estate market, with a splashy new deal.

Neumann’s firm— which vaguely defines its mission as “oneness” —just paid $116.2 million for the Aventura Corporate Center, a suburban Miami office complex with 931 parking spaces and a tantalizing development opportunity: 10 acres zoned for two new towers, with a combined 495 apartments.

The deal was disclosed in (of all places) a filing on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, where Flow’s partner, Canada Global, is listed, according to the South Florida Business Journal.

Neumann contributed $36 million toward the Aventura deal, $11 million of which came from Flow, the Business Journal reported.

The seller, New York-based Stonecutter Capital Management, took a sizable loss on the property, which it purchased in 2021 for $140 million, before investing as much as $15 million more in the site, according to the disclosure filed in Tel Aviv.

Neumann didn’t share details of Flow’s residential plans at the site. But one thing remains true: South Florida is awash in new rentals, and that oversupply is pushing down rents.

It’s not uncommon to see landlords of new buildings offering two months of free rent as enticement to fill their spaces these days. And even Flow, which sought to build a rental tower in downtown Miami, abruptly changed plans last month to sell condos there instead.

In an interview earlier this month, Neumann said his interest in building residential in Miami is still as strong as ever.

“Right now for us, doubling down here is very interesting,” he said at the Real Deal’s South Florida Real Estate forum.

The Condo Chronicles

This week in Florida condos brought news of new beginnings— and new middles:

😎 $2 Million Bungalows? Merrimac Ventures, the developers behind the $6 billion Miami Worldcenter, launched sales for their newest condo offering along the beach in Fort Lauderdale. The 14-story project, named Bungalow East, has 34 condos for sale at between $2 million and $4 million. Those prices not only secure an apartment with ocean proximity, but also come with perks like a yacht club membership and access to the nearby Conrad Hotel, complete with beach privileges and service.

⏳ Halfway There: Indian Creek Residences & Yacht Cub, the 9-unit waterfront condo building on Miami’s Bay Harbor Islands, has buyer commitments for 50% of its units. Construction on the exclusive residences, where prices start at $5.6 million for a half-floor apartment, will reach the topmost floor by the end of this year, and move-ins could begin as early as the fall of 2025, developer Landau Properties said in a statement. The property will include a private yacht club, six dock slips and dockmaster concierge services.

That’s it for today!

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