💵 Cash In, Cash Out

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Happy Saturday Highest & Best! Today we’re talking cashing out —and buying in. Here’s the rundown:

💰The Feds have a prime Miami building to sell

💵 Palm Beach’s oldest synagogue sells waterfront site for condos

🤔 Elon Musk to Florida?

👋A New York billionaire exits — with 78% return

💪 Ares’ Florida Flex

Let’s get to it!

Uncle Sam’s Brickell Bonanza

The federal government is ready to part ways with a 53-year old office building it owns in Miami’s Brickell neighborhood.

If there’s ever a time to cash in on assets, a prime site in Miami’s hottest office district—where rents are soaring and condo towers are blooming—is an excellent place to start.

🤩 The General Services Administration (GSA), which oversees the federal government’s real estate portfolio, identified the Brickell Plaza Building at 909 SE First Ave. as one of eight properties it's looking to offload, Bisnow reported. Built in 1971, this nine-story structure sits on a 60,000-square-foot lot in the center of Miami’s Financial District— a solid teardown opportunity that might appeal to office and condo developers alike.

🔥 The Brickell neighborhood, where billionaire Ken Griffin is planning a 1,032-foot tower for his hedge fund Citadel, commands the highest office rents in Miami.

(How high? The average asking rates for Class A offices in the neighborhood were $100.58 per square foot in the third quarter — a 5.6% jump from a year earlier, according to brokerage CBRE. Manhattan’s Plaza District, by comparison, had asking rents of $96.81 for its prime buildings, per Colliers).

The Brickell area is also of interest to condo developers who have been sprouting luxury skyscrapers with fancy brand names and price tags. Not far from the for-sale federal building, the Cipriani Residences Miami tower will rise to 80 stories, with 397 condos that start at $1.7 million.

Further inland, a planned 67-story Mercedes-Benz-branded tower will offer 791 condo residences, a 174-room hotel, and 200,000 square feet of new office space.

⏪ Catch up on recent Highest & Best issues:

• Snaps of Luxury, December 7, 2024

• Big Deals Appeal, Nov. 23, 2024

• Billion Dollar Bay Boom, Nov. 10, 2024

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A Prayer for Prime Land, Answered

🙏 A prayer for prime land has been answered—for $30 million.

After 74 years on a scenic waterfront property in West Palm Beach, Temple Israel is saying goodbye to its longtime home. This week, the synagogue agreed to sell the majority of its 1.8-acre campus for $30 million to developer Related Ross, which plans a condo tower there.

Temple Israel, the oldest Jewish organization in Palm Beach County, will use the proceeds to relocate — once it’s able to find a new home in the area, the Palm Beach Post reported.

For Related Ross, the waterfront property is another chance to tap into the area’s demand for luxury condos. Its planned 28-story Shorecrest tower will feature 199 units priced between $1 million and $6 million, adding to a wave of high-end developments redefining West Palm Beach’s skyline.

The century-old congregation purchased this prime spot, at 1901 North Flagler Drive, in 1950 and opened its sanctuary in 1953. Twenty-three years later, in 1973, the temple community marked its 50th anniversary by burning the mortgage.

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Musk Eyeing $100 Million Florida Condo?

Rumors are swirling in Palm Beach that Elon Musk, a regular visitor to Mar-a-Lago since Donald Trump's re-election, might be considering getting his own place nearby.

Not just a weekend man cave though, but a waterfront condo in West Palm Beach that could set price records.

The luxury penthouse at the Bristol owned by the late beauty mogul Sydell Miller is reportedly on Musk's radar. Her family is considering selling it to him for $100 million, according to Palm Beach’s Palmer Report.

Miller (who founded the false eyelash brand Ardell and the salon product line Matrix Essentials) bought the 19,000-square-foot unit for $42.56 million in 2019. That deal remains the most expensive condo sale in West Palm Beach's history, according to Mansion Global. (Unless, of course, Musk buys it for more than double that price).

Musk, who recently made history as the first person with a net worth exceeding $400 billion, addressed reports of his interest in West Palm Beach real estate on Dec. 10, posting on X that he’s not “buying or building a house anywhere.”

A Billionaire Exits (With a 78% Gain)

In a state where billionaires are proliferating like condo towers, Dan Loeb has flipped the script—and his Miami Beach mansion. The hedge fund titan sold his waterfront home this week for $35.5 million, or 78% more than what he paid for it just four years ago.

Loeb, founder of New York-based hedge fund Third Point, bought the 13,000-square-foot home— with 7-bedrooms, a boat slip and a wine cellar — as a pandemic getaway in late 2020 for $20 million. Fast-forward to 2024, and Loeb is cashing out, telling the Miami Herald last year that he doesn’t spend much time in the vacation home anymore.

The home, at 6440 North Bay Rd., hit the market in December 2023 at $45 million, an ambitious attempt to more than double the 2020 purchase price. The listing took a price cut to $41.5 million before finding a taker, the Real Deal reported.

North Bay Road has become a favored spot for billionaires and celebrities seeking a Miami residence. David and Victoria Beckham dropped $72.3 million on a waterfront mansion there in October and media mogul Barry Diller paid $45 million for a land parcel earlier this year, setting a neighborhood price record, the New York Post reported.

Yup, Ares Management ❤ South Florida

OK, we get it. Ares Management, the Los Angeles-based investment giant, really loves South Florida.

First, it invested $225 million in Inter Miami, the area’s professional soccer team, where Lionel Messi plays. Then, the firm decided Miami Beach is the place to be, leasing the last available 12,000 square feet at the glam, but not-yet-open Eighteen Sunset office building, where neighbor tenants include Lamborghini and Audemars Piguet.

But Ares isn’t stopping there. This week, it bought a 10% stake in the Miami Dolphins from billionaire developer Stephen Ross (see Related Ross—in synagogue post above).

And the firm did Ross a solid too: Ares Commercial Real Estate provided a $200 million loan to Related Ross to refinance part of the CityPlace dining and shopping district in downtown West Palm Beach. The deal, announced this week, replaces a $132.9 million loan that Related obtained from a Luxembourg lender —and adds $67.1 million.

That’s it for today!

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