šŸ˜ƒ šŸ«  Condo Boom, Office Gloom?

Meet tomorrow's new condos; Miami's office market gets gravity

Happy Friday Highest & Best! Today we swim through a sea of luxury condo proposals and ask whether Miamiā€™s office market is getting choppy. Hereā€™s the playlist:

šŸ—ļø Rock n Roll and Empty Nester condos coming soon.

šŸ„¶ Miami office market cool-off?

šŸ’° A big Miami office loan, nonetheless.

Also, help me tailor future newsletters to you! Let me know your interests via this 60-second audience survey. Thanks to those who have completed it.

Letā€™s get to it!

Condos, Condos and Even More Condos!

Rider at Wynwood, lounge rendering (Photo: Rilea Group)

Someone turned on the luxury condo spigot in South Florida this week. Or maybe the spring home-selling season is upon us, and itā€™s time to send up flares in search of buyers.

Hereā€™s a list of new South Florida condo projects that announced themselves in recent days:

  • šŸŽø Rock ā€˜Nā€™ Roll Condos: The Rider at Wynwood is pitching itself as the wealthy nomadā€™s dream. It will have 146 units, fully furnished, that you may buy and choose to never live in. The Miami rock-themed project allows condo owners to rent out their units, without restrictions, on home-sharing platforms like Airbnb.

    Prices at the 12-story building ā€” where owners have access to a fleet of Harley-Davidsons ā€” start in the $600,000ā€™s and go to over $1.8 million, according to a statement from the developer, Rilea Group. Sales start now, construction later this year, and the buildingā€™s completion is expected in 2026.

  • šŸø Empty Nester Chic: Developer PMG, which has built skyscraping towers in Miami and Manhattanā€™s Billionairesā€™ Row, announced its first condo project in Fort Lauderdale.

     Sage Intracoastal Residences will rise 18 stories and have 44 furnished units, starting at $2.9 million, the developer said. It will be built on the current site of a nearly 70-year old co-op building whose apartment owners collectively agreed to sell the property, according to Dan Kaplan, PMGā€™s managing partner.

The project could appeal to empty nesters seeking to sell their single-family homes but wonā€™tā€” because thereā€™s few choices for what to buy next, Kaplan said. ā€œWe think of it as a good relief valve for folks looking to downsize,ā€ he said in an interview.

ā€œYouā€™re looking at folks who own homes, likely with no mortgages, that are for sure worth between two and four million,ā€ he said of one possible buyer pool.

Sales at Sage start in April, though the project has at least six ā€œreservations,ā€ or nonbinding cash commitments, Kaplan said.

(For a wider view of PMGā€™s outlook on Florida, see our interview with CEO Kevin Maloney here).

 

Balcony unit at Sage Intracoastal Residences (Photo: ARX Creative)

  • šŸŒ“ Fantasy Island: Buyers with at least $4.9 million to spend on a condo can now get a peek at the plans for the Residences at Mandarin Oriental in Miami. Sales will start this spring for condos in the two-tower project, located on the island of Brickell Key, across a bridge from Miamiā€™s financial district. The developer, Swire Properties, said this week that would-be buyers can make private appointments at a ā€œPreview Loungeā€ inside the Mandarin Oriental Miami hotel.

  •  šŸ’µ Plans for a Ritz-Carlton branded condo tower on the West Palm Beach waterfront are moving forward, Miami-based developer Related Group told the Palm Beach Post this week. Thereā€™s still an influx of well-heeled executives moving to the region, so Relatedā€™s gonna build something for them to buy: a 28-story tower with 144 units priced from $2.5 million to more than $6 million.

"We believe there will be a continuing demand from people moving here with high-paying jobs," Relatedā€™s CEO Jorge PeĢrez told the Post.

This weekā€™s sales announcements come as the number of condos on the market is climbing throughout South Florida, per last weekā€™s newsletter. (Read here: ā€œHigh on Supplyā€).

The Residences at Mandarin Oriental, lagoon pool (Photo: The Boundary)

āŖ Catch up on recent Highest & Best issues:

Is Miamiā€™s Office Market Cooling?

One Brickell City Centre (Photo: Swire Properties/Related Cos.)

Miamiā€™s high-flying office market is experiencing something unusual: the pull of gravity.

  • šŸ¢ One Brickell City Centre, a planned office tower that will be Floridaā€™s largest, is having trouble landing an anchor tenant, the Wall Street Journal reported this week. The under-construction building, set to have 68 floors and 1.5 million square feet of office space, broke ground a year ago and is grappling with a leasing market thatā€™s slowed down since.

     

    Corporate relocations to Miami are still happening, but not at the pace they were two years ago, brokerage CBRE said in its most recent office report. ā€œToday, existing tenants are driving most of the market,ā€ the firm said, which means a smaller pool of takers.

  • šŸ¢ An office complex in Coral Gables sold at a 25% loss this week. The five-building property, called ā€œDouglas Entrance,ā€ was purchased for $76 million, according to sales tracker Vizzda. That price is 25% less than what the seller paid 10 years ago, when it was purchased for $100.8 million.

But Wait! This Office Tower Just Got a Major Bank Loan

2600 Biscayne Blvd (Photo: Oak Row Equities)

An rising office tower in Miami secured a $181 million construction loan this week.

The loan, from Bank OZK ā€” which really likes financing South Florida projects ā€” will back the construction of 2600 Biscayne Blvd, a 41-story office and apartment building in Miamiā€™s Edgewater neighborhood, the builder said.

The tower, developed by Oak Row Equities, will have 187,000 square feet of office and retail space plus 399 luxury apartments, with amenities that include a pet spa.

Fifty percent of the available office and retail space had been leased before construction began, which, as Oak Row tells it, makes it ā€œone of the most pre-leased new construction office buildings in Miamiā€™s history.ā€ 

That probably helped some in getting that loan šŸ¤”

Thatā€™s it for today!

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