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

😀 Miami’s office market win —and loss 😟

💵 $15 million condos on Surfside collapse site

💰 Mar-a-Lago adjacent mansions find sudden takers

🏎 A Ferrari-inspired home races to a quick sale

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Let’s get to it!

Miami’s Office Market Finds Gravity — AND Sets a Record?

Miami’s office market had a tale of two deals this week—one making history, the other hitting the brakes.

In Wynwood, Amazon signed the biggest office lease ever in the neighborhood, committing to over 50,000 square feet in a yet-to-be-completed office and residential campus called Wynwood Plaza.

Meanwhile, over in Brickell, things took a different turn. Developer Swire Properties scrapped plans for its 68-story tower, One Brickell City Centre, citing challenges in pre-leasing the massive project. Instead of breaking ground, Swire is now looking to sell the site altogether, Bloomberg News reported.

This push-pull dynamic reflects a broader trend: Miami’s office leasing cooled in 2024, a retreat from the pandemic-era frenzy marked by out-of-town companies eager to plant a flag in the city, and grab whatever space they can.

🤔 So, what does Miami's post-pandemic office market ultimately look like—and what can it realistically sustain? The answer lies somewhere between an out-of-town company setting a leasing record and, well, needing a 68-story tower with a rooftop helipad.

“New projects are getting delivered and leased at a much faster pace than historically was the case,” said Tere Blanca, founder and CEO of brokerage Blanca Commercial Real Estate, in an interview this week.

But, she cautioned: “Because we’re a small market, it doesn’t mean that we can build three new towers on Brickell Avenue, or four new towers in the urban core of Miami, of a million square feet, or a million-five square feet, and have all of them successfully leased.”

Some relevant stats to where Miami’s office market stands now:

📉 New office leasing in Miami fell 29% in 2024 from the previous year, with approximately 1.5 million square feet of office space finding fresh takers, brokerage CBRE reported.

😯 And yet: Despite the slowdown, the vacancy rate for prime, Class A buildings dropped to 14.5%—its lowest level since 2019.

📈 Class A rents are still climbing: They were up 5.7% in Brickell in the final three months of 2024, compared to a year earlier, and up 9.1% in Wynwood, which is now the second-most expensive office market in Miami, CBRE said.

🚚 Companies that are “new-to-market”—those without existing office space in Miami—leased just 185,822 square feet in 2024, marking a 37% decline from the previous year, according to Blanca Commercial Real Estate’s year-end report. (The bulk of these newcomers, though, came from the financial services sector).

🥳 And then there’s this week’s record-setting Amazon deal: the e-commerce giant signed on for 50,333 square feet of office space in a 12-story tower nearing completion in the Wynwood Arts District. The building, part of a retail and residential campus called Wynwood Plaza, will offer 266,000 square feet of corporate space, along with private terraces, a golf simulator, and a fitness club for tenants, according to developers Oak Row Equities and L&L Holding Company.

⏪ Catch up on recent Highest & Best issues:

• The Roaring Renties, January 25, 2025

• Sticker Shocked, January 18, 2025

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

• Topping Off, January 6, 2025

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$15 Million Condos Rise on Surfside Collapse Site

A new chapter is unfolding in Surfside, on a site marked by tragedy less than four years ago.

A luxury condominium is rising on the oceanfront lot where Champlain Towers South once stood, before its collapse in 2021 killed 98 people in one of the deadliest building failures in U.S. history.

Now, a new condo tower, the Delmore, is being built at the site, and sales for the units started this week. Prices for the 37 homes at the future building, start at $15 million, the developer, Dubai-based Damac International, said in a statement.

Damac described the units at the 12-story tower as “mansions in the sky”, all of them with four or five bedrooms, averaging 7,000 square feet. Except for the penthouses, which will start at 10,000 square feet. Each condo will come fully furnished and have a private elevator entry foyer.

The building, designed by Zaha Hadid Architects, will include a “meditation garden,” a 75-foot lap pool and a private restaurant with a “Michelin-starred menu,” the developers said. The property, at 8777 Collins Ave., will align with 200 feet of beachfront, where “dedicated beach butlers” will offer food and beverage service.

Damac purchased the former Champlain Towers South site for $120 million in a court-ordered auction (with no other bidders) less than a year after the collapse. Proceeds of the sale went towards a settlement fund for survivors and relatives of victims, the Miami Herald reported.

The new condo project will be complete in 2029.

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Big Month for Mar-a-Lago Adjacent Mansions

It’s been a busy few weeks for real estate in President Donald Trump’s Palm Beach orbit, with three mansions inside the Mar-a-Lago security zone landing buyers in January.

The latest: A six-bedroom estate under construction next door to Mar-a-Lago sold yesterday after sitting on the market for a year with a $45 million price tag. The final sales price was less than half that, at $19.5 million, according to Redfin. But it covers both a luxury home and a fast track into Trump’s enclave—with deeded membership to Mar-a-Lago as part of the deal.

That means owners of the future house at 1090 S. Ocean Blvd. can skip the club’s rumored $1 million initiation fee, though they’ll still need to submit to an interview and pay annual dues, the Palm Beach Daily News reported.

🚧 One more logistical quirk: the street shuts down to through-traffic whenever Trump is in residence at Mar-a-Lago, his waterfront compound-turned-Southern White House. So, not ideal for weekend Uber Eats deliveries.

The mansion, which won’t be complete until later this year, is one of several recent deals inside the Mar-a-Lago security bubble, the Daily News reported. Other long-simmering properties that changed hands include:

🏠 A five-bedroom house at 153 Kings Road, listed for $15.75 million, went under contract in mid-January, after spending more than two years on the sales market.

🏠 A 9,400-sqaure foot estate at 120 Clarendon Ave., first listed in 2023, sold for $27.5 million.

Overall, Palm Beach’s high-end home market saw a “Trump Bump” in the months following the election, according to data compiled by Jonathan Miller, president of appraiser Miller Samuel Inc.

Sales contracts for homes priced at $10 million or more surged 400% in November and December, compared to the same period the previous year. The total dollar volume of those contracts hit $290.6 million—a 612% increase from the year before (yes, really), Miller reported in his Housing Notes newsletter this week.

Ferrari-Themed Mansion Sets a Record— But Car Not Included

Well, that didn’t take long.

A Ferrari-inspired mansion in Delray Beach hit the market just two months ago, and now it’s sold — at the full asking price of $55 million, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The deal, which included all the home’s furnishings, set a local price record.

The new owners are reportedly car collectors, which makes sense considering the 21,000-square-foot home, dubbed Casa Maranello, features a glass-walled gallery for 12 automobiles, visible from the living room.

The only catch? They’ll have to BYOF (bring your own Ferrari). The vintage 250 Testa Rossa showcased in the living room was not included in the sale, the listing agent told the Journal.

Developer Aldo Stark, a lifelong Ferrari enthusiast, built the seven-bedroom estate with his wife, Fiorenna, naming it Casa Maranello as a tribute to Ferrari’s factory town in Italy.

The couple purchased the lot, in the exclusive Stone Creek Ranch community, for $3.4 million in 2023 and poured tens of millions into constructing the estate, which features a soccer field, a putting green, and a 95-foot pool.

That’s it for today!

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