⚽ Leasing & Leo

In partnership with

Happy Sunday Highest & Best! Here’s a rundown from the Florida real estate week:

📈 Miami’s office leasing rebound

⚽ Lionel Messi buys four Cipriani condos

🏝️ Record property sale in Key Biscayne

💰 Huge hotel loan in Miami Beach

🏗 New apartments for Breakers employees?

Let’s get to it!

🏢 Miami’s Office Market is Back from Its Coffee Break

City National Bank of Florida signed a 145,000-square-foot lease for a new headquarters in Coral Gables, marking the largest office deal in South Florida in the past two years, according to published reports.

The agreement, announced last week, highlights the revival of Miami’s office leasing market, which bounced back in the first quarter after a sluggish finish to 2024.

The bank will move into 2701 South Le Jeune Road, a 16-story tower owned by Ponte Gadea, the investment firm of Spanish billionaire Amancio Ortega (also known as the founder of fashion chain Zara).

Completed in 2009 and formerly home to Bacardi’s world headquarters, the building will be renamed ‘City National Financial Center,’ in honor of its newest, more sober tenant.

More than 800 bank employees, currently based in offices across Downtown Miami, Brickell, and Coral Gables, will consolidate into the new space next year. The relocation comes as City National plans to grow its workforce by 20% over the next 18 months.

📸 BIG PICTURE: Miami’s office market jolted awake in the first quarter.

📈 About 1 million square feet of office space was leased in the first three months of the year — a 27% jump from the same period in 2024, according to a report by brokerage Avison Young. Asking rents climbed 3.5% since then to an average $62.96 per square foot.

🤔 Smaller deals — for spaces 5,000 square feet or less — drove much of the leasing activity in the first quarter. (They accounted for 85% of all transactions, according to Avison Young).

But those smaller leases added up quickly, and a few larger deals still grabbed headlines.

💪 Amazon, for example, signed the largest office lease ever in Wynwood, taking 50,333 square feet at the brand-new Wynwood Plaza.

💪 Meanwhile, The Plaza at Coral Gables — the two-tower complex that counts Apple among its tenants — is now fully leased, following a flurry of mid-sized signings, according to owner Agave Holdings and brokerage Blanca Commercial Real Estate.

⏪ Catch up on recent Highest & Best issues:

• Markdown Madness, April 6, 2025

• Boca’s Big Bet, March 29, 2025

• The Big Bounce, March 18, 2025

Former Zillow Execs Target $1.3T Market

The wealthiest companies tend to target the biggest markets. For example, NVIDIA skyrocketed nearly 200% higher in the last year with the $214B AI market’s tailwind.

That’s why investors are so excited about Pacaso.

Created by Zillow’s founding team, Pacaso brings co-ownership to a $1.3 trillion real estate market. And by handing keys to 1,500+ happy homeowners, they’ve made $100M+ in gross profits.

Now, with aggressive global expansion underway, Pacaso’s ready to grow this disruptive model on a global scale.

Invest for $2.80/share today.

_{Paid advertisement for Pacaso’s Regulation A offering. Read the offering circular at invest.pacaso.com.}

One Messi, Four Condos

When you’re a soccer superstar, one Miami condo just doesn’t cut it.

Lionel Messi, Inter Miami’s star forward, has reportedly purchased four units at the under-construction Cipriani Residences Miami, according to The Wall Street Journal.

One of the units is a 3,500-square-foot, four-bedroom condo priced at around $7.5 million. Details on the other three remain under wraps.

This isn’t his first South Florida real estate move. Messi, 37, already owns a $10.75 million estate in Fort Lauderdale, plus a couple of sky-high residences at the Porsche Design Tower in Sunny Isles Beach.

The Cipriani tower, 80-stories and developed by Mast Capital, is slated for completion in 2028.

.

A Record Land Deal for Key Biscayne

The Silver Sands Beach Resort, a modest waterfront motel with perfect beach access in Key Biscayne, just made a bit of history. It sold last week for $205 million, the highest price ever paid for property on the island, according to the buyers.

Those buyers are Terra and Fortune International Group (two of South Florida’s busiest high-end developers). And their redevelopment plan — as is expected these days on sites that touch the waterfront — is to raze the motel and build “ultra-luxury” condos.

The project, at 301 Ocean Drive, will be a 56-unit boutique building, with promises of spacious residences and “panoramic” ocean views, the developers said in a press statement. They didn’t share pricing details, but did say the project would “lead to a significant increase in property tax contributions” — so you know it’s going to be high.

This will be Key Biscayne’s first new development in over a decade, and it will come with some perks for the non-condo-buying public. The development team will invest in local drainage infrastructure, improved traffic circulation, and pay for improvements to the community’s parks.

Workforce Housing For Breakers Staff

Running an iconic luxury resort comes with its challenges, and for The Breakers in Palm Beach, it’s not guest service that’s the issue. It’s housing.

The cost of living in Palm Beach County has climbed sharply in recent years, putting hospitality workers, like those who keep the Breakers running, in a tough spot.

One developer is putting forward an idea:

VDG Land Co., led by investor Frederic Van Der Grift, is seeking to rezone a 2.46-acre site in West Palm Beach and build a 155-unit apartment building, including 78 apartments to be designated as “workforce housing” for Breakers employees, the South Florida Business Journal reported.

The site, near 2410 North Australian Ave and currently home to a mostly vacant office building, would be transformed into a mixed-income apartment complex with a pool, fitness center and a salon. It would also include 88 parking spaces, though the developer expects many residents won’t need a car, and is seeking permission from the city to allow for that reduced number of required spaces.

The 78 units of workforce housing would be reserved for tenants who earn up to to 120% of area median income, which comes out to a $90,000 salary for a single-person household or $102,840 combined salary for a two-person household, according to Palm Beach County Housing figures from 2024.

The plan requires the city to sign off on several variances, as well as complete the sale of an additional city-owned parcel to the developer.

A Huge Hotel Loan on Miami Beach

Since we're talking milestones (see Key Biscayne above) here’s another one:

The long-awaited 800-room Grand Hyatt Miami Beach, planned next to the city’s convention center, just locked in $392 million in construction financing, developers Terra (see above) and Turnberry announced. The loan, from TYKO Capital, is the largest for a standalone hotel in Miami in over a decade, the developers said.

Voters overwhelmingly approved the project back in 2018, but it stalled during and after the pandemic, as labor and construction costs ballooned. Last year, Miami Beach’s redevelopment agency stepped in with a $75 million infusion of public funds to help close the gap.

The hotel is slated to open in late 2027, complete with five restaurants, 100,000 square feet of meeting space, and a skybridge to the convention center.

In the meantime, demand for Miami Beach hotels is strong:

📈 Average daily room rates jumped 3.9% in the first two months of the year compared to last year, reaching $366.97 per night, per the Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau.

💼 RevPAR (Revenue Per Available Room) — a key performance metric for hospitality investors — rose 5.4% year-over-year to $294.23

That’s it for today!

Like what you’re reading? Send it to a friend.

Or send Highest & Best directly to your inbox by subscribing here: https://highest-and-best.beehiiv.com/subscribe