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Happy New Year Highest & Best! Today, we’re talking new high-water marks— for people and property. Here’s the rundown:

💰 A record property sale on Miami’s waterfront
🤗 Our $200 million listing scoop
📈 Florida tops 23 million people for the first time
🏝 Mormon Church still bullish on South Florida

Let’s get to it!

A Record-Setting Deal for Miami

What better way to close out 2024 than with a history-making real estate deal?

A a 4.25-acre waterfront site in Miami’s financial district is in contract to be sold for a for an eye-popping $520 million—the highest price ever paid for a land deal in South Florida.

The buyers, Oak Row Equities and Mariposa Real Estate, clearly see something special in this prime Brickell parcel, which includes 485 feet of frontage along Biscayne Bay and is zoned for several towers reaching up to 1,049 feet, according to a statement from Oak Row.

🏗 Gone will be the old office and rental buildings on the site. In their place, Oak Row and Mariposa plan to develop “ultra-luxury” condos as part of the over 3 million square feet they’re cleared to build.

“A perfect blend of zoning, site geometry, bay frontage, and location combine to create a truly irreplaceable piece of real estate,” was how Erik Rutter, managing partner at Oak Row, described the alchemy behind the record-setting price of the land, at 1001 and 1111 Brickell Bay Drive.

The $520 million deal surpasses the previous Miami land record set in 2022, when Citadel CEO and billionaire Ken Griffin paid $363 million for a nearby 4-acre site. (Nice bragging rights to say you’ve one-upped Griffin, right?).

👋 But wait—there’s a twist. The final price tag could climb to $540 million if the buyers opt for $115 million in seller financing, as detailed in an SEC filing by Aimco, the current property owner. (That financing comes with a 12% interest rate for 18 months, so I’d bet the buyers are thinking that one over carefully.)

Oak Row and Mariposa have already placed a $38 million deposit (non-refundable) on the property, according to public filings. They could close as early as March or as late as the end of 2025, Aimco said.

💰As for Aimco’s net proceeds—what they’ll walk away with after all is said and done—those will range from $300 to $320 million, depending on whether the final sale price lands at $520 million or $540 million. The majority of those proceeds will be returned to shareholders, Aimco, a publicly traded apartment landlord, said.

🚧 Miami’s Brickell waterfront is a hub of new development, much of it announced in the past year. Read about the office skyscrapers being planned by Griffin, as well as Banco Santander, here.

Or see the second-biggest office sale in Florida, at 701 Brickell, here.

⏪ Catch up on recent Highest & Best issues:

• A Dash of Nope, December 21, 2024

• Cash In, Cash Out, December 14, 2024

• Snaps of Luxury, December 7, 2024

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🙌 We Had it First!

Highest & Best’s December 21st issue had the scoop about a $200 million land listing on Miami’s Indian Creek Island, the exclusive neighborhood where Jeff Bezos and Ivanka Trump own homes.

This high-dollar listing (house not included) turned heads, and soon, international and national media including the New York Post, Bloomberg and Curbed, followed our lead — and gave us credit.

But yeah, you read it here first:

U.S. Census: Newcomers Still Flocking to Florida

Florida gained 467,347 new residents in the year through July 2024, the second-highest influx of newcomers in the United States, according to new Census Bureau estimates.

To put that in perspective, Florida added more people in a single year than the entire population of Orlando (about 320,742). That growth pushed the state's total population to 23.4 million as of July 1, 2024, up from 22.9 million the year before.

Only Texas saw more growth last year, with 562,941 new arrivals.

Sunshine State demographers predict a steady flow of new residents into the next decade. Between now and April 1, 2028, Florida’s population is expected to grow by an average of 319,109 people per year —or 874 people each day.

By 2031, Florida’s population will top 25 million, according to a report by Florida’s Demographic Estimating Conference.

😎 That’s 25 million reasons for this newsletter to exist — so forward Highest & Best to a friend!!

Mormon Church Still on a South Florida Buying Spree

How much would you pay for a newly built apartment complex in Lake Worth?

For the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which has been busy expanding its Florida real estate holdings, the answer is: $102.4 million.

The Elan Polo Gardens, completed in 2024, was bought last week by the Mormon Church’s investment arm, Property Reserve, for $360,500 per apartment, according to real estate intel site Vizzda. The seller (and developer) of the property was Greystar— the nation’s largest apartment landlord.

The 284-unit complex in Palm Beach County sits on a 20.35-acre site (that was once polo fields), Vizzda said. It includes amenities like a “gaming lawn,” a fireside lounge, and electric vehicle charging stations, according to the property’s website. The apartment complex is so new that it’s still filling up with its first tenants, at rents that range from $2,116 (for a one-bedroom) to $3,000 (for a three-bedroom).

The purchase of Elan Polo Gardens adds to the the Utah-based church’s growing South Florida real estate portfolio. The Mormon Church, already a major property holder across the state, made headlines last year with a $133 million acquisition of another newly built apartment complex in Plantation. It also inked 2023’s largest Miami-area warehouse deal, spending $174.3 million on six buildings in a Hialeah industrial park.

That’s it for today!

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