Soffer tower is 25th proposed in Northeast Miami-Dade

Peter Zalewski
Peter Zalewski

A 25th new condo tower was proposed for the Aventura and Sunny Isles Beach market in Northeast Miami-Dade County, increasing the total number of planned units for this market to more than 3,525 during the latest cycle.

The latest developer to get into the mix in Sunny Isles is Jeffrey Soffer, who announced plans on Monday to build a 52-story tower with 154 units on a 2.3-acre site, according to the Miami Herald. Soffer’s company, Turnberry Associates, hopes the proposed tower achieves prices between $3 million and $22 million for units that range between 2,750 square feet to about 10,000 square feet. Presales are expected to launch this fall, according to a corporate statement.

It is unclear what the minimum asking price per square foot will be for units in the proposed Sunny Isles project dubbed Turnberry Ocean Club.

Soffer’s new tower is slated to be developed in the 18500 block of Collins Avenue between a pair of new condo high-rises already under construction – the 56-story, 132-unit Porsche Design Tower to the north and the 46-story, 79-unit Mansions at Acqualina to the south, according to the preconstruction condo projects website CraneSpotters.com. (For disclosure purposes, my firm operates the website.)

Overall, developers have now proposed to develop 14 condo towers with more than 1,800 units in the barrier island city of Sunny Isles, which stretches from Haulover Park north to the town of Golden Beach, and the Atlantic Ocean west to the Intracoastal Waterway. Added to that, developers are proposing 11 condo towers with more than 1,725 units to the west on the mainland in the Aventura area, which stretches from the Broward County line south to Northeast 163rd Street, and the Intracoastal Waterway west to Biscayne Boulevard.

The combined proposed condos in the Aventura and Sunny Isles market now ranks as the second-highest concentration of announced units in all of South Florida behind only Greater Downtown Miami, where developers are proposing more than 50 towers with nearly 14,650 units. Rounding out the top three markets with the highest number of announced units is the Hollywood and Hallandale Beach area in Southeast Broward County – immediately north of the Aventura and Sunny Isles Beach market – where developers are proposing a combined 18 towers with nearly 3,000 units.

Widespread condo tower development has happened before in Sunny Isles.

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During the last South Florida condo boom-and-bust cycle that occurred between 2003 and 2010, developers created more than 25 new towers with nearly 6,400 units in Sunny Isles, according to an analysis of Miami-Dade County records. As of Dec. 31, 2013, less than 60 of those units remain unsold.

It is unclear how many units were created in the Aventura market during the previous cycle.

What is clear is that more than 1,650 condo units are on the resale market at an average price of nearly $782,000 in the Aventura and Sunny Isles market east of Biscayne Boulevard as of April 15, according to the Southeast Florida MLXchange. In the first quarter of 2014, buyers acquired about 475 condo resales at an average price of less than $460,000 each in the market between January and March.

Given the 2014 sales pace, the Aventura and Sunny Isles condo resale market has about 10 months of available inventory.

Generally, a healthy condo resale market has about six months of available inventory. More than six months of resale inventory suggests a buyer’s market, industry watchers say.

The question going forward is will the Aventura and Sunny Isles Beach condo market have a sufficient number of buyers to purchase both the resale units and new condos proposed to be developed in Northeast Miami-Dade County?

Peter Zalewski is real estate columnist for The Real Deal who founded Condo Vultures LLC, a consultancy and publishing company, as well as Condo Vultures Realty LLC and CVR Realty brokerages and the Condo Ratings Agency, an analytics firm. The Condo Ratings Agency operates CraneSpotters.com, a preconstruction condo projects website, in conjunction with the Miami Association of Realtors.