Ian Schrager’s Miami Beach condo tower nears completion – with some surprises

International hotelier Ian Schrager took a step closer to the long-anticipated completion of his Residences At The Miami Beach Edition project with the filing of the official Declaration of Condominium for the ultra-luxury complex, but not without some surprises.

The 135-page condominium declaration recorded on Sept. 30 with the Miami-Dade County Clerk of the Court reveals Schrager’s project – officially known as the 2901 Collins Condominium – will have 25 condos – not the 26 units that are still being marketed on the project’s official website as of today – located in an 18-story structure fronting the Atlantic Ocean in Miami Beach.

The condominium declaration also shows the pair of penthouses in the project that reportedly went under contract in March 2013 for $34 million to a U.S. buyer who plans to combine the units into single condo will have 9,207 square feet of living space, less than the nearly 10,000 square feet cited by Schrager in a Bloomberg News article.

Even with the reduced square footage, the reported price tag for the two penthouse units as described in the condominium declaration works out to less than $3,700 per square foot, not the “record” $3,800 that Schrager announced some 20 months ago during an appearance on Bloomberg TV’s “In The Loop” program with Betty Liu.

Schrager declined to comment, according to a spokesperson.

No transactions have been recorded in Miami-Dade County for the 2901 Collins Condominium project as of Tuesday, so it is unclear if “half of the units” in the project went under contract for an average sales price of $3,000 per square foot, as Schrager said in the TV interview.

What is clear is that a trio of units in the 2901 Collins Condominium are being marketed for sale on the MLXchange at an average price of less than $2,530 per square foot at a time when a flurry of new projects are available for purchase.

As of today, the 2901 Collins Condominium is one of at least 27 new condo towers totaling 1,350 units to be developed in Miami Beach during this cycle, according to the preconstruction condo projects website CraneSpotters.com.

(For disclosure purposes, my firm operates the website.)

Overall, developers have announced nearly 290 new condo towers totaling more than 38,000 units on sites located east of I-95 in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties.

For buyers of units in the 2901 Collins Condominium, the monthly maintenance fee will average about $1.47 per square foot, according to government records.

Based on this average, monthly maintenance fees for individual units in this ultra-luxury project are set to range from less than $1,250 to more than $7,350, according to the condominium declaration.

Buyers who purchase units in the 2901 Collins Condominium will be permitted to rent out their condos to tenants up to four times a year as long as the minimum lease is for 30 days.

The unanswered question going forward is whether Schrager will have any surprises in the coming months when buyers of the 2901 Collins Condominium are asked to close their purchases upon completion of the project.

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.