17th new condo tower proposed in Sunny Isles Beach

Sunny Isles Beach (inset: Peter Zalewski)
Sunny Isles Beach (inset: Peter Zalewski)

Showing little concern about the number of new condo units already announced, a Broward County-based development group is proposing what amounts to the 17th new tower of this real estate cycle in Sunny Isles Beach.

The developer, a Florida corporation managed by Ben Kaplan of Hallandale Beach, filed an application to construct a 50-story, 212-unit condo tower that is yet to be named publicly on a pair of contiguous oceanfront sites totaling 2.2 acres at 15701 and 15795 Collins Avenue, according to an application filed with the City of Sunny Isles Beach.

The City Commission is scheduled to conduct a zoning hearing regarding the application at 6.30 p.m. on Oct. 16 at the Sunny Isles Beach Government Center, according to a public notice.

Currently, the sales center for the Chateau Beach Residences – located at 15795 Collins Avenue – and the partially constructed Solis Resort Spa & Residences at 15701 Collins Avenue stand on the site where the newly proposed tower would be developed.

In February, a venture between the Chateau Group, which is developing the 33-story, 84-unit Chateau Beach Residences with 84 units, and Fortune International, which is building the 56-story, 192-unit Jade Signature condo tower, acquired the land for the project, according to The Real Deal.

With the newly proposed condo tower, developers have now announced more than 2,325 units in Sunny Isles during the current real estate cycle that began in 2011, according to the preconstruction condo projects website CraneSpotters.com.

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

Sunny Isles ranks as the fourth most active preconstruction condo market in the tri-county South Florida region with about 6 percent of the total units announced.

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Overall, developers have announced 284 new condo towers totaling more than 38,600 units for locations east of I-95 in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties.

During the previous boom, developers created 28 new towers totaling more than 6,360 units, including some apartment projects that were converted into condominiums, according to an analysis of Miami-Dade County records. As of June 30, less than 35 units from the last condo boom remained unsold.

In addition, Sunny Isles currently has nearly 800 condo resale units available for purchase at an average asking price of more than $640 per square foot, according to data from the Southeast Florida MLXchange.

In the first nine months of this year, buyers acquired less than 650 condo resales – about 72 units monthly – at an average price of about $431 per square foot.

Based on the current resale pace, the Sunny Isles condo market has about 11 months of unit supply available for purchase.

Industry watchers typically consider a healthy residential real estate market to have six months of resale inventory. Fewer months of available resale inventory suggest a seller’s market, while more months indicate a buyer’s market.

The unanswered question going forward is whether enough of today’s prospective buyers are focused on Sunny Isles to absorb all of the proposed and existing units now available for purchase.

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.