Chateau Beach marks 38th new SoFla condo tower completed

Developer Manuel Grosskopf of the Chateau Group has completed the first of at least three new condo projects planned on the barrier island in Miami-Dade County during this South Florida real estate cycle that began in 2011.

Transactions in the newly completed 32-story Chateau Beach Residences condo tower with 81 units in the 17400 block of Collins Avenue began to be recorded on Aug. 12, according to Miami-Dade County records.

To date, buyers have taken title to 15 new condo units for a combined $37 million, for an average transaction price of $972 per square foot as of Monday, according to government records.

Individual unit sales have transacted at prices ranging from $980,000 to $5.3 million. The recorded sales prices per square foot range from less than $670 to nearly $1,300, according to government records.

Currently, one condo unit in the Chateau Beach is available for purchase on the resale market at an asking price of $5.8 million, for an average of $1,371 per square foot as of Monday, according to data from the Southeast Florida MLXchange.

The Chateau Beach is the third new condo tower — along with the 44-story Regalia with 39 units and the 47-story Mansions at Acqualina with 86 units, for a combined 206 units — to be completed in the barrier island city of Sunny Isles Beach. Developers have announced 20 new condo towers with nearly 2,650 units in Sunny Isles Beach since this current real estate cycle began, according to the preconstruction condo projects website CraneSpotters.com. (For disclosure, my firm operates the website.)

Developers are currently constructing seven new condo towers with nearly 950 units. An additional 10 new towers with 1,500 units are currently in the planning or presale phase of development in Sunny Isles Beach.

Based on the new units announced, Sunny Isles Beach is the fourth most active area east of I-95 in the tri-county South Florida region of Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach, behind the markets of Greater Downtown Miami, Hollywood/Hallandale Beach, and Downtown Fort Lauderdale and Beach, according to CraneSpotters.com.

Overall in South Florida, developers have now completed 38 new condo buildings — including the Chateau Beach project — with more than 3,400 units located east of I-95. The new South Florida condos completed to date represent nearly 8 percent of the more than 43,675 units announced for the tri-county region during this cycle.

At least 113 new condo buildings with more than 11,160 units — about 26 percent of the overall South Florida total — are currently under construction.  

An additional 217 new condo buildings with more than 29,100 units — nearly 67 percent of the overall total announced this cycle — are currently in the planning or presale phase of development in South Florida, according to the data.

For Grosskopf’s Chateau Group, the focus is now on completing the construction on the 12-story Fendi Chateau Residences with 58 units in Surfside sometime next year and selling enough preconstruction units to build the planned 52-story Ritz-Carlton Residences Sunny Isles Beach with 212 units.

(For disclosure, I provided expert testimony last week in a civil suit filed by a Grosskopf company in Broward County Circuit Court.)   

Besides these two barrier island projects, the Chateau Group is also linked to at least three other Miami-Dade County condo towers slated to be developed on sites east of I-95 in Sunny Isles Beach and Greater Downtown Miami.

The Chateau Group had planned to build an additional 25-story condo tower with 205 units, dubbed Puerto Aventura, in Aventura before selling off the development site for $21.6 million in March.

The unanswered question going forward is whether enough buyers exist in the South Florida preconstruction condo market at a time of rising prices, growing supply and a stronger U.S. dollar for the Chateau Group to complete all of the new towers planned for this cycle in the tri-county region.

Peter Zalewski is a 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.