A New York City-based development group has completed its first of at least four new condo projects announced for vacant sites located east of I-95 in South Florida since this real estate cycle began in 2011.
Transactions in the newly completed Echo Aventura project — officially called the Echo condominium — with a pair of 12-story towers and a combined 190 units, located in the 3200 block of Northeast 188th Street fronting the Intracoastal Waterway in Northeast Miami-Dade County, began to be recorded on Aug. 14, according to Miami-Dade County records.
To date, buyers have taken title to 11 new condo units in the project developed by Property Markets Group (PMG) with Kevin Maloney for a combined $15.6 million, for an average transaction price of $610 per square foot as of Monday, according to government records.
Individual unit sales have transacted at prices ranging from less than $1.2 million to nearly $1.7 million. The recorded sales prices per square foot range from less than $510 to more than $750, according to government records.
Currently, eight condo units in the Echo Aventura project are available for purchase on the Multiple Listing Service database at an average asking price of nearly $2.5 million — or $790 per square foot — as of Monday, according to data from the Southeast Florida MLXchange.
The Echo Aventura is the third new condo project — along with the 24-story Bellini Williams Island tower with 68 units and the multi-phased Aventura Place low-rise project with a combined 82 units — to be completed in Aventura. Developers have announced 21 new condo towers with more than 2,625 units in Aventura since this current real estate cycle began more than four years ago, according to the preconstruction condo projects website CraneSpotters.com. (For disclosure, my firm operates the website.)
Developers are currently constructing six new condo tower with about 650 units in Aventura. An additional 11 new towers with more than 1,700 units are currently in the planning or presale phase of development in the Aventura market.
Based on the new units announced, Aventura is the fifth most active area east of Interstate 95 in the tri-county South Florida region of Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach, behind the markets of Greater Downtown Miami with nearly 20,200 units, Hollywood/Hallandale Beach with more than 3,500 units, Downtown Fort Lauderdale and Beach with more than 3,100 units, and Sunny Isles Beach with nearly 2,650 units, according to CraneSpotters.com.
Overall in South Florida, developers have now completed 40 new condo buildings — including the Echo Aventura project — with about 3,600 units located east of I-95. The new South Florida condos completed to date represent more than 8 percent of the nearly 43,500 units announced for the tri-county region during this cycle.
At least 111 new condo buildings with nearly 11,000 units — more than 25 percent of the overall South Florida total — are currently under construction.
An additional 217 new condo buildings with more than 28,900 units — about 66 percent of the overall total announced for this cycle — are currently in the planning or presale phase of development in South Florida, according to the data.
For PMG, the focus is now on finishing up the construction on the two-building Sage Beach project with 24 units on Surf Road in Hollywood Beach, the 48-story Muse tower with 68 units on Collins Avenue in Sunny Isles Beach and the 57-story Echo Brickell project with 180 units on Brickell Avenue in Greater Downtown Miami.
Besides these three new projects currently under construction, PMG is also linked to a two-acre condo development site located in the 300 block of Biscayne Boulevard in the Central Business District of Greater Downtown Miami that was purchased for $80 million in November 2014.
The unanswered question going forward is whether PMG can successfully attract enough buyers for its various projects in this time of a strengthening U.S. dollar, rising South Florida real estate prices and a mushrooming supply of new and existing condo units currently being marketed for purchase in the coastal 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.