Miami’s luxe listings vie to break $47M sale record

A $47 million glass house with a seven-car garage is the priciest residential sale ever in Miami-Dade County, and brokers are chomping at the bit to break that benchmark.

Today, the five most expensive properties on the market range from a mere $39 million to an eye-popping nine digits — $100 million.

Despite the astronomical asks, though, Miami is still undervalued in the opinion of Jill Eber of The Jills brokerage team at Coldwell Banker, who originally marketed the $47 million home and now has the $100 million listing. And the market agrees, although the vast majority of homes admittedly sell for only a fraction of what the primo listings bring: The median sale price of a luxury condominium jumped to $1.2 million, up a third in the fourth quarter of 2012 year-over-year, and the median sale price of a luxury single-family home climbed to $1.4 million, a 17 percent increase over the same period, according to Douglas Elliman’s quarterly report provided by Miller Samuel.

Eber’s $100 million listing is the legendary Casa Casuarina estate, the former home of late designer Gianni Versace and the site of his murder. The 19,000-square-foot house hit the market a year ago in June with an all-time-high asking price of $125 million; the princely sum dropped to $100 million in November.

Telecom mogul Peter Loftin is operating this richly decorated mansion as a boutique hotel and restaurant, leading many in South Florida’s real estate community to speculate that it is destined for commercial use.

Eber is still confident that she will find a residential buyer, though she is seeing strong interest from the commercial side as well.

At roughly half the cost of Casa Casuarina, the second most extravagant listing is the $55 million penthouse of the Trump Group’s under-construction condo tower called Mansions at Acqualina.

Holding the No. 3 spot, with an asking price of $45 million, is 12 Indian Creek Drive. Just a few lots away is the $47 million record-holder, at 3 Indian Creek.

“Current high-end activity, coupled with low inventory, is causing listing prices to increase, especially the new listings coming on the market,“ said Nelson Gonzalez of the Esslinger-Wooten-Maxwell firm, who is exclusively marketing the third and fourth priciest listings. “Even properties that have sat on the market are increasing their prices.”

Regardless of all the positive energy and short supply, Miami’s top properties are taking a considerable length of time to sell. Four have spent at least seven months on the market; the average time for the overall market in the fourth quarter of 2012 was 68 days, according to Douglas Elliman’s quarterly report.