Regalia condo tower tops $100 million in sales

The new Regalia oceanfront condo tower in Sunny Isles Beach has surpassed $100 million in sales since opening some 60 days ago.

Buyers paid nearly $105 million to acquire 13 units in the 43-story tower that features one residence per floor at 19575 Collins Avenue in the barrier island city as of Monday, according to Miami-Dade County records. Units in Regalia transacted at an average price of more than $1,610 per square foot, with individual condo residences trading from less than $1,275 per square foot to nearly $2,150 per square foot.

At the current sales pace, Regalia’s developers are on track to sell out the entire 39-unit tower – with nearly 202,500 square feet of “net” salable space – for more than $325 million.

At the moment, only one Regalia residence – a furnished developer unit – is being openly marketed for sale at an asking price of more than $2,500 per square foot as of Monday, according to data the Southeast Florida MLXchange.

Regalia is the first new condo high-rise to be completed in Sunny Isles since developers created more 28 towers with more than 6,200 condo units between 2003 and 2010 in this 1.02-square-mile city in northeast Miami-Dade County. Less than 50 developer units remain unsold in Sunny Isles from the last boom-and-bust cycle as of March 31.

In addition to the recently completed Regalia, developers have announced 13 new condo towers totaling about 1,885 units in Sunny Isles, according to the preconstruction condo projects website CraneSpotters.com.

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

The average minimum asking price for a preconstruction condo unit in Sunny Isles is nearly $1,190 per square foot.

Overall, developers have announced 255 new condo towers totaling more than 34,560 units east of I-95 in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties.

The average minimum asking price is more than $735 per square foot for presale condos in South Florida.

Regalia concluded construction in May, more than two-and-a-half years after work first began in October 2011.

Regalia is said to be “95 percent sold” to buyers who have preconstruction contracts. The minimum asking price of the remaining units starts at more than $1,575 per square foot, according to a recent CraneSpotters.com Developers Price Survey.

For comparison, the Sunny Isles condo market now has nearly 450 units in oceanfront towers on the resale market at an average asking price of about $830 per square foot as Monday, according to the Southeast Florida MLXchange.

The unanswered question going forward is whether Regalia will be able to maintain – or even improve upon – the current pricing and sales pace given the number of new condo towers being proposed and the supply of resale inventory available in the Sunny Isles market.

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.