Developers propose 24 new condo towers in last month

Miami skyline (inset: Peter Zalewski)
Miami skyline (inset: Peter Zalewski)

South Florida’s current condo boom is ramping up in preparation for the approaching winter buying season, when visitors from around the world have historically descended upon the tri-county region.

In the last 30 days, developers have announced plans to build an additional 24 new towers with more than 3,200 units for sites east of I-95 in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties, according to the preconstruction condo projects website CraneSpotters.com.

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

Developers were most active in Broward, where they announced plans for nine new condo towers with more than 2,000 units. An additional eight new towers with nearly 600 units were proposed in Palm Beach. Developers announced seven new towers with more than 600 units in Miami-Dade.

With the newly announced projects, developers have now proposed 180 towers with more than 28,250 units in Miami-Dade, 56 towers with nearly 6,500 units in Broward and 44 towers with more than 3,600 units in Palm Beach.

Overall, developers have now proposed 280 condo towers with nearly 38,350 units for sites located east of I-95 in South Florida as of Monday.

By comparison, developers created more than 245 condo towers totaling nearly 49,000 units in South Florida’s seven largest coastal condo markets during the previous boom that began in 2003, according to an analysis of government records.

News of the two-dozen new South Florida towers comes at a time when buyers purchased nearly 450 preconstruction condo units in the last month, according to the latest Developers Price Survey for September from CraneSpotters.com.

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Buyers were the most active in Miami-Dade, acquiring more than 400 preconstruction units within the last month.

The rest of the region was considerably less active during that span.

Buyers acquired about 24 preconstruction condo units in Broward and less than a dozen units in Palm Beach, according to the survey.

Currently, less than 135 new condo towers totaling nearly 16,400 condo units have been on the presale market in South Florida since this latest boom began in 2011.

On the pricing front, the mean minimum presale price for a preconstruction condo unit in South Florida is about $762 per square foot as of Sept. 5.

On a county-by-county basis, the mean minimum price is about $844 per square foot in Miami-Dade, about $498 per square foot in Broward and about $496 per square foot in Palm Beach.

The unanswered question going forward is whether enough preconstruction condo buyers will come to South Florida this winter to justify the number of new units continuously being announced for the tri-county coastal region during this current boom.

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.