Eight new condo towers planned for Fort Lauderdale’s Las Olas Isles neighborhood

Peter Zalewski
Peter Zalewski

As preconstruction buyers increasingly look north of Miami-Dade County’s rich presale asking prices and mushrooming inventory, at least eight new condo buildings are hoping to attract purchasers for waterfront locations in Fort Lauderdale’s Las Olas Isles neighborhood in Broward County.

Each of the preconstruction projects in Las Olas Isles — a neighborhood of multi-family and single-family homes located between downtown Fort Lauderdale and the barrier island — is slated to stand no more than five-stories tall. They will feature a maximum of 20 units each, for an overall total of nearly 90 condos, according to the preconstruction condo projects website CraneSpotters.com. (For disclosure, my firm operates the website.)

At least four of the new condo buildings are currently under construction, while the other four projects are in the planning or pre-sale stages.

A drive through the neighborhood reveals that even more condo projects could be in the works, as additional sites have already been cleared for potential development.

Minimum preconstruction condo prices for the announced projects in the Las Olas Isles neighborhood currently range from $400 to $625 per square foot, according to the CraneSpotters.com Developers Price Survey for January.

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For comparison, the average minimum price per square foot for a preconstruction condo unit located east of I-95 is nearly $500 per square foot in Broward County, and more than $850 in Miami-Dade County, according to the survey.

The Downtown Fort Lauderdale and Beach area — with the inclusion of the Las Olas Isles neighborhood — ranks as the third most active preconstruction condo market in South Florida, out of a pool of 30 markets east of I-95 in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties.

Overall, the preconstruction condo units announced for the Downtown Fort Lauderdale and Beach market represent about 6.8 percent of the nearly 41,300 condo units announced east of I-95 in South Florida as of Tuesday.

The unanswered question going forward for developers is whether low-rise condo projects in the Las Olas Isles neighborhood of Fort Lauderdale will appeal to the deep pool of preconstruction buyers who have historically purchased units in new high-rise towers in Miami-Dade County.

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.