Champagne, yachts and luxury real estate go hand-in-hand, especially at the Miami International Boat Show and the Yacht & Brokerage Show this weekend.
For Jade Signature, the party started Thursday evening alongside the Moonraker at the Yacht & Brokerage Show in Miami Beach, a 160-foot, $29.9 million Mangusta yacht.
Brokers and prospective buyers feasted on antipasto and sipped cocktails, as a video of the 182-unit luxury condo tower in Sunny Isles Beach ran continuously throughout the night.
Edgardo Defortuna, developer and president of Fortune International, is marking his return to the boat show this weekend, first with Thursday’s cocktail party and again at a similar event on Saturday.
For luxury developments like Jade Signature, the boat show is a feeding ground for prospective buyers.
Fortune is also hosting kiosks and events at local airports this weekend to target potential buyers who have private planes.
“Some people that can afford those types of products are buying the million-dollar boats,” Defortuna told TRD.
Farther south, 1 Hotel & Homes South Beach is hosting a VIP reception this weekend for boat show attendees and real estate agents “buzzing around,” Defortuna said.
The Ritz-Carlton Residences Miami Beach also kicked off the weekend with an event Thursday night, Lionheart Capital partner and CEO Ophir Sternberg said.
The Ritz is hosting a pop-up showroom over the weekend for the development, which is 50-percent sold and has 36 boat slips — with less than 15 remaining.
Having boat slips in a private marina is one of the biggest selling points for the 111-unit development, at 4701 North Meridian Avenue.
“We’re going to have a private 40-foot day yacht available to residents,” Sternberg said, comparing the VanDutch yacht to a clubhouse on the water. Units range from $2 million to $40 million.
Marina Palms Yacht Club & Residences, a 468-unit, twin-tower luxury condo project in North Miami Beach, is also targeting boat show-goers at the Yacht & Brokerage Show.
The project has a double-booth on a display barge across from the Eden Roc — complete with champagne and a video of the development’s promised lifestyle.
“Given the large yachting component and the on-the-water lifestyle, it was a synergistic decision to be at the boat show,” DevStar Group principal George Helmsetter told The Real Deal.
Marina Palms, developed by DevStar and the Plaza Group, is the first project in more than 20 years in Miami-Dade County to come with a full-service marina. The marina will fit 112 slips for yachts up to 100 feet in length.
The dock system itself will feature two fixed docks and a floating dock down the center of the marina. All boat slips will be wired for electricity and high-speed Internet. Prices for units start in the low $800,000’s.
About 28 boat slips, which are only available to Marina Palms condo owners, are left.
Helmsetter said the affluent profiles of buyers at the boat shows are in line with prospective buyers, who will get an invitation to a party next week at the sales center.
Iris on the Bay, a 43-unit luxury townhouse community on Normandy Isles in Miami Beach, also has a booth at the show. Ann Nortmann, director of sales, said the development has 15 boat slips for boats between 32 and 36 feet long.
Prices for the units range from $786,000 to $1.2 million. Roughly half of the units are nearing completion.
“This is an audience interested in our project,” she said. “We feel that the price point is of the same demographic of the typical boat show [attendee].”