Related Group completes its fourth new condo tower of 2015

Rendering of Icon Bay and Peter Zalewski
Rendering of Icon Bay and Peter Zalewski

It has been a remarkably busy year for South Florida’s most prolific vertical residential developer.

For the fourth time in 2015, the Related Group has completed a new condo tower east of I-95 in the tri-county South Florida region of Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach.

All told, the Related Group has delivered nearly 1,150 new condos to the South Florida market since January and nearly 1,400 units since this current real estate cycle began in 2011.

Days after completing the new 167-unit Baltus House project located northeast of the Miami Design District on June 30, the Related Group began recording transactions in the new Icon Bay project with 299 units in Greater Downtown Miami on July 2, according to Miami-Dade County records.

To date, the Icon Bay project — located in the 400 block of Northeast 28th Street in the Edgewater neighborhood — has recorded transactions for 28 units totaling more than $18.9 million for an average price of $550 per square foot in a project that first began construction in January 2014, according to government records.

Individual unit transactions have ranged in price from less than $481,000 to more than $885,000 each. On a price-per-square-foot basis, individual unit transactions have ranged from less than $440 to more than $600, according to government records.

As of Monday, three units in the Icon Bay are listed on the resale market at an average asking price of nearly $600 per square foot. An additional unit in the project is listed on the rental market at a monthly asking price of $3.58 per square foot, according to data from the Southeast Florida MLXchange.

The Icon Bay is the third tower of 13 new condo buildings with more than 3,400 units announced for the Edgewater neighborhood since 2011.

The Melo Group delivered the first two towers — the 23 Biscayne Bay with 96 units and the Bay House with 165 units — of this cycle in 2012 and May 2015, respectively.

Prior to finishing the Icon Bay, the Related Group completed the Apogee Beach project with 49 units in Hollywood in 2013; the MyBrickell project with 192 units in Greater Downtown Miami in 2014; the 1100 Millecento Residences project with 382 units in Greater Downtown Miami in February; the Beachwalk project with 300 units in Hallandale Beach in March and the Baltus House in June.

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Overall, South Florida developers have now completed 34 new condo towers with more than 3,200 units east of I-95 in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach as of Monday, according to the preconstruction condo projects website CraneSpotters.com. (For disclosure, my firm operates the website.)

The new South Florida condos completed to date represent nearly eight percent of the nearly 43,000 units announced for the tricounty region during this cycle.

More than 110 new condo towers with nearly 10,900 units — more than 25 percent of the overall South Florida total — are currently under construction.

An additional 211 new condo buildings with more than 28,800 units — some 67 percent of the overall total announced this cycle — are currently in the planning or presale phase of development in South Florida, according to the data.

For its part, the Related Group has 11 new condo buildings with more than 2,700 units currently under construction east of I-95 in South Florida.

At least two of Related’s new projects — the Marea South Beach with 30 units and the One Ocean with 50 units in Miami Beach — are slated to be completed in the upcoming weeks and months.

Besides the projects now being built, Related has an additional 22 new condo towers with more than 4,500 units in the planning or presale phase east of I-95 in South Florida, according to the data.

Related accounts for more than 20 percent of all new South Florida condos announced since 2011.

The unanswered question going forward is whether competing developers will attempt to push forward with all of the new condo projects that they have announced given the number of units in the Related Group’s pipeline.    

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.