Fourth new condo project completed in Fort Lauderdale

A fourth new condo project has been completed in the booming Downtown Fort Lauderdale and Beach market since this South Florida real estate cycle began in 2011.

The first transaction in the newly completed four-story Palms On Venice condo project with 10 units and “no less than” 10 boat slips, was recorded on Nov. 10, according to Broward County records. The project is in the 100 block of Isle Of Venice Drive in the Las Olas Isles neighborhood, between Fort Lauderdale’s Downtown and Beach.

To date, buyers have taken title to only one new condo unit —  Penthouse 402 —  for $2.15 million, for an average transaction price of less than $625 per square foot as of Monday, according to government records. The project was developed by a Delaware corporation, led by M. Austin Forman.

Currently, two condo units in the Palms On Venice project are available for purchase at an average asking price of more than $1.6 million — or $620 per square foot — on the Multiple Listing Service database as of Monday, according to data from the Southeast Florida MLXchange.

The Palms On Venice is the fourth new condo project — along with the 12-unit Adagio On The Bay, the eight-unit Cymbrinas Cay and the 22-unit AquaVita Las Olas — to be completed in the Downtown Fort Lauderdale and Beach market. Developers have announced 49 new condo buildings with 3,280 units in that market since this current real estate cycle began more than four years ago, according to the preconstruction condo projects website CraneSpotters.com.(For disclosure, my firm operates the website.)

By comparison, developers a year ago had announced 23 new condo towers with less than 2,430 units for the Downtown Fort Lauderdale and Beach market for the week of Nov. 17, 2014, according to CraneSpotters.com.

Developers are currently constructing 16 new condo buildings with nearly 450 units in the Downtown Fort Lauderdale and Beach area. An additional 28 new condo buildings with nearly 2,800 units are currently in the planning or presale phase of development in the Fort Lauderdale market.

Based on the new units announced, the Downtown Fort Lauderdale and Beach area is the third most active area east of I-95 in the tricounty South Florida region of Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach as of Monday, according to CraneSpotters.com.

Overall in South Florida, developers have now completed 49 new condo buildings — including the Palms On Venice project — with more than 3,725 units located east of I-95. The new South Florida condos completed to date represent about 7.8 percent of the nearly 47,850 units announced for the tri-county region during this cycle.

At least 124 new condo buildings with more than 12,330 units — nearly 26 percent of the overall South Florida total — are currently under construction.

An additional 224 new condo buildings with nearly 31,800 units — about 66 percent of the overall total announced for this cycle — are currently in the planning or presale phase of development in South Florida, according to the data.

In the Downtown Fort Lauderdale and Beach resale condo market, less than 660 units are currently available for purchase at an average asking price of about $414 per square foot as of Monday, according to the Southeast Florida MLXchange.

In the first 10 months of 2015, buyers acquired 966 units at an average price of about $301 per square foot. A year earlier, buyers acquired 896 condo units at an average price of less than $285 per square foot between the same January-to-October period of 2014, according to the data.

Based on the 2015 resale pace, the Downtown Fort Lauderdale and Beach market has about a 6.8 month supply of resale condo units available for purchase.

A balanced market is considered to have about six months of supply. More months of unit supply indicates a buyer’s market, and less units suggests a seller’s market.

It is worth noting that the 2015 average condo resale price in the Downtown Fort Lauderdale and Beach market is still about 19 percent below the $372 per square foot level at the peak of the last South Florida real estate cycle in 2006.

The unanswered question going forward is whether developers will step up the pace of new condo projects proposed for the Downtown Fort Lauderdale and Beach area, given the strength of the market.

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.