Assembling properties is nothing new for Wynwood developer Moishe Mana, who just spent $5.2 million on a waterfront Venetian Islands teardown next door to a vacant lot he already owns.
Records show Venetian Drive Realty LLC, an entity controlled by Mana, bought the 3,267-square-foot home at 851 North Venetian Drive in Miami. It was built in 1950 and sits on an 11,250-square-foot lot. No financing was recorded for the off-market deal.
Oscar and Sandy Castellanos sold the four-bedroom home. They paid a mere $550,000 for the property in 1998, which means it just traded for nearly 10 times its last sale price less than twenty years ago.
Together with the lot next door, Mana now owns 26,250 square feet of contiguous waterfront land on Biscayne Island, the westernmost island. In 2013, Maverick Realty, an affiliate of Mana’s M Management, spent $3.3 million for the plot next door at 861 North Venetian Drive.
Mana is active in downtown Miami, Wynwood and even west into Allapattah. In downtown Miami, he has spent at least $200 million on properties in downtown Miami as a whole with plans for retail and residential redevelopments. And in Wynwood, his 30-acre Mana Wynwood complex would include a public square, tech and media hubs, and plazas for open-air retail, courtyards and pocket parks, as planned.
A number of new homes, owner-developed and built on spec, have been popping up in the Venetian Islands, an area increasingly attractive to financial executives and spec home builders.