Amaray Las Olas hits the market, could fetch more than $150M

Amaray Las Olas, the new luxury rental tower in downtown Fort Lauderdale, has hit the market and could sell for upwards of $150 million.

Cushman & Wakefield is marketing the 30-story, 254-unit apartment building developed by a joint venture of New York-based Rockefeller Group and the Fort Lauderdale-based Stiles Corp. on a 1.25-acre site at 215 Southeast 8th Street.

While the tower is not priced, Cushman Vice Chairman Robert Given told The Real Deal that comparable properties in cities like Washington, D.C., Boston and Chicago have been trading for $500,000 per unit to $700,000 per unit.

“Our expectation is we would be close to the middle part of that range,” he told TRD. At $600,000 a unit, the price would equate to $152.4 million. 

He said the building, which he called the first high-rise of its quality to hit the market in South Florida in more than a decade, could be converted to condos. Yet, “the most likely buyers would be an institutional class investor looking to hold the property for 10 to 20 years,” Given said.

The tower, which opened to residents in April 2016, is currently 97 percent occupied, he said, with the average unit of 1,123 square feet renting for $3,488 per month, or $3.11 per square foot. The project held a grand opening in September.

Amenities include a rooftop pool deck with a hot tub and private cabanas, an entertaining pavilion with gas grills, a gym area with saunas and massage treatment rooms, a clubroom with catering kitchen, business center, a dog run and a dog wash. 

In addition to Given, Cushman & Wakefield’s South Florida Institutional Multifamily Team Executive Managing Director Zachary Sackley, Senior Managing Director Troy Ballard and Director Neal Victor are marketing the tower.

Demand for multifamily properties has outpaced other asset classes in recent months, with more than $4 billion in multifamily properties trading hands in South Florida in the first half of 2016, according to data from the CoStar Group. Interest in the multifamily market is followed by industrial, office, retail and hotel projects, Given said.

Fort Lauderdale’s downtown area is undergoing a renaissance of sorts, with new developments including Las Olas Place, a two-story, 30,000-square-foot retail and office building across the street from American Social, a restaurant and bar on the corner of Eighth Avenue and the boulevard. Just west of the Las Olas shops the Related Group is building Icon Las Olas. To the east are high-end single-family homes, and to the north, Flagler Village, which is undergoing significant redevelopment geared toward attracting millennials and baby boomers. More than 40 projects are in the pipeline in Flagler Village.

Meanwhile, Las Olas Boulevard is up for re-tenanting. Michael Comras and his senior director of retail leasing Jeffrey Evans were recently hired to handle leasing for the three major property owners along a four-block stretch of Las Olas Boulevard. In all, the Comras Company is handling about 250,000 square feet of retail space from U.S. 1, where the Cheesecake Factory is, going east toward the canal. Given said Amaray Las Olas is 200 feet off of the Las Olas property that is the center of Comras’ repositioning efforts.

“Fort Lauderdale at the moment is a highly synergistic area of South Florida,” Given said, “and we’re getting a lot of international interest — as much as we are seeing in Miami.”