Owners at Porsche Design Tower are flippin’ out.
The owners of 29 units at the luxury condominium in Sunny Isles Beach — 22 percent of all owners at the property — have put their digs on the market, gunning for gains of as much as 85 percent, according to an analysis by The Real Deal.
The most ambitious of these sellers is the owner of unit 1503, which is listed by Piquet Realty. The buyer closed on the condo in February for $3.95 million, and is now asking $7.3 million for it – a markup of 85 percent.
Edir Macedo, a Brazilian media mogul known as “the Bishop,” is seeking a 66 percent markup. Macedo closed on unit 4005 in December 2016 for $9.65 million and is now asking $16 million for the four-bedroom pad.
On average, the 29 property owners, who paid between $4.1 million to $11.8 million for their units, are seeking a 38.5 percent return within 10 months of closing on their purchases, according to TRD‘s analysis of all the tower’s units currently on the market.
Dezer Development, led by Gil Dezer, completed Porsche Design Tower at the end of November and closings began Dec. 1. The 132-unit, 60-story building at 18555 Collins Avenue is known for its “Dezervator,” a patented car elevator that takes residents up to their units in their cars. Amenities include balcony plunge pools and racing and golf simulators. During Hurricane Irma, the tower served as a refuge for the city’s exotic-car collection.
“I don’t look at it as flipping,” Dezer said about the flurry of Porsche Design listings on the market. “I look at it as, these people bought when we started selling in 2011 or 2012 and values have gone up.”
Pricing began at $1,100 per square foot, he said, while recent sales have hit between $2,000 and $2,500 per square foot, with a premium for the penthouse. Foreign buyers may see an additional windfall if they got their funds from countries where the currency has weakened in relation to the dollar since their purchase.
“So I don’t necessarily blame someone for taking a profit six years after they bought,” Dezer said. “To make a couple of million dollars without doing much and bring it back to your currency — that’s a good incentive.”
At many of South Florida’s glitiziest condo towers, flipping is virtually a sport. At Faena House in Miami Beach, for example, 20 percent of the units were back on the market within a year.
Andres Asion, a principal at brokerage Miami Real Estate Group, which does not have any listings at Porsche Design Tower, said since about two-thirds of pre-construction buyers tend to be investors, it isn’t unusual to have as many as 30 percent of the units in a newly-built condo back on the market in short order. Even some buyers who intend to live at the developments have a change of circumstances — a death in the family, a divorce, or a sudden need for cash.
For Polish investor Dariusz Robert Wojdyga and his wife Agnieszka Gasior, who have three children, their 3,171-square-foot condo simply isn’t big enough, said Marc Hameroff of Engel & Volkers Miami, who is about to list unit 3605 for the couple. They paid $6.7 million for it in March and have since spent more than $1 million on furnishings from designer Steven G, according to Hameroff.
It is now asking $8.9 million, or $2,806 per square foot.
Madeleine Romanello of Compass is listing unit 2905, a four-bedroom purchased in January for $4.4 million. The three Argentine investors who own the unit now want $6.5 million, or $1,565 per square foot for the pad, which equates to a 48 percent markup.
“The truth is that many of these people [South Florida condo buyers] just bought to flip,” Romanello said. “I don’t think the price points have moved that much, and there is a huge amount of inventory in the luxury market.”
There’s only been one closed resale so far at Porsche Design Tower, and it was a very profitable flip. Kabsa 3501 closed on the purchase of unit 3501 in December 2016 for $5.3 million, and then turned around and sold it in January for $7.75 million, a 46-percent mark-up. Kabsa is managed by John Pribil, the broker-owner of City First Realty in Sunny Isles Beach, state licensing records show.
Property records reveal additional owners at Porsche Design Tower include Mexican billionaire Carlos Peralta Quintero, who paid $6.54 million for unit 1101; Colorado Rockies player Carlos “CarGo” Gonzalez; Russian businessman Igor Yakovlev and Terry Taylor, the president of a major car dealership, who paid $25 million, or $2,615 per square foot, for a four-story penthouse at the tower.
Asion doesn’t think the sheer amount of Porsche Design Tower units on the market will scare away potential buyers.
“It’s a good thing,” he said, “because it gives a buyer negotiating power.”
Harunobu Coryne contributed research.