Harbor drops $184.5M on Brickell apartments

Less than five months after scooping up a pair of downtown Miami rental towers in a record deal, Harbor Group International bought a Brickell multifamily property for $184.5 million.

The Norfolk, Virginia-based real estate investment and management firm bought the 372-unit Miro Brickell at 251 Southwest 11th Street, according to a Harbor news release. The deal breaks down to about $496,000 per unit.

Seller Broadstone at Brickell developed the 24-story building with a clubhouse and pool on a 1.9-acre lot in 2017, according to records. It had paid $20.2 million for the site in 2014.

Broadstone at Brickell is in the care of Scottsdale, Arizona-based Alliance Residential Company, although state corporate records also tie the entity to New York-based Clarion Partners.

Harbor, led by Chairman and CEO Jordan Slone and President T. Richard Litton Jr., has been betting heavily on Miami-Dade County’s multifamily market.

In March, the company bought the two ParkLine Miami apartment towers at Brightline’s downtown station for more than $400 million, marking a record deal for a single-asset multifamily property in South Florida since at least 2018.

Harbor also has been spreading outside Miami’s urban core, paying $50 million in April for the seven-story 275 FontaineParc at 275 Fontainebleau Boulevard in western Miami-Dade.

Harbor now owns a total of seven multifamily properties spanning 1,500 units in Miami-Dade County, according to the release and the company’s website.

High demand for apartments in the Miami area has led to skyrocketing rents, as well as investment sales and development activity.

In downtown Miami, Long Island-based Lions Group NYC and Miami-based Fortis Design + Build want to build the 57-story M Tower with 675 units on the site of a public garage at 65 Southwest Second Street.

Last month, Aimco’s spinoff Air Communities scooped up the bayfront, 296-unit Watermarc at Biscayne Bay on the northeast corner of North Bayshore Drive and Northeast 21st Street in Miami’s Edgewater for $211 million.

Emerging Miami neighborhoods also are attracting attention. This month, Habitat Group sold the newly built eight-story, 34-unit building at 39 Northwest Seventh Avenue in Little Havana for $15 million. The buyers were entities tied to Richard Gerber, Brett Talla and David Talla. The Tallas and Gerber are affiliated with Los Angeles-based Cochise Capital.