Aimco Skirts Over Millions in Taxes on Brickell Site Sale

Aimco shielded its record $520 million sale of a Brickell development site from roughly $5.5 million in state taxes and a county surtax usually levied for property sales.

By not recording a deed, the Denver-based firm sidestepped about $3.12 million in Florida documentary stamp taxes and $2.34 million in a Miami-Dade County surtax, both of which primarily fund affordable housing, the South Florida Business Journal reported based on calculations of the tax rates. The seller, which is the one on the hook for the taxes, pressed for doing the deal without a deed.

The publication was unable to reach Aimco, led by Wes Powell, for comment.

The publicly traded real estate investment trust that primarily buys and develops apartments announced in November its plan for a voluntary dissolution, amid a slower multifamily market. Aimco has been selling off its assets over the past year and listed its Brickell assemblage in 2024 for about $650 million.

Last month, Vlad Doronin’s Miami-based OKO Group and Oak Row Equities, with offices in Miami and New York, bought the 32-story Brickell Bay Office Tower at 1001 Brickell Bay Drive and the adjacent 31-story, 357-unit Yacht Club Apartments at 1111 Brickell Bay Drive from Aimco. Mariposa Real Estate, tied to the Franklin family’s Miami-based Mariposa Capital, partnered on the purchase.

The buyers took out a $464.5 million loan for the purchase from Tyko Capital. The financing was recorded in Miami-Dade records, and the borrowers were the same entities that Aimco used to own the sites for years, but with Oak Row’s Erik Rutter signing the loans on behalf of the borrowers. Rutter leads Oak Row with David Weitz.

This signifies that Aimco sold the properties through a transfer of the ownership interest in the limited liability companies it used to own the sites. The practice is legal and sporadically used, though the Brickell deal is the biggest known South Florida sale closed without recording a deed and paying state and county taxes.

The Brickell assemblage sale is the biggest urban land site deal in South Florida history, and likely in the state.

OKO Group and Oak Row plan a hotel and branded condos for the first phase of their project. As a whole, the site can be developed with multiple supertalls with more than 3 million square feet. For now, it has two income-producing properties.

–– Lidia Dinkova