Bellini at Williams Island approaches $75M in condo sales

Veteran developer Martin Margulies has sold nearly $75 million in new condo units in his recently completed Bellini at Williams Island tower in Aventura.

Some 10 months after completing the 24-story tower, Margulies has sold 49 units (four units were combined into two massive condos) in the 70-unit building located on the last developable waterfront site in the gated community of Williams Island, according to Miami-Dade County records.

New condo units at Bellini have sold for an average of nearly $600 per square foot, with individual deals ranging from about $425 per square foot for a residence that transacted in December 2013 to nearly $830 per square foot for a deal that traded in late July.

(For disclosure purposes, a company that I was involved with has consulted for Margulies in the past but was not involved with the Bellini project.)

The minimum asking price for a new developer condo unit at Bellini is nearly $655 per square foot as of Monday, according to the Southeast Florida MLXchange.

A new condo project – the 160-unit Privé – is planned for a site on a vacant island that can be reached by road by driving through the Williams Island community, according to the preconstruction condo projects website CraneSpotters.com.

The minimum presale asking price for a unit in the Privé project is $800 per square foot, according to the CraneSpotters.com Developers Price Survey for August 2014.

(For disclosure purposes, my firm operates the website.)

About 90 condo units are up for resale in the Williams Island community for an average asking price of about $455 per square foot. In the first seven months of the year, buyers acquired nearly 90 Williams Island units at an average price of $326 per square foot, according to the Southeast Florida MLXchange.

Based on the current sales pace of nearly 13 transactions monthly between January and July, Williams Island has about seven months of available resale condo inventory.

A healthy condo market is thought to have about six months of supply. More months of resale inventory typically suggests a buyer’s market, and fewer months of inventory indicates a seller’s market.

Of the condo resales being marketed in Williams Island, a pair of units in the Bellini At Williams Island tower is currently available at an average asking price of nearly $760 per square foot by new owners who are attempting to retrade their residences at a premium.

The unanswered question going forward is what will happen if more of the early buyers of Bellini units attempt to resell their condos at the higher prices currently being sought in today’s market.

Peter Zalewski is real estate columnist for The Real Deal who founded Condo Vultures LLC, a consultancy and publishing company, as well as Condo Vultures Realty LLC and CVR Realty brokerages and the Condo Ratings Agency, an analytics firm. The Condo Ratings Agency operates CraneSpotters.com, a preconstruction condo projects website, in conjunction with the Miami Association of Realtors.