First new Fort Lauderdale condo project completed this cycle

A developer has completed the first new condo project in the downtown Fort Lauderdale and Beach market during this current South Florida real estate cycle that began in 2011.

A Fort Lauderdale corporation — Grupo Alco International LLC with Gustavo, Leonardo and Luis Coll — began recording transactions on April 16 in the new five-story Adagio on the Bay condo project, which has 12 units and eight boat slips, according to records from Broward County and the Florida Division Of Corporations. It has been developed on a waterfront site in the 1100 block of Seminole Drive that fronts the Intracoastal Waterways just north of Sunrise Boulevard.

To date, the developers of the Adagio on the Bay project have sold five units at an average price of $527 per square foot for more than a combined $7.6 million, according to government records.

Individual units in the Adagio on the Bay project have sold for prices between $1.4 million and $1.7 per unit. The individual unit sales prices on a per-square-foot basis range from $488 to $581, according to the records.

Adagio on the Bay is the first of 40 new condo buildings with nearly 2,750 units announced for the downtown Fort Lauderdale and Beach market as of Tuesday, according to the preconstruction condo projects website CraneSpotters.com. (For disclosure, my firm operates the website.)

Currently, nine new condo buildings with about 180 units are under construction, and 30 buildings with a combined 2,552 units are in the planning or presale stage of development in the downtown Fort Lauderdale and Beach market, according to the data.

Overall, developers have announced 345 new condo towers with nearly 44,000 units east of I-95 in the tri-county South Florida region of Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach since 2011, according to CraneSpotters.com

The downtown Fort Lauderdale and Beach area is the third most active market after Greater Downtown Miami with nearly 20,200 units and the Hollywood/Hallandale Beach area, with nearly 4,850 units for preconstruction condo development east of I-95 in South Florida as Monday, according to the data.

During the last South Florida real estate cycle, developers in the Downtown Fort Lauderdale and Beach market created 87 new condo buildings with more than 5,300 units that sold for an average price of about $367 per square foot for a combined $2.5 billion, according to an analysis of government records.

Today, the downtown Fort Lauderdale and Beach market has less than 700 condo units listed for resale at an average price of nearly $400 per square foot, according to data from the Southeast Florida MLXchange.

In the first quarter of 2015, buyers acquired 270 condo units at an average price of $300 per square foot, according to the data.

At the current sales pace of 90 units monthly, the downtown Fort Lauderdale and Beach market has about 7.7 months of condo resales available for purchase in the waning days of the winter buying season.

A balanced market is considered to have about six months of supply. More months of supply suggests a buyer’s market, and less months indicates a seller’s market.

The unanswered question going forward is whether the domestic-oriented downtown Fort Lauderdale and Beach condo market can attract the increasingly important U.S. buyers with the strong dollar at a time when international purchasers with weak foreign currencies are finding it more expensive to purchase South Florida real estate.

Peter Zalewski is a 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.