Defortuna, meanwhile, is now selling downtown’s Paramount Bay, a 346-unit building resurrected out of foreclosure by owners iStar Residential and ST Residential. Musician Lenny Kravitz’s Kravitz Design firm is working on the building, where prices are about $400 per square foot.
South Beach, with significantly pricier properties, is seeing lots of action, too.
“The summer was uncharacteristically busy,” says Vanessa Grout, president of Douglas Elliman Florida, which has three South Beach offices. “We certainly didn’t take a vacation.”
According to Douglas Elliman’s latest Miami market report, South Beach condos sold for an average of $515 per square foot during the third quarter. But this factors in distressed properties, including units bought out of foreclosure.
As with much of Miami, foreign buyers have been key at the W. (Douglas Elliman translated its market report into Spanish and Portuguese to spur international interest.) From May through September, about 65 percent of Edelstein’s purchasers were foreign, and about half of those were from Brazil.
The allure of the W has helped nearby condo buildings lure in buyers, including those from New York.
Fashion designer Irina Shabayeva, who won season six of “Project Runway,” owns a one-bedroom with a balcony at the 52-unit Boulan South Beach development just south of the W, but on the other side of Collins Avenue.
“I like the Boulan because it was so new, really fresh and modern,” says Shabayeva, who primarily lives in the East Village. “And it’s across the street from the beach and the W.”
Shabayeva says she enjoys the New Yorker-friendly amenities at the W, which include a Warren Tricomi salon and a Mr. Chow restaurant. And Edelstein says that the Dutch, an outpost of Andrew Carmellini’s SoHo restaurant, will open in the W by Thanksgiving.
Boulan, which has sold 22 condos and has one-bedrooms on the market for upward of $600 per square foot, is busy filling its own retail spaces, as well. An art gallery should open in time for December’s Art Basel festival. A Mexican/Asian fusion restaurant and a nightclub are also in the works.
Neighborhoods all over Miami are getting big residential and retail makeovers. The 56-acre Midtown Miami development’s second phase, which will start next year, will include a boutique hotel, a movie theater and 100,000 square feet of retail.
“We’ll definitely have a fashion component,” says developer Jack Cayre.
And the nearby Design District is getting a Louis Vuitton store.
“There was probably a point in time here someone said, ‘What’s Chelsea?’ or ‘What’s Meatpacking?’ — and eventually, they became a place because New York was ready to have another place,” says Greg Masin, senior director at commercial real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield. “When we look at the Design District and at Midtown, what we see is the evolution of the next place in Miami.”
Plus, the downtown Metropolitan Miami development’s third phase will include rental apartments and a Whole Foods Market. Plans for downtown’s eight-block Miami Worldcenter site include residences, restaurants and retailers. And the Genting Group, an Asian casino operator, has unveiled plans for its $3.8 billion Resorts World Miami mixed-use complex. But the scope of the latter two projects will depend on approval for casino gaming, something that’s the object of much speculation and uncertainty all over Miami.
Dezer says he has been talking to major Las Vegas casino operators about land he owns in Sunny Isles (13 1/2 acres on the beach and 6 1/2 acres “directly across the street that hits the intracoastal waterway”) that could accommodate a gaming resort with more than 2,000 rooms and 3 million square feet.
“They’re both good real estate,” Masin says of the Genting and Dezer sites. “If they both had a casino, they’d both be successful.”
Whatever happens, Dezer has options.
“We originally bought [the land] to build condos,” he says. “We could build five condo buildings.”
That idea would have seemed ridiculous in 2009, but now it’s more plausible.
Defortuna has sold out the 256-unit Jade Beach condo building in Sunny Isles Beach and has just three apartments left (for about $700 per square foot) at its 252-unit Jade Ocean sister property.
“In terms of quality inventory, oceanfront,” he says, “you can make a strong argument that you need to start building now.”
Source: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/realestate/residential/the_heat_is_on_0LNTpSmeeB4VzlEjOg9CJI#ixzz1c93wQtGe
An Equal Opportunity Company. Equal Housing Opportunity. 
English
Português