Estate and mortgageInvestor Report: Mini Miami Boom
Investors who"ve been sniffing around the Miami area looking to pick up condos at rock bottom prices - either in multiple-unit bulk deals or retail - better move fast.
That"s because prices per square foot have stabilized recently, and foreign buyers are competing against condo investors - and beginning to close the gap between bulk pricing and retail.
In fact, for some price-sensitive investors, it may be time to forget south Florida altogether, and start turning their attention to two other heavily overbuilt condo markets that haven"t yet seen their pricing lowpoints, such as Las Vegas and San Diego.
That"s the recommendation from one of Florida"s highest-volume specialists in distressed high-rise condos, Peter Zalewski, founder and principal of CondoVultures Realty.
In an interview with RealtyTimes last week, Zalewski said there"s a "mini boom" underway in the Miami market, where developers and lenders have finally marked down prices to the bone -- $200 to $250 a square foot -- well below replacement cost in most locations.
That in turn has brought in retail buyers, many of them foreign nationals waving cash contracts, "like swarms of bees," says Zalewski, every time a developer cuts prices in a condo tower with great location and views.
In some cases, developers of luxury buildings that had originally been priced at $400 to $600 a foot - and sat untouched for a year - are now clearing out their entire inventories in a matter of weeks.
Some developers are even ignoring all cash bulk offers from investors in the $160 and $170 a foot range in order to sell to retail buyers lining up to pay much more.
One project sold out 500 units in less than two months when it slashed prices to just above $200 a foot, according to Zalewski.
Many of the foreign buyers are scooping up what they see as prime real estate at once in a lifetime prices.
"They"re doing it for wealth preservation," he said. "They see the dollar as incredibly cheap, they see condos in Miami as very attractive as second homes or rentals," and they"re ending up with the sort of low price deals only bulk investors might have scored a year ago.
Retail buyers, of course, are not able to compete with the very biggest institutional investors, Wall Street banks and private equity funds that will only buy entire buildings, such as those now under the control of the FDIC following its takeover of the failed Corus Bank, a major lender to condo developers during the boom.
They are the mega-vultures. They buy super bulk, and always pay the least.