Brickell Condo Index – August 2010

August 17, 2010

The Brickell Condo Index is back!  It has been a year and a half since I last published the Brickell Condo Index.  Fortunately, eighteen months is a good reference point and definitely enough time where one would expect a lot to have changed with the condo market.  For those of you who haven’t followed this blog that long, the Brickell Condo Index is an in-depth look at the various condo buildings in Brickell with various statistics included to illustrate the health or weakness of each building.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news but this will be the last Brickell Condo Index to appear on this blog.  From here on out, the Brickell Condo Index, as well as other neighborhood indexes, will only be made available via email.  Early next week, I will unveil a new version of the Miami Condo Investments website.  The new website will be much easier to navigate, have a lot more content, load considerably faster and, most importantly, allow you to register to our Miami Condo Investments weekly newsletter.  The weekly newsletter will contain the best condo deals of the week, relevant news stories and exclusive market data such as the neighborhood condo indexes.  The neighborhood condo indexes will be emailed the Sunday following the 15th of each month, the day that I have chosen to collect and compile the data.  Each neighborhood will be represented every six months as follows: Brickell this month, Brickell Key next month, Downtown Miami in October, the Edgewater in November, South Beach in December and the Miami River area in January.  The cycle will then start all over so a neighborhood update is provided twice per year.  In the meantime, if you’d like to be included on the newsletter list then simply send us an email at [email protected] and convey your interest to be placed on the list.  The blog will not change and will continue to be updated but the market data reports will only be made available via our newsletter.

Before we get into this month’s numbers, let me discuss a few changes that I made to the Brickell Condo Index since the last update in February 2009.  First, I excluded One Miami from the index.  One Miami will be included in the Downtown Miami Condo Index in October.  Second, Latitude on the River and Neo Vertika were also excluded.  Both will appear in the Miami River Condo Index in January 2010.  Third, I decided to include 1060 Brickell, 500 Brickell, Brickell on the River South and The Plaza on Brickell.  Each has had enough closed resales to warrant their inclusion in the Brickell Condo Index.  Fourth, I decided to bring back The Sail on Brickell.  As of late, I’ve seen much more interest in the building due to its price point and it is much healthier than it was in October 2007 when I dropped it from the index.  I guess you can say that it’s officially off the pink sheets.  There are now a total of twenty buildings in the Brickell Condo Index whereas before there were eighteen.  Last, but not least, I decided to round the price per square foot calculations.  I think it makes everything easier to read and I honestly don’t think excluding the two decimal points makes the figures any less insightful.

As per the MLS, the average of the asking prices of the twenty condo buildings that now represent the Brickell Condo Index is $376 per square foot. The average asking price per square foot for each Brickell condo building individually can be found below:

• 1060 Brickell – 1050 & 1060 Brickell Ave – $375
• 500 Brickell – 500 Brickell Ave & 55 SE 6 St – $362
• Atlantis on Brickell – 2025 Brickell Ave – $255
• Brickell on the River North – 31 SE 5 St – $268
• Brickell on the River South – 41 SE 5 St – $276
• Bristol Tower – 2127 Brickell Ave – $471
• Emerald at Brickell – 218 SE 14 St – $348
• Four Seasons Residences – 1425 Brickell Ave – $954
• Imperial at Brickell – 1627 Brickell Ave – $285
• Jade Brickell – 1331 Brickell Bay Dr – $532
• Santa Maria – 1643 Brickell Ave – $691
• Skyline on Brickell – 2101 Brickell Ave – $352
• Solaris at Brickell – 186 SE 12 Ter – $189
• The Club at Brickell Bay – 1200 Brickell Bay Dr – $285
• The Mark on Brickell – 1155 Brickell Bay Dr – $313
• The Palace – 1541 Brickell Ave – $298
• The Plaza on Brickell – 951 Brickell Ave & 950 Brickell Bay Dr – $394
• The Sail on Brickell – 170 SE 14 St – $299
• Villa Regina – 1581 Brickell Ave – $350
• Vue at Brickell – 1250 S Miami Ave – $214

At the bottom of this post, I included a chart that shows how each of the above figures compares with those published in February 2009.  Solaris at Brickell experienced the largest drop with average asking prices there falling slightly over 40 percent.  Three of the buildings saw a slight increase in their average asking price per square foot within the past eighteen months.  These were Bristol Tower, Four Seasons Residences and Villa Regina.

Below, you’ll find the average price per square foot for Brickell condos sold in the MLS within the six month period from February 1, 2010 to July 31, 2010.  I decided to do it this way because I’ve noted that oftentimes it takes agents a few weeks to change the status of a listing in the MLS from pending to closed.  The neighborhood as a whole sold at an average price per square foot of $285 during that time period.

• 1060 Brickell – 1050 & 1060 Brickell Ave – $208
• 500 Brickell – 500 Brickell Ave & 55 SE 6 St – $286
• Atlantis on Brickell – 2025 Brickell Ave – $227
• Brickell on the River North – 31 SE 5 St – $208
• Brickell on the River South – 41 SE 5 St – $204
• Bristol Tower – 2127 Brickell Ave – $341
• Emerald at Brickell – 218 SE 14 St – $201
• Four Seasons Residences – 1425 Brickell Ave – $647
• Imperial at Brickell – 1627 Brickell Ave – $219
• Jade Brickell – 1331 Brickell Bay Dr – $413
• Santa Maria – 1643 Brickell Ave – $669
• Skyline on Brickell – 2101 Brickell Ave – $281
• Solaris at Brickell – 186 SE 12 Ter – $183
• The Club at Brickell Bay – 1200 Brickell Bay Dr – $186
• The Mark on Brickell – 1155 Brickell Bay Dr – $239
• The Palace – 1541 Brickell Ave – $248
• The Plaza on Brickell – 951 Brickell Ave & 950 Brickell Bay Dr – $295
• The Sail on Brickell – 170 SE 14 St – $214
• Villa Regina – 1581 Brickell Ave – $271
• Vue at Brickell – 1250 S Miami Ave – $154

The biggest surprise in the figures above when compared to those in February 2009 is Jade Brickell.  The average price per square foot for closed sales during the previous six months increased a little over 14 percent when compared to the figures published eighteen months ago.  Other buildings that experienced an increase are Skyline on Brickell, The Mark on Brickell, Villa Regina and Vue at Brickell.  With the exception of Villa Regina, these buildings were some of the hardest hit in Brickell when the market collapsed mainly due to the large amount of mortgage fraud that took place in these buildings.  The Club at Brickell Bay and Solaris at Brickell are two other buildings in Brickell that were heavily victimized by mortgage fraud.  The Club at Brickell Bay saw about a 1 percent decrease in average closed sales prices while prices at Solaris at Brickell fell slightly over 9 percent.  This actually makes sense since the fallout at Solaris at Brickell didn’t take place until about a year after the others.  Also worth mentioning, prices at Santa Maria fell a little over 4 percent within the past eighteen months but the numbers were a bit skewed due to Penthouse 4901 recently selling for $1,100 per square foot.  The average for the past six months would have been much lower had it not been for that sale.

Below you will find some additional statistics.  Click on the image to enlarge it.

The first column to the right of each condo development name is the difference in the average sales price and list price for this month, expressed as a percentage.  A high percentage indicates that there is a large discrepancy between the average asking price for condos currently on the market and what has actually sold within the past six months.  In other words, many of the sellers in these buildings are delusional and are in need of a reality check.  For example, 1060 Brickell has a very large discrepancy because there are quite a few units asking over $400 per square foot and even some asking over $560 per square foot while closed sales have averaged around $208 per square foot within the past six months.

The second column shows the number of active listings currently in the MLS for each condo development.  The third column shows the percentage that these listings represent over the total number of condo units in each development.  The cells highlighted in green reveal those condo developments that have active listings that that represent less than 10 percent of the overall units in the building.  This is typically one indication of a sound condo building.  When I first started doing the Brickell Condo Index in 2007 many of the cells in this column were highlighted in red, indicating that active listings represented over 20 percent of the building.  This was always a good indication that prices would fall further in these buildings.  For example, in February 2009, active listings at Solaris at Brickell represented slightly over 20 percent of the building.  That was the largest percentage of listings at that time and it is not a coincidence that eighteen months later prices fell the most at Solaris at Brickell of all the buildings represented in the Brickell Condo Index.

The fourth column reveals the number of condos currently pending sale in each building.  The Club at Brickell Bay has a whopping 42 pending sales at this time and there are a total of 155 pending sales in all of the buildings combined.  In February 2009, there were only 81 pending sales although a total of twenty buildings are now present in the Brickell Condo Index rather than eighteen.  The fifth column displays the number of closed sales from February 1, 2010 to July 31, 2010.  Once again, The Club at Brickell Bay leads the way with a total of 38 closed sales in that time period.  It’s interesting to note that there were 20 more closed sales in the six months prior to February 2009 when compared to the current closing numbers even though the index now has two additional buildings.

The sixth column shows the difference in the average list prices from this month’s and February 2009’s, expressed as a percentage.  Those highlighted in red reveal those condo developments which had a drop in their average list price while those highlighted in green show those that experienced an increase.

The seventh column reveals the difference in average sales prices from this month’s and February 2009’s, expressed a percentage.  Once again, those highlighted in green represent an increase while those highlighted in red represent a decrease.

Well, that’s all for today.  Have fun with the numbers.  Time for me to get back to work on the new website.