New Miami Condos – Closing Rates for May 2008

May 28, 2008

It’s been almost 2 months since my last post regarding the closing rates of various Miami condo developments. That post was published on April 4, 2008. Referring back to that post and comparing it to the figures in the graph below, you may quickly realize that I must have made a mistake last month when pulling the data for Loft Downtown 2. I’m not sure how that happened. I double and tripled checked the figures this month, however, for all of the condo developments.

Below you will find the date that each condo development began closings:

• Ten Museum Park – June 14, 2007
• Star Lofts on the Bay – June 20, 2007
• Latitude on the River – July 27, 2007
• Onyx on the Bay – July 31, 2007
• Loft Downtown 2 – September 26, 2007
• 50 Biscayne – October 1, 2007

Even with the overstatement of closed units corrected, Loft Downtown 2 still has the best closing rate of any condo development located in Miami included in this post, and the second best overall. Loft Downtown 2 isn’t as close to hitting the 100 percent mark as I had previously thought, but it’s doing comparatively quite well. The overall closing rate at 50 Biscayne increased slightly over 6 points while the rest, in the group above, increased 2.52 points or less, since the last update.

As over half of this group approaches the one year mark since their closings began, a few interesting questions come to mind. What is happening to the defaulted condos? Are developer’s leasing them and holding until the market gets better or are they hoping for onesy and twosy buyers to come along to slowly deplete their inventory? Are any of these developers feeling the pain yet? I’ve heard that at least one of these condo developers has been for a few months. If that’s true, then when, if ever, are we going to see some bulk sales?

• 1800 Club – November 27, 2007
• Brickell on the River South – December 17, 2007
• Opera Tower – December 28, 2007
• Quantum on the Bay – January 3, 2008
• Plaza on Brickell – January 7, 2008
• Apogee South Beach – January 16, 2008

I’m sure glad he’s proving me wrong. Those were my first thoughts when looking at the chart above. My second thoughts are that Apogee South Beach has continued to make great strides in closing its condos. Apogee has improved almost 15 points since my last update. Quantum on the Bay and 1800 Club, the only other two condo developments in the group above the 50 percent mark, each continued to show nice progress as well.

Below you will find the date that each condo development began closings:

• 1060 Brickell – January 23, 2008
• Midtown 4 – February 15, 2008
• Marina Blue – February 27, 2008
• Wind – February 28, 2008
• Asia – April 4, 2008

Marina Blue is off to a very good start. Pretty impressive from a condo development that started closings so late in the game. Asia is doing relatively well given that it had its first closing less than two months ago. However, Asia has only 123 total units. I’m expecting that we’ll some good progress in Asia’s closing rate next month. I guess we’ll have to wait for the next update, however, to find out.

Disclaimer: The above closing rate information was derived from public County records. There can be a 2-3 week delay from the time that a closing occurs and the time that the closing is recorded.