Inside the Bond on Brickell, Which Just Received its Temporary Certificate of Occupancy

The lobby

The Bond on Brickell, which used to be called the Bond ‘at’ Brickell until its developers MDR and the Rilea Group secured an address and entrance on Brickell Avenue itself for the building (the name change has become something of, shall we say, a conversation piece) recently received its temporary certificate of occupancy for most of the building, and has started closings while still putting on finishing touches. It is also almost completely sold out, with only about a dozen units remaining according to a building representative. Meanwhile, it was recently reported that the first unit closings took place earlier this week. Today the building was a beehive of activity as workers got the Bond showcase ready and brokers brought their clients/current owners/us for a looksie.

On the first floor, the building’s driveway can be entered via either Brickell Avenue or SE 1st Avenue, leading to a covered porte cochere which will have a waterfall feature, and the building’s signature London phone booth. Inside, the spacious lobby itself is divided into a few sitting areas, with a fireplace, overstuffed couches, and mod chairs, giving it a bit of a British vibe. Not really British-meets-the-tropics, or British colonial, just British. Walls throughout are paneled in a variety of interesting materials. In the lobby, surfaces alternate between gray suede and dark, blood red leather. Despite its location in the heart of Brickell, the building’s interiors are hushed, due to a layer of fiberglass behind all the walls.

Upstairs, on the amenity level, a club room, library, and fitness center all look out onto an amenity deck with a large T-shaped pool and outdoor fire pit. Also on the floor is a children’s playroom which is probably the most explicitly flag-flying, ‘God save the Queen’-ing part of the entire building, with wallpaper covered in British-isms like ‘Mind the Gap.’ Mens and women’s saunas and steam room, with accompanying locker rooms, are elsewhere on the floor, slightly oddly not attached to the gym, but on the opposite side. They are tiled in contrasting black and white rocks, to moody effect.

Finally, we checked out a few units with varying layouts. Balconies are generously deep, all kitchens come standard with Bosch appliances, designed to coordinate with the dark wood cabinetry, and some units come with dens. Interior doors feel solid wood, instead of hollow, which is often the case, and door handles and other hardware is nice.

One final note about the exterior. Although renderings gave the impression of dramatic exterior lighting, it appeared that this was not (or at least not yet?) part of the final design. Where there would have been long bands of light shooting up and across the facade as of now are just bands of decorative plaster, painted a dark gray.

Over 30% of Brickell City Centre’s Reach Tower Units Are Already Offered as Rentals

Brickell City Centre’s Reach Tower has been open now for a little over 3 months and over 30% of the apartments are already offered as rentals! According to public records, Swire has been able to close 277 of the contracts on the units already, probably closer to 300 if you count the two-week delay that is common with tax roll searches. Of those closed apartments, 125 have already come back to the market as rental apartments.

What I find to be even more alarming is the fact that of the 125 rental opportunities, only 15 landlords have found a tenant. Fifteen. In 3 months. If we keep up at that pace, landlords will be holding their apartments for 2 years or more. That’s a big pill to swallow if you bought a condo with the expectation of having it produce an income for you.

But what does this mean for Brickell?

Here’s the bottom line. The condos are beautiful. The neighborhood is hot. The condos will rent and tenants will be found… but at what price?

The Downtown Development Authority estimates that 70 new families move to Brickell each month in their 2014 Demographics Report. That doesn’t include people who relocate between buildings in the neighborhood, and there is plenty of that going on. The demand is there and nobody is denying the fact that Brickell City Centre is one of the most anticipated projects of them all. That leaves us at price.

Before the building opened, agents were boasting to our team members that they were representing landlords and planned to offer their 1 bedroom units for $3,500 and 2 bedroom units for $4,500. You see, our team members know their way around the Brickell rental market. Their response was, “You guys have fun with that.”

Fast forward to today. The 15 units that rented were all leased for $2,500-$2,750 for one bedrooms and $3,300-$4,000 for two bedrooms. The one bedrooms offered currently are between $2,500-$3,300 and the two bedrooms offered are between $3,700-$5,700, so some folks are starting to get the memo.

Hopefully the others will realize the true market value, before the Bond on Brickell, SLS Brickell and Rise at Brickell City Centre open, further flooding the market. With this being said, please don’t think it is fire sale time in Brickell. The neighborhood is still very hot, it is just readjusting with the new inventory.

We’ll check back in a few months to see how things are going after the Bond on Brickell and SLS Brickell open.

Pharrell Williams Finally Sells His Toy-Filled, Domed Penthouse at the Bristol Tower for $9.25 Million

After three and a half years on the market, broker Dora Puig of Luxe Living Realty has finally sold singer Pharrell Williams’ incredible Brickell Avenue penthouse, at the Bristol Tower, for $9.25 million. Full disclosure: Miami Condo Investments is under the umbrella of Luxe Living, so go boss! We’re proud of our own, yo. The Journal just broke the story. The ten thousand square foot pad takes up the entire top of the building, with an incredible triple-height living space under the building’s massive dome. Mr. Williams had it artfully decorated with toys galore, from his many projects including Minions, and things he loved, with an obviously personal touch. It includes a home theater, five bedrooms, and a rooftop pool.

The unique design of the whole condo was obviously personal too, which is undoubtedly one reason why it took so long to sell. And yes, Pharrell did take a financial hit on the place, having purchased it for $12.525 million at the height of the last real estate bubble. But Dora did it! After an original ask of $16.8 million under another broker, a price that Curbed expressed skepticism about when I was there (Dora originally listed it for $10.9), and multiple price cuts, she clinched the sale.

This is How Much Each Icon Brickell Owner Will Have to Pay to Fix That Giant Leaking Pool

Icon Brickell Pool

The Icon Brickell Master Association sent out a letter to ‘All Association Members,’ meaning every owner in the three-towered colossus, to lay out how much each is expected to pay, broken down per unit, for the repair and replacement of Icon Brickell’s poorly constructed pool. The cost of the entire $14 million project is being split up among the development’s 1,718 total units, the newly rebranded W Hotel, and even (from the looks of it) the restaurants, proportional to each owner’s percentage ownership of the development. This breaks down the amount of the special assessment to thousands of dollars for a typical unit, but not tens of thousands. Reasonable? The association is set to vote on the special assessment on 14th.

Closings at Brickell City Centre Reach Tower: How are They Faring and What Percentage are Hitting the Market For Rent?

According to public records, closings for condos in the Reach tower at Brickell City Centre began on April 11, 2016. Since then, as of this past Friday, 82 of its 390 total units (21 percent) have been recorded as closed. The 82 closed units amount to $64M in closed sales, averaging $619 per square foot, and ranging from $532 to $674 per square foot. Of greater significance, to many at least, is not the percentage of units that have closed, but, rather, the percentage of closed units that are being converted to rentals. In other words, what percentage of the units at Brickell City Centre were purchased by investors versus end-users? That’s a question that has crossed my mind a number of times in recent months, so I decided to do some investigative research. According to the MLS, 28 of the 82 recorded closed units (34 percent) have already been listed for rent (25 units available for rent + 3 units pending). If that percentage ends up holding true across both towers at Brickell City Centre (Reach and Rise), that will mean that roughly 265 units will end up hitting the market for rent soon after closing. However, it should be noted that Swire (the developer) appears to be closing lower floor units first. Of the 82 closed units, the majority of them are located below the 20th floor; the highest floor that a closed unit is located is the 30th. The Reach tower at Brickell City Centre is 43 stories high, as is the Rise tower. In my experience, investors tend to snatch up the lower floor units because they tend to bring the highest rate of return from an investment standpoint. As such, if we were to divide the tower in half, I would expect the bottom half to have more units owned by investors than the top half. With that being said, I do not expect the 34 percent rental-to-closing rate to hold true as closings continue. If I were to venture a guess, I would say that the rental-to-closing rate across both towers will end up being closer to 28 percent once everything is said and done. But we shall see, because I plan to report each month an update on closings, not only for Brickell City Reach and Rise, but for all recently completed condo developments. Back in 2007, 2008, and 2009 (during the last condo boom), I reported closings rates a lot. Consider this a reboot.

On the Eve of Opening, Brickell City Centre Gets Bicycles And Gives Money to the Underline

Brickell City Centre-branded bicycles.

There’s lots of action happening at the $1.05 billion Brickell City Centre, as the East Miami Hotel gears up for its May 31st opening and sales close at Reach, the megaproject’s first residential tower.

Swire Properties, BCC’s developer, announced today that residents of Reach and Rise Brickell City Centre, the project’s two residential towers, will have complementary access to a fleet of Brickell City Centre-branded house bicycles for jaunts around town. Each building will initially have ten bikes, which will be kept in a designated area near the parking garage. Residents will be able to rent them for unlimited lengths of time, but will be responsible for the bikes while in use. There’s no word yet on whether hotel guests will be provided with bicycle privileges too, but that would make sense.

Swire has also just announced a $600,000 donation to the Underline, Miami’s planned 10-mile linear park underneath the Metrorail, and a perfect place to ride those bikes once completed. As the press release says “The Underline will focus on transforming the space around Miami’s urban infrastructure and is set to be one of the city’s most ambitious projects. ”

“Swire’s donation will be earmarked for the construction of the Brickell portion of The Underline and will seamlessly connect with Swire’s renovation of the Eighth Street Metromover station and surrounding green space, which is located adjacent to the 5.4-million-square foot Brickell City Centre.”

Did a Kaleidoscope Explode in This Modernist Condo?

Santa Maria condominiums, one of Brickell’s most stalwart high-end condo towers, is where you would be likely to find somewhat predictable interior design choices, liked overstuffed club chairs and wainscoting set off by a Dale Chihuly chandelier. Unit 1643, priced at $5.5 million, has none of those things. Instead it’s a white box condo with bold, solid colors, and geometric designs selectively streaked over walls, ceilings, and floors. The dining room comes in a black & white diamond pattern. There are yellow checkerboard-ish walls in a bathroom. The kids’ rooms are colorful, as kids’ rooms tend to be, and the kitchen is triangular. Out in the living room,  a giant circular black rug and three-piece yellow couch dominate the space, while on the balcony the ottomans are made of grass.

Brickell’s Taj Mahal-Inspired Penthouse Under Contract

It is one of Brickell’s most unique and storied penthouses, nestled above The Palace Condominium and spanning over 5,800 square feet in 3 levels of Moroccan-inspired glamour. The Brickell Taj has had only 3 previous owners since it was built in 1981. That may soon change as a contract was accepted this week.

According to local legend, the penthouse was originally intended to be the Miami home of New York’s “Queen of Mean,” Leona Helmsley. Instead, the property was sold to a Saudi Sheik who spent 2 years with a team of 27 Moroccan craftsmen to finish the interior as an Arabian palace for his use while visiting the Magic City.

The property boasts 6 bedrooms and 4.5 bathrooms of hand-crafted wall designs and intricate tile mosaics with Turkish, Indian and Persian influences. A glass atrium offers amazing entertaining space with a 3,000 square foot terrace that spans the entire width of the building’s rooftop.

After nearly 20 years and very little use, the Sheik sold the palace atop The Palace to a developer and weapons collector, who has now received a contract from an unnamed buyer. The property had been on and off the market several times over the last 4 years without finding a buyer. In 2012 it hit the market with an asking price of $4,199,000 but was reduced to $2,295,000 at the time of sale… an excellent case in point of the fact that no matter how ornate or beautiful the property, spaces that are uniquely designed are notoriously more difficult to sell.

Photos courtesy of MLS

Brickell City Centre Reach Tower Is Officially Open

At long last, Brickell City Centre’s first residential tower has opened! Reach Tower has received its certificate of occupancy from the city and closings have begun. The closings just began this week and the first residence to hit the public records was apartment 2109. That closed on Monday, April 11, according to The Next Miami.

Sources with the development have indicated an average sales price of $650/square foot for the 390 residences, 335 of which are currently under contract. The first investors to commit to the development were offered lower prices in exchange for believing in the project when it was in the conceptual phase. Apartment 2109 is a 2 bedroom with 1,501 interior square feet that closed for $884,300, or $589/square foot.

At the time of this post, we have not yet seen any of the apartments come to the rental market although they are expected soon. Some investors have mentioned to our agents that they intend to list the rental units for $3500/month for one bedroom options and $4500/month for two bedroom options.

The apartments are being delivered finished and ready for furniture, so we will not have to wait for interiors to be built out before seeing new neighbors occupying the tower. If you would like a tour of the development for purchase or lease, we are happy to arrange it.