Friday, July 9, 2010

More Price Cuts As ICON Brickell in Miami Reaches 33% Sold Milestone

 MIAMI, FL--It has taken 18 months and two price cuts but the nearly 1,800-unit ICON Brickell (top left photo)  condominium complex in Greater Downtown Miami is finally 33 percent sold, according to a new report from CondoVultures.com.

In an effort to accelerate the pace of future sales on the remaining 1,200 unsold units, prices have been slashed for a third time in the last 10 months in the three-tower ICON Brickell complex on the south bank of the Miami River,(middle right photo)  according to the licensed Florida brokerage Condo Vultures® Realty LLC.

This latest price cut announced this month shaves an additional $63 per square foot, or 15 percent, off of the average completed sales price of $430 per square foot in the complex, according to research for a soon-to-be-released Condo Vultures® White Paper™ analysis of second quarter new condo sales in Greater Downtown Miami.

The current prices vary by building with Tower One (North) asking an average of $402 per square foot, Tower Two (South) asking $363 per square foot, and Tower Three asking (West) $308 per square foot.

"ICON Brickell has experienced tremendous sales velocity in the first half of 2010, selling more than 500 units," said Peter Zalewski (lower left photo), a principal with the Bal Harbour, Fla.-based real estate consultancy Condo Vultures® LLC.

"The unknown is whether the sales velocity can continue at the same pace for the next few years to ultimately sell out the project.

"Industry watchers also do not know how many of the 500 sales completed this year were with original contract holders with 20 percent deposits who were offered discounted prices and other incentives to close."

This latest round of price cuts follows discounts of as much as 51 percent in February 2010, which were preceded by a 30 percent price cut in October 2009, according to a recent CondoVultures.com report.

ICON Brickell has experienced tremendous change in the first half of 2010 besides the price cuts.

In May, the project's developer, The Related Group, deeded over 870 units with more than one million square feet of saleable space in Towers One and Two to an entity controlled by the lending group headed by HSBC Bank USA, according to a recent CondoVultures.com report.

The Related Group continues to control Tower Three, which was financed by a lending group headed by Bank of America.

For Towers One and Two, HSBC has implemented an approach that maintains a higher price and offers in-house financing to buyers. For Tower Three which has a condo-hotel located within the building, the approach has been to sell the units at deep discounts to all-cash buyers who must close in 21 days.

As of July 7, buyers had purchased 622 units with more than 685,000 square feet livable space for nearly $295 million, according to the analysis conducted using the Condo Vultures® Official Condo Buyers Guide To Miami™.

In Tower One (North), there have been 342 sales out of 713 units at an average price of $483 per square foot with units selling from a range $331 per square foot to more than $915 per square foot, according to the report based on Miami-Dade County records.

In Tower Two (South), there have been only 93 sales out of 560 units at an average price of $443 per square foot, with prices ranging from $188 per square foot to nearly $850 per square foot.

In Tower Three (West), there have been 187 sales out of 520 units at an average price of $317 per square foot. The sales prices have ranged from $203 per square foot up to nearly $620 per square foot.

The ICON Brickell is the largest project to be constructed in Greater Downtown Miami during a boom that produced more than 80 project with more than 22,250 new units in a 60-block stretch from the Rickenbacker Causeway (midle left  photo)  north to the Julia Tuttle Causeway (middle right  photo), Interstate 95 east to Biscayne Bay, according to theCondo Vultures® Official Condo Buyers Guide To Miami™.


Between 1963 and 2002, developers constructed 11,500 units in the same Greater Downtown Miami area.

At the end of the first quarter, some 6,600 new condo units were still under the developers' control in Greater Downtown Miami but the number was decreasing at a steady pace.

 Buyers purchased nearly 720 units - 83 percent of the deals closed with cash - in the first quarter of 2010 at an average price of $326 per square foot, according to a recent Condo Vultures® White Paper™.

Contact: Peter Zalewski, Principal, Condo Vultures® LLC, Office: 305-865-5629
Cell: 305-321-7383, eFax: 1-305-832-0311, Peter@CondoVultures.com
http://www.condovultures.com/

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