When the pandemic first hit South Florida, there was an immediate slowdown in commercial real estate — until demand quickly returned last year.
Take the sale of the Midas store at 2140 Northeast Second Avenue in Miami’s Edgewater neighborhood. Prior to Covid, the listing broker, Miguel Pinto, said he “had a really, really hard time” trying to sell it.
“I couldn’t give it away,” said Pinto, who is broker and owner of Apex Capital Realty. Then, in February, Brooklyn-based Heritage Equity Partners paid $6.3 million for the property, home to a store that was built in 2019. Heritage, led by Toby Moskovits and Michael Lichtenstein, plans to tear it down and build an apartment tower on the site. Land costs typically account for 10 to 15 percent of a project’s budget.
Today, Pinto said it could “very easily flip” for over $400 per square foot. It traded for $283 per square foot.
“There’s been a crazy appetite from developers wanting to enter the market,” who are betting on rents and demand for housing continuing to rise, he said.
Some local developers are selling land on which they planned to build because the offers are just too good to pass up.
