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The new owner of the Trump Towers in Miami is discounting units up to 30 percent, hoping to sell off units and pay down the newly acquired debt.
“It’s like a relaunch,” Dezer Properties president Gil Dezer told the Miami Herald.
Dezer Properties assumed control of the project in January from its former partner, Related Group, which not long ago was building condo towers in Miami like kids with a Lego set. Now Related is busily working out deals with lenders, bailing out of several of its high profile projects, including the must-discussed Icon Brickell towers.
Before the crisis, developers cited robust sales in Trump Towers, the three-tower, 813-unit waterfront project, which is licensing Donald Trump’s name. But many buyers didn’t close on the sales, Dezer told the Herald.
Now there are reportedly 435 units still available. In pre-construction, condos in the project sold for between $600 and $700 a square foot, local experts say; now prices range from $350 to $600 a square foot for a penthouse. Units in the sold-out third tower sold for an average price of $720 a square foot, Dezer said.
The fire sale comes at a time when the Miami market is starting to show signs of something resembling normal activity. More than 9,000 properties are under contract in Miami-Dade County, according Condo Vultures, a real estate consultancy.
"Buyers are stepping up their purchases of resale product in South Florida," said Condo Vultures principal Peter Zalewski.
In January, the number of existing home sales was up 60 percent from January of 2008, according to data compiled by the Realtor Association of Greater Miami and the Beaches and the Southeast Florida Multiple Listing Service (SEFMLS).
The average sale price of existing single family homes in Miami actually increased 21.3 percent in the last year, the data shows. But the average price of condos dropped 16.7 percent, reflecting the glut of available units.
