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While headlines focus on the towers of empty condos, Miami has been posting some big-dollar sales.

Last week a “German businessman” paid $16 million for a new 17,200-square-foot, 10-bedroom house in Miami Beach. The developer built the house as a spec property in 2008, which was, to say the least, unfortunate timing.

The waterfront house, which includes two docks and a five-car garage, originally hit the market at $25 million, according to the Miami Herald.

A Miami firm promoting Florida real estate investments was actually running a $135 million Ponzi scheme, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged this week.

Gaston Cantens and his wife, Teresita, founders of Royal West Properties, promised investors returns between 9 and 16 percent a year on property in southwest Florida markets like Cape Coral, Port Charlotte and Lehigh Acres. But when the bottom fell out of the market the Cantens began using new investor money to pay off earlier investors, the SEC alleges in its civil complaint.

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.

Headlines from the world of property:

Dubai: Older Offices Have a Vacant Look

New buildings are gobbling up tenants, leaving older buildings to struggle. From the National.

New York: Priciest Condo Takes a Tumble

Price of condo in Philippe Starck building drops $7 million. From Curbed.

Icon Brickell

Developers in downtown Miami sold more than 1,600 condos in the second half of 2009, after lenders slashed prices by 30 percent, according to Condo Vultures.

Only about 700 units sold in the first half of the year, but buying activity picked up when prices dropped from $300 a square foot to $200 square foot, Condo Vultures’ Peter Zalewski notes.

"The new prices triggered a buying frenzy by foreign nationals with strong currencies and private equity groups that finally began to purchase, completing a dozen condo bulk deals in the Brickell Avenue Area, Downtown Miami, and the Biscayne Boulevard Corridor in 2009," Zalewski notes.

Shaq estate

2009 was “a really blah year” for the Miami Beach waterfront market, agent Kevin Tomlinson reports in his South Beach blog.

In total, 42 waterfront homes sold in Miami Beach in 2009, compared to 49 in 2008. But the average price dropped from $934 a square foot in 2008 to $702 a square foot, a 24.8 percent drop, Tomlinson reports.

“In other words, if you own a 7,000 square foot waterfront home, in 2008 it was worth $6,538,000--today it would be worth $4,914,000,” Tomlinson notes.

Think back to November, 2008. The U.S. was wrestling with the choice between John McCain and Barack Obama. The government was bailing out AIG, again. And the real estate market was grinding to a halt as the world absorbed the ramifications of the financial collapse.

With that in mind, the jubilation over the latest U.S. sales numbers seems a tad misplaced. The National Association of Realtors today announced "another big gain in existing home sales," with the number of transactions jumping 44.1 jump from a year earlier, which is impressive. But not when the comparison is to a month when the industry was on the verge of Armageddon.

The level of sales transactions is certainly good news, representing a 7.4 increase from October and the highest levels since Feb. 2007, NAR notes in its press release. But they also show a market that is still in crisis, with 33 percent of sales involving distressed properties.

ICON Brickell

Miami condo developer Jorge Perez surprised at least one analyst with his decision to complete sales in a second tower of ICON Brickell, the troubled 1,800-unit waterfront project. Industry watchers expected Perez’ Related Group would roll the meager sales in the second, 560-unit tower into the 713-unit first tower, which is only 14 percent sold, according to CondoVulture’s Peter Zalewski.

By combining the sales into the first tower, Related would have been able to use tower two and a third tower with 501-units for rentals--or at least preserve the option if a hedge fund or investor wanted to buy the towers and use them for rentals.

"Institutional funds from Wall Street to Greenwich, Conn., Canada to the United Kingdom, have been looking for vacant residential towers to acquire and run as rental projects for the foreseeable future," Zalewski says in a report.

Agents around the country are seeing renewed activity by international buyers, the Associated Press reports. The weak dollar and the perception of the U.S. as a depressed but relatively secure market are fueling the trend, which agents have been reporting anecdotally for several months.

"They want to buy," Cynthia Crowley, an agent with Olshan Realty in New York, told the Associated Press. "This is not tire kicking."

Lenders filed more than 8,400 foreclosures in South Florida in October, but the rate of defaults appears to be slowing, according to data compiled by CondoVultures. The October number—which represents 272 filings a day—is an eight percent increase compared to 2008 and an 86 percent increase from 2007, when there was still some level of normalcy in the market.

The South Florida area, including Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach, is on track to post 98,000 foreclosures in 2009—but that might actually be good news.