What’s in a reputation? In terms of luxury high-rise residential real estate in Miami, the reply is greater than $11,000 per square foot.
That’s what a 13,000-plus-square-foot penthouse is anticipated to ask when it hits the marketplace for greater than $150 million on the Raleigh, a storied Art Deco hotel currently being overhauled by developer Michael Shvo and can include a Rosewood Hotel and Residences.
How can it ask a lot? Well, partially since it’s designed by the world-famous architect and renowned leather daddy Peter Marino.
So-called “starchitects” like Marino are behind a majority of Miami’s best latest towers. It’s no wonder why. Identical to caviar in your lobster roll, these high-flying, brand-name designers help developers upsell Mimi’s already top-dollar apartments.
“Within the Miami market, it’s an actual stamp of credibility, of quality,” said Douglas Elliman broker Fredrik Eklund, who’s working with the Shore Club, one other Art Deco Miami Beach icon, this one reimagined by famed Recent York firm Robert A.M. Stern Architects (RAMSA) for the Witkoff Group and Monroe Capital.
Owners who purchase units in these starchitect-designed buildings are “buying into a set of properties that hold their value in any market. It affects pricing immensely,” Eklund added.
That definitely proved true for owners of homes in One Thousand Museum, the 62-story, Biscayne Boulevard tower that opened a number of years back as certainly one of the last projects designed by the late Zaha Hadid. Condos up for resale there have been fetching as much as $2,100 per square foot (with one currently asking $2,700), well above the $1,740 per square foot being asked for a top unit within the neighboring, non-starchitect Marquis tower. Attaching a “name” architect to a project “really makes a major difference,” confirmed Liz Hogan, a broker with Compass. “It’s a strategy to collect buyers and create confidence.”
She points to a different in-the-works RAMSA project, the St. Regis Residences in Brickell. There, she noted, “buyers didn’t have questions because they trusted the architect’s name. Some even bought without floorplans.”
So which architect has the richest name of all of them? Below are five in-the-works Miami towers, all designed by the grandest of starchitects. We stacked them up against comparable non-starchitect buildings nearby to see how the value of their top units fared.
Baccarat Miami, Brickell
The name: This 75-story, 355-unit development from the Related Group and GTIS Partners boasts design by Arquitectonica — arguably the South Florida firm with probably the most international cache, because of its early-Eighties Atlantis condominium, whose cameo within the “Miami Vice” credits turned its palm-tree-punctured facade into an icon. Here, they’ve partnered with Recent York studio Meyer Davis for interiors and Swiss-born landscape architect Enzo Enea for the gardens.
The worth: The Baccarat’s almost 6,800-square-foot duplex penthouse is asking $21.7 million, which translates to about $3,200 per square foot.
The competition: That’s almost 20% below the $3,950 being hunted for a 5,798-square-foot penthouse asking $22.9 million on the nearby, 20-year-old 4 Seasons Residences by Handel Architects.
The difference: $750 per square foot
Shore Club, South Beach
The name: One other iconic Art Deco hotel getting the luxurious real estate treatment, this property will emerge from its RAMSA–designed reboot with a 75-room Auberge hotel in the unique Shore Club structure. Also on the property can be 49 private residences housed in a vintage 1939 constructing, plus a 20-story tower and a single-family Beach House, each newly built.
The worth: The developers are keeping mum on penthouse pricing, revealing only that they’re asking $6,250 a square foot for the $37.5 million, 6,000-square-foot Beach House.
The competition: That’s well above what the $4,179-per-square-foot penthouse on the nearby Setai is hoping to attain. On the neighboring W, a $15.5 million penthouse is in search of $5,632 a square foot.
The difference: $618 over the W and $2,071 over the Setai.
The St. Regis Residences, Brickell
The name: This RAMSA tower, with interiors by David Rockwell, will rise 50 stories, offering residents of its 152 homes long views over Biscayne Bay, the Atlantic Ocean and the town. The Related Group and Integra Investments turned to Stern partially due to his firm’s proven track record delivering top of the range and price victories for luxury real estate towers in Manhattan — not least at 15 Central Park West and 220 Central Park South, where a unit sold for $238 million, or nearly $10,000 per square foot.
The worth: Integra cofounder and principal Nelson Stabile thinks the mix of Stern and St. Regis allows for a 35% pricing premium. But with the St. Regis’s 10,000-square-foot upper penthouse duplex asking $45 million, or $4,500 per square foot, developers are in search of only about 14% greater than nearby penthouses.
The competition: That $3,950-a-square-foot penthouse on the 4 Seasons mentioned above.
The difference: $550 per square foot.
The Perigon, Miami Beach
The name: For this 73-unit, 17-story tower, developers Mast Capital and Starwood Capital Group teamed Dutch arch-icon Rem Koolhaas’s OMA (known for his manifesto “Delirious Recent York”) with British interior designer Tara Bernerd. Gustafson Porter + Bowman, the landscape firm redoing the Eiffel Tower gardens before this summer’s Paris Olympics, will handle the greenery.
The worth: The $6,500-per-square-foot, $37 million penthouse comes with nearly 6,500 square feet of outside living space along with the virtually 5,700 inside.
The competition: Compare that to other listings within the Perigon’s Mid Beach neighborhood, which top out for probably the most part around $2,000 a square foot, including condos on the Fontainebleau, which come furnished. (An outlier on the famed constructing is asking $3,790 — however it has been for over a yr.)
The difference: $4,500 per square foot.
The Raleigh, South Beach
The richest name: Celebrated for the curvaceous swimming pool in its courtyard, this legendary beachfront Art Deco hotel has developer SHVO to thank for its reimagining as a 3-acre luxury enclave designed by Peter Marino. When complete, it’ll feature a 55-room, five-villa Rosewood Hotel in two vintage buildings; a gourmet restaurant in one other; a personal club from Milan’s Langosteria on the beach; and 40 residences in a latest 17-floor tower.
The worth: The highest spot within the tower is that 13,000-plus-square-foot penthouse, which Shvo has said he’ll marketplace for over $150 million, or roughly $11,000 a square foot. But even the starter units, priced at $10 million, go for almost $4,600 per square foot.
The competition: That penthouse is stratospherically greater than either of the top units on the Setai or W mentioned above.