Thursday, January 17, 2008

South Beach's newest conversion: One South Park


Though many followers over at socketsite have been claiming that prices are exorbitant for many of these no view, sardine can units with bums and addicts as neighbors, twelve of the 35 units at One South Park have officially closed escrow as of January 13. Contrary to the naysayers, they are getting pretty much what they are asking for at an average of $986/sq ft.

Not uncommon with developments such as this, their own figures of sales and pending sales do not match the public records. They are off by three "sales" (15 claimed vs 12 on record) but maybe we'll give them the benefit of the doubt on this for now. They also list two as "pending" with the remaining 18 available for sale.

While the closed sales have been right at or near original asking prices, the project is still less than half sold out and they began accepting reservations as far back as June of last year. They can't be excited with the 18+ units currently available at this time and after many have canceled their reservations. Yet there has been no sign of price reductions or incentives like many other developments have started to offer. Can this project compete with the Infinity and One Rincon Hill on a $/sq ft basis? These next couple months will be interesting to see how this project fares.

My conclusion: This is a tough call. I feel projects like these are unique enough and in a great location (for some) to sell, as it isn't a huge development with 100+ units for the market to absorb. But the trends are there (falling) and at these prices I think people are really starting to sit back and ask themselves if they should really be buying at or near the top of the market.

I predict slow sales here in Q1 and price reductions and/or incentives in March or April.

Although I have not toured this building personally, I have to agree with the socketsite reader's label of sardine can. I highly doubt I would be pleasantly surprised with the space by seeing it in person.


Vitals:
-Redfin listing
-Developer: Santa Fe Partners
-MLS listing
-Google Maps

Readers: What say you?


dg