A year ago, Miami’s Icon Brickell condo complex was a symbol of just about everything that had gone wrong during South Florida’s epic housing bust: Speculators had walked out on sales contracts, the towers were half-empty, and a group of lenders was making moves to foreclose.
Now, as Brazilians and Argentineans wage bidding wars for Icon’s bank-owned condos, the rapidly selling, 1,800-unit complex represents a few of the things that are going right in the region’s still-shaky housing market.
A little more than a year after a consortium of banks seized ownership of two of Icon Brickell’s three towers, more than 930 condos have sold, meaning the towers have gone from three-quarters empty to three-quarters sold. A third tower, which was not taken over by lenders, has sold 518 of its 520 units, according to data provided by Bal Harbour-based consultancy Condo Vultures.
Fortune International Realty, the marketing muscle brought on by Icon’s lenders to sell individual units, has focused its efforts on the bright spots of the troubled housing market: discounted prices, international appeal and the up-and-coming allure of downtown Miami.
“It’s beyond anybody’s expectation,” said Edgardo DeFortuna, president of Miami-based Fortune. “The bank expectation was it was going to be a three-year sellout. We’re going to sell out within 18 months, which is unbelievable.”
Fortune has moved some 527 units for a total of $244.5 million after beginning sales efforts last June, according to public records data provided by Condo Vultures.
In May, a Maryland company bought the 148-unit Viceroy Hotel in Icon’s third tower for $36.5 million, clearing out the last remaining inventory owned by Miami-based developer Related Group.
With the hotel sold and about 40 residential units selling each month, Icon’s road to health looks much clearer now than it did just 12 months ago.
DeFortuna predicts that the final 250 units will all be sold by the end of the year. Prices, which were slashed heavily to entice buyers last year, are even starting to rise again as inventory shrinks.
Icon’s turnaround highlights a number of trends in the overall housing market, which has seen condo sales soar despite record-high foreclosures, declining values and hard-to-obtain credit.
In Miami-Dade County, condo sales were up 94 percent in April, compared to a year earlier, a reflection of a growing international appetite to cash in on Miami’s condo bust while prices are low and the dollar is weak.
Projects like Icon Brickell have benefitted immensely from international interest, with more than 70 percent of sales coming from foreign buyers who paid with cash.
“Ultimately the deciding factor of why Fortune was successful is that they had the [international] reach and they had the pricing,” said Peter Zalewski, principal at Condo Vultures. To market Icon, Fortune headed to South and Central America to meet with potential buyers and make its pitch.
“The first thing we did was to pack up and go to Argentina, Brazil and go to Mexico and educate people on this project,” said DeFortuna.
The company opened a sales center in Punta del Este, Uruguay, targeting wealthy South Americans as they visited the resort town.
Fortune also sought to rebrand and relaunch the turbulent Icon project locally, hosting parties on-site with abundant liquor and fur-wearing models, announcing price cuts in email blasts to brokers and launching an iPad application for the building.
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