If a condo crashes in South Florida, does anyone hear it? Apparently not, because yet another tower is planned for the tri-county area.
The 31-story combination condominium and hotel in Hallandale Beach is the 22nd high-rise planned since the condominium market went bust in the Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties, according to a running tab kept by CondoVultures, a local real estate consulting firm.
According to the CondoVultures, the Beachwalk tower, with 84 residential apartments and 432 hotel rooms, won't even be on the beach. Rather, if it is indeed built, it will front on the Intercoastal Waterway.
But nothing spurs optimism in a developer like activity elsewhere. And this one is fueled by what is termed a "steady" stream of pre-sales in the nearby 23-story Apogee Beach condo tower. As of the end of January, buyers have committed to purchase all but eight units in the 49-unit Apogee project, according to the developer's marketing materials.
If developers actually go in the ground with all 22 planned properties, they will add nearly 4,400 units to a tri-county coastal area that is still trying to dig out from under a hangover of an estimated 4,200 unsold units left over from the previous housing boom.
But only a handful of those are in the relatively healthy Hallandale-Hollywood Beach submarket, where CondoVultures reports that developers have sold all but four units out of a pool of nearly 5,000 apartments built between 2003 and 2011.
That makes it the first South Florida coastal market to statistically sell out all the new units developed during the last boom.
