International buyers are fueling sales activity at One Thousand Museum, the flashy new downtown Miami condominium project designed by renowned architect Zaha Hadid. The project, scheduled for completion in late 2017, is attracting well-heeled overseas buyers to a section of Miami not previously known for ultraluxury real estate. One Thousand Museum is on Biscayne Boulevard near the Pérez Art Museum Miami and about 4 miles west of South Beach. More than half of the project’s units are under contract, the developer says. Deposits were put down recently by Latin American and European buyers on four of the property’s 4,600-square-foot units; prices for those apartments reached as high as $6.8 million. Recent listings in the building include a 10,000-square-foot full-floor unit with a price tag of $18.3 million; a two-story penthouse is on the market for $49 million. Luxury offerings in the neighborhood typically sell for $700 to $750 a square foot. At One Thousand Museum, prices start at $1,200 a square foot and go above $2,000, according to the developer. The project is Hadid’s first residential high-rise in the Western Hemisphere. The first woman to win architecture’s top prize—the Pritzker—Hadid is well-known for her curving, innovative, modernist designs. Past projects include the London Aquatics Centre built for the 2012 Olympics and the Guangzhou Opera House in China. One Thousand Museum’s “exoskeleton” design allows for open, flexible spaces in the building. Amenities include a pair of swimming pools, a helipad on the roof and state-of-the-art vaults to store residents’ valuables. The 83-unit building is seen as a statement on the city’s luxury condo market. “It shows that Miami has a truly global real estate market, which attracts buyers looking for trophy properties,” said Harvey Daniels, director of sales for One Thousand Museum and vice president of One Sotheby's International Realty's development division. Oren Alexander, a broker with Douglas Elliman who works mostly in South Beach, added, “One Thousand Museum is trying to raise the bar of downtown. The neighborhood is growing as a result of that.” The Miami area is full of expensive homes, but they tend to be in areas like Miami Beach or Coral Gables. Alexander compared One Thousand Museum with Richard Meier’s glass-box buildings on the western fringe of New York’s Greenwich Village: “Zaha Hadid is bringing people—who previously would have wanted to live on the beach—to downtown.” For all that has gone into the building, some residents may not spend a lot of time there. “The amount of people who will be here, simultaneously, is actually a small number,” said Louis Birdman, who, along with Gregg Covin and Kevin Venger, is developing the project under the entity 1000 Biscayne Tower LLC. Previously they worked together on Regalia, a 46-story luxury tower in Sunny Isles Beach, north of Miami Beach. “For most of them, this is a fifth or sixth home.” Over the last several years, Miami’s real estate market has been powered by foreign money. In 2014, according to the Miami Association of Realtors, international buyers generated some 30% of real estate deals in Miami-Dade and Broward counties. Purchasers from Latin America and the Caribbean accounted for 68% of those sales. Fourteen percent of the buyers were from Europe, 6% were from Canada and 3% were Asian. But there are fears that softening financial markets outside of the U.S. will cause foreign buyers to put the brakes on their Miami shopping sprees. “In 2011, when we began our boom, foreign nationals took advantage of strong foreign currencies against the dollar, strong commodity prices, and the fact that we’re cheap to buy in compared to other international cities,” said Peter Zalewski, founder of Crane Spotters, a Miami-based firm that tracks towers in development. It remains to be seen how this will impact One Thousand Museum. Carlo Dipasquale, an agent with Cervera Real Estate, recently had a client, an Italian art collector, go into contract for more than $6 million on a five-bedroom unit at the project. Acknowledging that, generally, there has been a bit of a hiccup in foreign sales, he said, "The dollar being high doesn’t help, but a lot of wealthy international clients have bought dollars over the years. Many of my clients knew that the dollar would not stay weak forever and converted to dollars at the right time." Dipasquale views buildings such as Faena House and the Surf Club Four Seasons Hotel and Private Residences, both located on the beach, as competitors with One Thousand Museum. At the Norman Foster-designed Faena, slated to open later this year, the 8,000-square-foot penthouse sold for $60 million, $10 million above the asking price. Surf Club, designed by Richard Meier and due for completion in 2016, has units priced from $3 million to $35 million. Prices per square foot range from $1,950 to $4,300, according to Gabriela Navarro, marketing director with Fort Partners, the developers. The Hadid project could be enough to lead a neighborhood price-surge for downtown. “People fall in love with Zaha Hadid and the architecture and owning real estate in Miami’s most unique building,” said Dipasquale. “My Italian buyer is thinking of hiring her to decorate his apartment.”
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