The lender took back 44 West Flagler and 200 SE First Street on July 20. Six blocks away, Brickell office rents are the highest in the country. Both things are true.
I wrote in June that two downtown Miami office towers were headed to the auction block. On the morning of Monday, July 20, an affiliate of Atlanta-based Ardent Companies won them with a $15 million credit bid, per The Real Deal and a transaction record at Traded. Bisnow's reporting on the judgment: Stonerock Capital Partners had financed the 2022 purchase with a $58 million loan from Ardent, defaulted on a $49 million mortgage that matured in June 2024, and by judgment the amount due had grown to more than $65 million with interest and fees.
44 West Flagler is a 176,000-square-foot, 25-story tower built in 1974 across from the county courthouse, anchored by First Horizon Bank with tenants including the Consulate General of Jamaica. 200 SE First Street is 150,000 square feet over 12 stories and sits on a ground lease dating to 1956 that expires in 2055. One report describes 44 West at about 172,000 square feet; Bisnow's 176,000 is the figure I am using.
On August 28, MIAMI REALTORS reported that Brickell office asking rents, at $79.7 per square foot with 7.3% vacancy, now exceed Manhattan's $72. The Miami central business district asks $78.4 with 13.2% vacancy. Same quarter, same downtown, and two CBD towers changed hands for $15 million against $65 million of debt. The difference is submarket, building age and tenant quality, not “Miami office.”
This is what an off-market opportunity actually looks like. It came out of a courthouse docket, not an MLS feed, and it went to the party that already held the paper. For investor clients: older Class B and C towers in the CBD are repricing hard while Brickell trophy space sets records, and the spread between them is where the next few years of value will be made or lost. If you want to see the distressed pipeline before it reaches an auction calendar, that is a conversation I can have with you.
Foreclosure filings, judgments and auction calendars for Miami-Dade commercial, read weekly.
Talk commercial →Cover photography: Creative Commons / public domain — photo credits.
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