Ryan Shear.
Ryan Shear
Managing partner at Property Markets Group
Property Markets Group has a lot going on in South Florida, but its most notable accomplishment might be breaking ground on Miami’s first supertall. The Waldorf Astoria Residences, when complete, is supposed to rise 1,049 feet, which would make it the first U.S. tower above 1,000 feet south of New York.
Ryan Shear, who oversees Property Markets Group’s South Florida operations, is casual about the record. “It’s a nice feather in the cap to be the first,” he said, but he’s not in the business of collecting feathers.
He’s in the business of building condos. PMG is in the midst of construction on the 65-story E11even Hotel & Residences in Miami, near the famed E11even nightclub, while a second tower on the same block, the E11even Residences Beyond, is in the permitting process. Together, the two buildings will have 861 residences.
“It feels like 10 years in one year,” Shear said of 2022. On the financing side, PMG was negotiating deals worth close to $1 billion throughout the year, and the shifting economics added a healthy dose of drama.
“In a time when hard costs and debt costs were going through the roof, every deal had a different story,” Shear said. “It wasn’t that we were closing so much in a short time frame, it was the fact that all the rules were changing.”
That said, the condo market is still in full swing in South Florida, with a steady stream of buyers. While Florida has always been a seasonal market, its status as a second-home market has recently been cemented, according to Shear. The state is now the sort of place where people want to live three to six months a year.
“Miami’s an easy sell right now,” he said. “Beyond the whole taxes and weather argument, the whole world has moved down here.”
As far as the Waldorf Astoria, it is 87 percent sold and the penthouse —which spans an insane 34,000 square feet — sold in November. Shear expects to close on financing for the cubic tower shortly. Once that’s in place, the developers can begin going vertical, and maybe become the first to breach the 1,000-foot mark on Miami’s skyline.
It’s a nice feather, after all.—C.G.
