(HOLLYWOOD, FL) — They are bucking the Gods of Condo Sales.
That’s what condominium industry analysts were saying privately Friday, Aug. 21 as they watched legendary Miami condo developer Jorge M. Perez and Donald Trump Jr., son of the equally legendary Manhattan developer Donald Trump, pitch their $355 million Trump Hollywood condominium community to lenders, sales officials and the media.
A third partner in the project is Jean Francois Roy, a successful Canadian developer from the province of Quebec who now operates Ocean Land Investments Inc. in Boca Raton, FL.
The luncheon event marked the official market unveiling of the 41-story, 200-unit oceanfront condo building in Hollywood, FL, 15 miles from Downtown Miami.
The partners told South Florida Sun-Sentinel they have 140 potential buyers lined up already. That’s 70 percent of the total product. The condos are priced from $1.3 million to $7 million and average $700 per square foot.
That price structure intrigues veteran condo market watchers since prices already are being discounted in Miami-Dade arena to the $200-per-square-foot level from previous average highs of $300 to $500 per square foot.
Peter Zalewski, managing member of Bal Harbour, FL-based Condo Vultures, who knows all the players and prices in the South Florida condominium market, isn’t betting on the project’s sales success. “Daunting,” is how he described the challenge to South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
“The last thing in the world I would want to be doing today is opening a condo development,” longtime Miami real estate consultant Lewis Goodkin told the same newspaper.
Perez is chairman of Related Group, which had been until this year, the most aggressive condo developer in Florida. Related built more than 58,000 condo units in Florida since 1979, according to the company’s Web site.
Perez now is trying to renegotiate about $1.5 billion in maturing loans facing his company, according to a New York Times report. He recently turned over CityPlace South Tower in West Palm Beach to an investor group in lieu of having a foreclosure filing recorded against the project.
Perez and Trump also built a luxury condo complex last year in Sunny Isles Beach, not far from Hollywood, FL.
Trump’s long-delayed Trump International Hotel & Tower in Fort Lauderdale also faces financing headaches. And in Mexico, A trump condo-hotel project was recently terminated with investors losing their deposits, according to previously published reports.
Perez did not respond to a Real Estate Channel e-mail for a phone interview. Trump Jr. and Roy couldn’t be reached.
Donald Trump Sr. has licensed his organization’s name to Trump Hollywood and will receive fees from ongoing sales. That is his total involvement in the project, industry insiders familiar with the endeavor tell Real Estate Channel.
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