545 closed sales across two short-term-rental-permitted Brickell towers, 2019 to 2026, and what they say about the new-build pipeline being marketed today.
Two things are true at once, and together they answer the timing question.
Buildings that already permit daily rentals, already have an operating history, and already have furnished units producing income are trading at $545 to $703 per square foot. New construction marketed on the same short-term-rental promise is asking $1,056 to $1,251. That is a 50 to 129 percent premium for a unit that cannot generate a dollar until it is delivered.
At a 5 percent annual appreciation assumption, a buyer paying today's 501 First ask needs about 14 years before that price looks like the Club's current market. At 3 percent, roughly 23 years. That is the arithmetic the glossy brochure leaves out.
The MLS cannot answer this question. The County can.
The obvious way to answer "when should I buy" would be to chart what units in these new buildings have sold for. Ask the MLS and you get almost nothing: a developer selling a preconstruction unit to its first buyer is a private contract that never goes through a broker. Across the two delivered short-term-rental towers downtown, the entire MLS resale history is two transactions.
But every closing is still a recorded deed, and Miami-Dade publishes them. Reading the deed record instead of the listing record turns two data points into thirty-eight, all of them at 501 First, all with the developer as grantor:
| Source | Closings visible | Median $/sf | What it covers |
|---|---|---|---|
| MLS (Bridge / SEFMLS) | 1 | $854 | Only the one unit a broker relisted |
| County deed record | 38 | $908 | Every developer closing, Dec 2025 to Apr 2026 |
All 38 prices are independently corroborated by the documentary stamps on each deed, at the statutory $0.60 per $100 of consideration. None of them disagreed.
Because the deeds are dated, they show what the developer accepted over time as the building delivered. This is the preconstruction curve, and it rises:
| Month closed | Closings | Median $/sf |
|---|---|---|
| Dec 2025 | 13 | $833 |
| Jan 2026 | 2 | $834 |
| Feb 2026 | 8 | $913 |
| Mar 2026 | 14 | $957 |
| Apr 2026 | 1 | $845 |
Jan and Apr rest on 2 and 1 closings respectively and should be read as noise, not as a turn. The move that matters is Dec through Mar, on 35 closings: $833 to $957 per square foot, up 15 percent in four months as the earliest contracts cleared and the developer repriced the remaining inventory.
The developer's median closing was $908 per square foot. Resale listings in the same building currently ask a median $1,092. Early buyers trying to flip are asking 20 percent above what the developer itself was still accepting in the same quarter. On this building, at this moment, the developer is the cheaper counterparty.
Thirty-eight deeds over five months establish today's price level, not a cycle. For that the study reads two buildings that have already lived through one: Brickell towers permitting short-term rentals, delivered in 2004 and 2008, with 545 closed sales between them since 2019. That is the empirical base for the timing question below.
The Club at Brickell Bay (delivered 2004, no rental restrictions) and Icon Brickell (2008, short-term rentals permitted). Median price per square foot, studio and one-bedroom units of 400 to 900 square feet, which is the short-term-rental sweet spot.
| Year | Club, median $/sf | n | Icon, median $/sf | n | What was happening |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | $316 | 17 | $500 | 4 | Flat base, pre-cycle |
| 2020 | $333 | 36 | $500 | 6 | Still flat through COVID |
| 2021 | $415 | 52 | $547 | 44 | Inflection, volume triples |
| 2022 | $609 | 38 | $857 | 13 | Repricing, +47% and +57% |
| 2023 | $646 | 30 | $874 | 18 | Peak, both buildings |
| 2024 | $585 | 20 | $861 | 12 | Rates bite, Club rolls over |
| 2025 | $570 | 23 | $766 | 9 | Correction broadens |
| 2026 YTD | $545 | 11 | $703 | 3 | Third year down |
Read the small samples carefully. Icon's 2026 median rests on 3 closings and its 2019 to 2020 medians on 4 to 6. Those points show direction, not precision. The Club's series is the more reliable of the two at every point, and the two buildings agree on the shape: flat, inflection in 2021, peak in 2023, three years of decline since.
Same unit band, same short-term-rental permission, same submarket. The only difference is that one set of units exists and earns, and the other does not yet.
| Building | Status | Asking, median $/sf | vs Club at $545 | vs Icon at $703 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nexo Residences, N Miami Beach | Delivering 2026 | $1,251 | +129% | +78% |
| 501 First, Downtown | Delivered 2026 | $1,092 | +100% | +55% |
| ↳ what the developer actually took, 38 deeds | Dec 25 – Apr 26 | $908 closed | +67% | +29% |
| District 225, Downtown | Delivered 2025 | $1,056 | +94% | +50% |
| Icon Brickell, resale | Delivered 2008 | $753 ask / $703 closed | +29% | — |
| The Club at Brickell Bay, resale | Delivered 2004 | $629 ask / $545 closed | — | −22% |
501 First asks a median $1,092 per square foot. Its 38 county-recorded closings ran at a $908 median, 17 percent below ask, and its single MLS resale went at $854. District 225 asks $1,056 and its one recorded closing went at $914, 13 percent below. Whatever the brochure says, transactions in these buildings are not happening at list.
Note also what the resale asks say. The Club is asking $629 and closing at $545, a 13 percent gap of its own. Sellers across both the new and the old stock are ahead of the market, which is normal in the third year of a correction and is the single most useful fact for a buyer with patience.
The cycle above has four phases. Only two of them were good entries, and one of those is open right now.
Two years of nothing. The Club moved $316 to $333, Icon did not move at all. This was the entry that mattered, and it was only obvious afterwards. A buyer here is up 72 percent.
Volume triples and price follows within two quarters. Still a good entry, because the repricing had another 47 to 57 percent to run, but you are now buying into a crowd.
Both buildings top out in the same year. Anyone who bought here is still underwater on price three years later, and is relying on rental income to carry the position.
Three consecutive down years, 16 to 20 percent off peak, sellers still asking 13 percent above what closes. This is the second good entry, and it is on delivered stock, not on the pipeline.
Buy delivered, short-term-rental-permitted inventory while it sits 16 to 20 percent below its 2023 peak and sellers are 13 percent above the market. Negotiate against the closed comps in the table above, not against the asking prices. Preconstruction at a 50 to 129 percent premium only pays if this market re-takes and then exceeds its 2023 peak before you need to sell, and nothing in eight years of data says when that happens.
Two narrow cases. First, if the developer's rental policy is genuinely better than anything available in delivered stock, for example an on-site operator with a rental guarantee, which changes the income side rather than the price side. Second, if you are buying the specific thing that does not exist in the resale market at all: a brand-new furnished unit with warranty coverage and no assessment history, and you are willing to pay for that certainty. Neither case is a value argument, and both should be priced as a premium you chose, not a discount you found.
What does not justify the premium is the short-term-rental permission itself. That is available today at $545 per square foot in a building with twenty years of operating history.
The buildings that actually allow daily rentals, from the wider Miami-Dade pipeline. Rental policy as published by each developer, which is the one line in the offering documents that decides whether a building is usable as an income asset.
| Building | Area | Delivery | Rental policy as published |
|---|---|---|---|
| 501 First | Downtown | Delivered 2026 | Daily rentals permitted |
| District 225 | Downtown | Delivered 2025 | Daily rentals, on-site operator |
| Nexo Residences | N Miami Beach | 2026 | Short-term, AvantStay operates on site |
| Melia Miami Brickell | Brickell | 2027 | Full flexibility, owner use capped 30 days/yr |
| LOFTY Brickell | Brickell | 2027 | Short-term rentals permitted |
| Parkside Residences | Brickell | 2028 | No rental restrictions |
| 14 ROC Miami | Arts & Entertainment | 2028 | Short-term rentals permitted |
| TwentySixth&2nd | Wynwood | 2028 | Airbnb partnership, Airbnb manages |
| Edge House | Edgewater | 2028 | Full flexibility, owner-managed permitted |
| NoBe PARC | North Beach | 2028 | Short-term rentals permitted |
| Frida Kahlo Residences | Wynwood | 2029 | Short-term rentals permitted |
| Palm Tree Residences | Park West | 2030 | Short-term rentals accommodated |
This table is the extension point. Only 501 First, District 225 and Nexo have market pricing today, which is why only those three appear in the premium comparison above. The deed method that produced 501 First's 38 closings works on any of these buildings the moment it starts recording deeds, so each row becomes a real price series as it delivers rather than waiting for brokers to relist. As each building opens broker inventory or begins closing, it gets its own unit-level analysis and is added to the comparison. Rental policies are as published and are routinely amended before closing: the condominium documents govern, and they can change after you go to contract.
Roughly sixty projects are moving through Miami-Dade. Most are 30-day-minimum or long-term-only, which makes them irrelevant to a short-term-rental thesis regardless of price, and a large share have published no policy at all. The full pipeline list shows all of them with their policy labels.
If you are weighing a specific preconstruction unit against a resale, the comparison that matters is not brochure-to-brochure. It is the developer's price per square foot against the closed comps in this study, on the same unit size, with both rental policies read in full. I will run that side by side on any building here, including the deposit schedule and the projected HOA, which is where new construction often gives back part of whatever premium it justified.
Cycle and asking data: Bridge Data Output, Miami Realtors (SEFMLS), pulled 29 July 2026. Buildings identified by postal code plus street address to avoid substring collisions, sales filtered to units of 400 to 900 square feet with a close price above $50,000, leases excluded. Medians, not averages, because a single penthouse distorts a mean at this sample size. The Club at Brickell Bay and Icon Brickell were chosen as the empirical base because both permit short-term rentals and both have a continuous transaction record spanning the full cycle.
Developer closings: recorded deeds from the Miami-Dade Property Appraiser, joined to the MLS on the county folio. Restricted to arm's-length transfers: warranty deeds, price above $25,000, examiner-qualified, quitclaims and related-party transfers excluded. Each price is checked against the documentary stamps at the statutory $0.60 per $100; all 38 agreed. Pre-completion land deeds inherited by the folio are excluded, which matters because the developer's assemblage parcels carry an $8.25M 2015 dirt sale that would otherwise contaminate the series.
BlueBay Brokers manages short-term-rental units in both The Club at Brickell Bay and Icon Brickell, the two buildings used as the empirical base. That is why the operating data was available, and you should weigh the conclusion accordingly. The transaction figures are third-party MLS records and can be verified independently. BlueBay does not represent any of the developers listed and receives no compensation from them.
Want this run against a specific unit, new build or resale? I will put the two side by side on real closed comps, with the rental policy read in full.
Request a comparison
Disclosures. Short-term rental income in Miami-Dade is subject to approximately 13 percent in combined State of Florida and Miami-Dade County transient rental taxes, collected on top of the nightly rate and remitted by the operator. Figures on this page are historical transaction records and current asking prices, not projections of return. No forecast of price, occupancy or yield is made or implied for any building. Past price behaviour does not predict future price behaviour, and the 2019 to 2026 window covers one interest-rate cycle only. Unit counts, sizes, delivery dates and rental policies for preconstruction buildings are the developers' own and are not verified by BlueBay Brokers LLC. This is a market study, not investment advice, and not an offer to sell or a solicitation to buy any security or interest in real property. Consult your own tax and legal advisers.
Transaction data © 2026 Miami Association of Realtors / SEFMLS, provided via Bridge Data Output. Information deemed reliable but not guaranteed.