(To read more on the multifamily market, click here.)

ORLANDO-In one of highest gross per-acre sales in recent years here, Dublin-based Feltrim Developments and Columbus, OH-based MAS Cos. paid Houston-based Rida Associates LLP $233,766 per acre for 15.4 acres about one mile south of Walt Disney World. The deal carried a total $3.6-million price tag, or $5.37 per sf.

Feltrim-MAS plan to develop the Valencia at ChampionsGate, 120-unit residential condominium project off Goodman Road near the main entrance to the 1,400-acre, $1-billion mixed-use development. Valencia is expected to be built out at a value of $42 million, Marc Reicher, vice president of operations at ChampionsGate, tells GlobeSt.com.

Reicher says "a better way" to analyze the price of the land is to use the residential builders' barometer of estimated hard construction cost per apartment or condominium. That would make land for the planned 120-unit condo project come in at $30,000 per unit. Reicher says this calculation in the industry is called "transactional value."

ChampionsGate is being developed by Rida Associates as a joint venture by Apollo Real Estate Advisors of New York and Rida Development Corp. of Houston, as GlobeSt.com previously reported.

Reicher says about 200 acres remain for development at ChampionsGate. About 500 acres in the 1,400-acre development are wetlands and can't be developed. ChampionsGate broke ground in 1998 and completed the first project, a championship 18-hold golf course, in October 2000.

The highest per-acre land price recorded in metro Orlando is the $4.72 million per acre ($108.26 per sf) that Orlando developer Cameron Kuhn paid in November 2003 to the locally based Tavistock Group for the 2.29-acre Jaymont Block in Downtown Orlando, as GlobeSt.com previously reported.

The next highest per-acre price was the $3 million per acre (70 cents per sf) that developer David Ortiz's Global Group Investment Inc. of Miami and the Falcone Group of Fort Lauderdale paid Columbus, OH-based Pizzuti Cos. in January 2005 for a prime 5.6-acre Downtown tract now known as 400 North Orange. The total price was $17.1 million. Palm Beach Land Trust LLC, headed by David Barley, is the lead coordinator on the project.

In the most recent big per-acre price deal, the Brossier Development Group of suburban Winter Park paid three separate owners a total $8.7 million, or $2.56 million per acre ($58.74 per sf), for a strategically located 3.4-acre parcel in suburban Maitland, as GlobeSt.com reported last week. That deal was the highest on record for suburban dirt on a per-acre basis, according to GlobeSt.com research.

Instant Insights /

UPDATE: Dublin Developer Buys Prime ChampionsGate Tract

Related Stories

Recommended For You