Aimco Buys Apartment Tower in Miami's Edgewater for $81M

Aimco, one of the biggest players in the multifamily investment arena, bought a waterfront tower developed by the Arison family in Miami’s trendy Edgewater neighborhood for $80.96 million.

The publicly traded real estate investment trust bought 28-story Hamilton on the Bay apartment high-rise from an affiliate of the Arison family. The deal closed Aug. 25, and the deed was posted on the Miami-Dade clerk’s website Monday.

The Arison family through affiliates also sold to Aimco a four-unit apartment building across the street from Hamilton Bay at 630 NE 34th St. and an adjacent 20,493-square-foot vacant lot for a combined $8.64 million. This brings the total deal size to $89.6 million.

The late Ted Arison, an Israeli-born businessman who in 1972 founded Doral-based Carnival Cruise Line, developed Hamilton on the Bay in 1984.

The tower sits on 3.8 acres east of Biscayne Boulevard between Northeast 34th and 35th streets. The address is 555 NE 34th St.

The Miami-Dade County property appraiser’s website lists Hamilton on the Bay as having 265 units, but real estate publication The Real Deal, which broke the report on the sale, reported there are 275 units.

This would mean the transaction breaks down to $294,400 per unit.

Arison developed the sky-blue Hamilton on the Bay before the latest round of redevelopment turned Edgewater into a high-rise cluster.

Edgewater on Biscayne Bay north of the Omni neighborhood was home to single-family homes built in eclectic architectural styles with Miami families such as the Searses and Burdines having homes there in the 1960s and 1970s. The neighborhood later was up-zoned to allow landlords to split homes into small apartments. It underwent major redevelopment in the years following the Great Recession with condominium towers replacing one- and two-story apartment buildings.

Hamilton on the Bay is one of the few high-rises built in Edgewater before the redevelopment wave.

Aimco, short for Apartment Investment and Management Co., has other nearby investments, including the Bay Parc apartment tower at Bayshore Drive and Northeast 17th Street.

Other Miami-Dade County holdings include the Flamingo apartment towers in Miami Beach, the 31-story Yacht Club at Brickell in the financial district and the nearby 1001 Brickell Bay office tower.

The Hamilton on the Bay sale comes amid a dearth of multifamily transactions this year, more than likely caused by the market uncertainty created by the coronavirus pandemic.

Multifamily hasn’t been impacted as much as hotels and retail as housing rent collections have exceeded expectations. More than 92% of U.S. apartment households made their August payments, according to the National Multifamily Housing Council.

The $80.96 million price is the biggest so far this year in South Florida followed by the nearly $75 million sale of the 310-unit Harbor complex in Coral Springs in late June.