Last year, owners at the Mansions at Acqualina wanted to enclose their balconies. To do it they had to buy square footage from the City of Sunny Isles Beach. Three transfers went through, totaling 931 square feet of floor area, and each one needed its own application number and a vote of the City Commission. The first of those requests, filed as PZ2025-06, asked the city's public bank for 313 square feet to cover one enclosure.
Most buyers never meet this mechanism, but it explains a lot about Sunny Isles pricing. Along with regulating how much gets built, the city holds a large share of the buildable floor area itself and sells it to whoever needs it, whether that's a developer planning a 62-story tower or a single owner adding a glass wall.
Square Footage That Has to Be Bought
East of Collins Expediting is a local permitting firm that has handled enclosures at the Mansions at Acqualina. It explains why the process works this way. Every building in Sunny Isles Beach is allowed a set amount of livable floor area. Open balconies were left out of that count when the towers were designed. Enclosing one turns open space into conditioned interior space, so the owner has to buy the right to that extra area through the city's Transferable Development Rights program.
The firm describes the steps in this order:
- A Pre-Development Review with the Planning and Zoning Department. Nothing moves forward until the project is found eligible.
- Buying the exact square footage from the city's TDR bank. According to the firm, this step alone usually takes about four months.
- City Commission approval of the purchase and assignment. After that, the unit's official floor area is updated and engineered plans move to permitting.
The firm also says the city sets the price per square foot from an appraisal of the receiving site, divided by the floor area its zoning allows. It puts the whole process, from start to finished construction, at a year or more. The program dates to 2001. Its stated purposes are managing growth and protecting open space, view corridors and public resources.
Developers use the same system on a much larger scale. Once you see how big their purchases are, the size of the bank becomes the real question.
The Ledger Behind the Skyline
Each year the city's Planning and Zoning Director sends the Commission an update on the TDR bank. The March 19, 2026 memo covers activity through 2025. It is the most recent official count available.
| City TDR bank, per the March 19, 2026 memo | Floor area | Dwelling units |
|---|---|---|
| Deposited into the bank since the ordinance | 2,412,433 sq ft | 1,212 |
| Transferred to private parties to date | 1,908,118 sq ft | 947 |
| Balance available for transfer | 340,561 sq ft | 219 |
| Miami Beach Club site plan approval, February 2026 | 120,972.18 sq ft | 48 |
The rows don't add up by simple subtraction. Deposits minus transfers would leave 504,315 square feet and 265 units, more than the balance the memo reports as available, and the memo doesn't break out the difference. The table uses the memo's figures as printed, and the available balance is the number the city itself reports.
The money is substantial. As of that memo, the city had collected $77,407,863.75 from TDR sales and expected another $50,417,939 from transfers already approved but subject to payment agreements or due at permitting. The city's FY2025 annual financial report says its five-year Capital Improvements Program is funded through TDR and Development Bonus revenue. In other words, selling density has paid for the city's facilities, infrastructure and park projects.
The sender sites are concrete places. The newest is Le Richelieu at 18126 Atlantic Boulevard, which added 43,353 square feet and 26 dwelling units to the bank. Demolition there was finished in July 2024. The city expects the lot to become a small green space that will eventually extend Pelican Community Park. The building rights moved off that lot and into the bank, and the land will stay open.
Private accounts expire. The memo notes that one developer's private TDR account reached the ten-year limit set by city policy. Its 19,287 square feet and 9 dwelling units are now null and void.
Most of What Remains Is Already Spoken For
Three projects account for most of the money still owed to the bank, and all three are years from delivery.
St. Regis Residences at 18801 Collins Avenue owed $22,517,066. Bentley Residences at 18401 Collins Avenue owed $14,134,446.50. The Miami Beach Club tower at 19051 Collins Avenue owed $13,609,370.25.
According to The Real Deal, the St. Regis is a two-tower, 320-unit project from Fortune International Group and Château Group. Its 170-unit south tower is scheduled to finish in 2028, and construction on the 150-unit north tower was expected to start later in 2026. Dezer Development's Bentley Residences has 216 units and was also expected to finish in 2028. The Real Deal reported in November 2025 that it was more than 50% presold. The Miami Beach Club tower's application listed anticipated completion in December 2031.
Our research found no Sunny Isles tower reported to have started closings in 2025 or 2026, and none scheduled to deliver before mid-2027. The newest finished product on the oceanfront is therefore the Estates at Acqualina. The Trump Group completed its two towers, with 232 units combined, in 2022 and 2023.
Where the Next Tower's Land Came From
New supply can't simply wait for an empty lot. The Miami Beach Club site shows how it actually gets made. Related Group, Dezer Development and BH Group closed in 2025 on 100 units of the 108-unit complex, a building from 1951, for $131.8 million. Related already owned the other eight, The Real Deal reported. That works out to an average of about $1.318 million per acquired unit. It is an average and does not show what any individual seller received.
In February 2026 the City Commission approved a 62-story, 145-unit tower on the 2-acre site, just north of Residences by Armani/Casa, by a 4–1 vote, The Real Deal reported. According to that report, neighboring residents had raised concerns about safety and the structural integrity of nearby buildings, and in response the developers agreed to monitor vibrations and subsidence during construction and for one year after. The same report says the city agreed to sell development rights for more than $26 million, adding about 121,000 square feet of floor area, and that the developers plan to build fewer units than they could by right.
That detail tells you what is scarce. The approved site plan shows TDR floor area of 120,972.2 square feet with capacity for up to 48 units from those rights, yet zero proposed units in that row. The developers paid for room, not for more homes. At the top of this market, the expensive thing is square footage per residence and height, which reaches 828 feet total on the approved plan.
Two Supply Systems Sharing One Zip Code
The broader Sunny Isles condo market looks very different. MIAMI REALTORS' August 2026 data puts the city's condo and townhome median sale price at $593,000, with 431 closings year to date and 19 months of supply across all price points. An MLS snapshot synced September 6, 2026 shows an average closed price of $865 per square foot over the prior 12 months, across 391 sales.
Nineteen months of supply is a buyer's market by any usual measure. The newest building in town doesn't behave like one. In September 2026, The Real Deal reported that a Trump Group affiliate sold a 52nd-floor penthouse at the Estates at Acqualina, 17975 Collins Avenue, for $33 million, the highest price yet in the tower. The six-bedroom unit measures about 8,858 square feet and had been asking $35 million. Earlier in 2026, a 7,700-square-foot Estates residence resold for $21.6 million, about $2,800 per square foot. The residence had previously sold in 2025 for $17.9 million.
That resale closed at more than three times the citywide trailing average per square foot. The two figures come from different datasets, so treat the comparison as rough. Older inventory competes with a deep stock of similar units. Recently completed oceanfront product competes with a pipeline that won't deliver until 2028, and every new tower in that pipeline had to buy its extra floor area from a bank that held 219 dwelling units as of March 2026.
What the Bank Changes in a Purchase Decision
The city says it is reviewing its separate Development Bonus program to resolve inconsistencies between the Comprehensive Plan and the zoning code. A Commission workshop has heard consultant findings, and staff are drafting corrective amendments. The city's page doesn't show any amendments adopted yet. For a buyer, the questions that follow are practical ones:
- For a presale: has the project's TDR transfer been approved, and how much of the payment is still due at permitting? The city's annual memo names the balances owed by project.
- For a resale with an open balcony: has the building ever had an enclosure approved, as at the Mansions at Acqualina? East of Collins says the city has told its team that only a limited amount of these rights will be issued, though no city document we reviewed sets a cutoff.
- For an older oceanfront building: how does its site compare in size and position with 19051 Collins? That 1951 complex became the city's next approved tower site.
- For any comparison: is the citywide median being used to price a building that belongs to the newer, scarcer system?
The same rule from 2001 governs a 313-square-foot balcony and a 62-story tower, and the remaining balance limits both. Mariela keeps track of where each project's allocation stands, from the presale releases to the TDR payments that come due at permitting. If you're weighing a Sunny Isles presale against a finished residence and want to see how the timing of each building's floor-area purchase affects its price, Mariela Hopen can walk you through it. Request Exclusive Access.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
