After 52 years on a quiet Wynwood side street, King Automotive, a family-run repair shop owned by Leon Wegman, will close its doors today. Wegman recently sold his property in the booming arts neighborhood for more than 100 times what he paid for it decades ago. King Automotive was one…
If you wake up each morning and stroll out to the balcony of your luxury downtown condo in nothing but a silk robe to leisurely spend the morning checking your E-Trade account and making reservations for the night at Prime 112, you may, in fact, think Miami is the best…
There’s no question that Miami was one of the cities hardest hit by the housing market collapse, but can the City of Miami actually sue big banks over it? The U.S. Supreme Court will decide next year. Back in 2013, the City of Miami sued Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and…
If a Gap or Urban Outfitters popped up in Wynwood anytime soon, many local would decry it as the official death of the neighborhood. The fear is that in less than 15 years, Wynwood would have transformed from genuine art district into an outdoor suburban shopping mall full of the…
Plans for SkyRise Miami, the much talked about planned observation tower near Bayside Marketplace downtown, continue to trudge on. The biggest question left is how the project’s mastermind, developer Jeff Berkowitz, is going to pool together the estimated $430 million price tag to build it. Well, today Berkowitz announced that SkyRise…
Richard Florida, the country’s most famous urban studies scholar, and the FIU-Miami Creative City Initiative came out today with a major, in-depth and incisive report on the state of the Miami and what we must do to truly become a global city. Dubbed “Miami’s Great Inflection: Toward Shared Prosperity as a Creative…
A few things Tremont Towing is well known for: pissing off South Beach drivers, accusations of shady business practices, tight political connections, and enriching us all with hilariously scripted “windmill roundhouse back flips” on the since-canceled reality show South Beach Tow. Some things Tremont Towing is not particularly well known for: improving…
The annual WalkScore rankings always include Miami in the top ten. In the latest edition, Miami was ranked America’s fifth most walkable city. Which inevitably leads to lots of locals shaking their heads. How could this city, with its gridlocked highways and sorely lacking public transit infrastructure, ever be considered walkable? …
The Southeast Financial Center is the crown jewel of Miami office towers and downtown’s skyline. When it was built in 1983, it not only became Miami’s tallest building but the highest skyscraper south of New York and east of the Mississippi. It still remains Miami’s second tallest building and its tenants…
Residents on Miami Beach’s exclusive La Gorce Island have a new neighbor: retired boxing champ Floyd Mayweather. The pugilist recently bought up a newly built home on the island and paid its $7.7 million price tag in cold, hard cash. The modern home makes liberal use of white surfaces, steel and…
Tons of Miamians start their own businesses. Many maybe dream of running worldwide empires out of corner offices in Brickell office buildings. Turns out few of those would-be empires ever grow to employ more than 5 people. Back in August, The Kauffman Index crowned Miami America’s second hottest metro for…
If you had $455,000 sitting around in 2006 to buy a loft penthouse at Neo Vertika, a Brickell condo building on the banks of the Miami River, you might consider yourself a bit wealthy. Rich even. Perhaps even a “Rich Bitch.” In fact, Neo Vertika’s penthouse unit 19 is owned…
Four years ago, Stefanie Voigt, an underwater cinematographer, moved into a new apartment on a small island called Belle Isle in the Venetians on Miami Beach. Her building overlooked Biscayne Bay, her rent was affordable, and her neighbors were friendly and welcoming. It was pretty much the ideal living situation…
Miami is a city that thrives on youth. Who else but the young is supposed to fill up the decks of party yachts, regularly dance until five in the morning, and still look good frolicking on the beach the next day? Yet, Miami is not a city where the young…
Miami is a city that seems to reinvent itself every ten years or so. Change is a constant. Neighborhoods are always reinventing themselves. Cranes and jackhammers are always busy erecting new buildings. We’re so used to it, sometimes we don’t even notice when it happens. In fact, looking back just 10 years…
Chicago-based LaSalle Investment Management dubs itself as “one of the world’s leading real estate investment managers” and their mega-profitable flip of Miami’s most iconic skyscraper certainly proves why. The firm announced today that they’ve sold The Miami Tower for a cool price of $220 million. LaSalle originally purchased the property then…
If it seems like you can get almost anything delivered to your house these days, it’s because, for the most part, you can. Need a set of champagne flutes or a can of Fancy Feast or an extra phone charger? Amazon Prime Now can get it to you for free…
The number of million dollar-plus homes in Miami has doubled since 2012 (even as the number of millionaire has not). It’s part of a national trend, according to Trulia. In 2012, 1.6 percent of all homes in the USA were worth at least seven figures. That share is now 3…
Turns out Donald Trump’s most successful business move of the past decade wasn’t Trump Steaks, Trump University or Miss Universe. Nope, not at all. According to personal financial documents Trump released yesterday, out of his more than 150 various business ventures, by far the biggest money maker was the Trump National…
The world laughed when Jimmy McMillan ran for New York City mayor with the slogan, “The rent is too damn high!” Yet, how many of us now repeat that line verbatim whenever we cut our landlord a check or browse apartment listings in Miami? They are, indeed, categorically, undebatably too damn…
Florida is ground zero of the foreclosure crisis. No other state even touches Florida when it comes to the number of foreclosure over the past decade. So you would figure our state government would be first in line when it comes to taking advantage of federal assistance programs meant to help regular…
Every year Christie’s International Real Estate compiles it’s list of the world’s top luxury real estate markets. Miami’s made frequent appearances in the top ten, but its ranking in the newly released 2015 study is the highest it has ever sat. In fact, we overtook both Paris and San Francisco to…
