Investors Discover New Appetite for Miami Beach Hotels
Miami Beach is still an undiscovered pleasure for many international travelers—and so are its hotels, EWM Realty International's Jason Zarco tells us. That's keeping investors interested in its hospitality properties.
"We've never seen the magnitude of global attention from international travelers and investors we're seeing today," Jason says. Recently, Jason, who's in EWM's Miami Beach office, repped a private buyer in its $9.5M acquisition of the Marlin Hotel at 1200 Collins Ave. The hotel sports an Art Deco exterior—not so unusual in its location—but less commonly, the boutique property is home to South Beach Studios, where Bob Marley, Aerosmith, Jay-Z, U2 and others have produced their music.
For the buyer, Jason says, the deal is an opportunity to create a product for those who don’t enjoy being in hustle-and-bustle mega-properties. "There aren’t many true luxury boutique hotels for the private, low-key luxury traveler," he explains. Renowned Miami Beach architect L. Murray Dixon, who designed the Raleigh Hotel and Hotel Victor, among others, did the Marlin in 1939; it was renovated in 1991 and 2011. Jeffrey Cohen and Luigi Mercurio, also with EWM’s Miami Beach office, repped the seller, Mario Valadares de Costa.
