Undaunted By Prior Rejections, Continuum Co. Offers $141M For Surfside Condo Buyout
The Four Winds condominium building is prime real estate in the heart of Surfside, and it has become a sort of white whale for developers chasing beachfront property.
Ian Bruce Eichner's Continuum Co. is trying for a third time to buy out the condo units at the building at 9225 Collins Ave., offering $141M, Commercial Observer reports. The developer offered $125M last year and made a separate $141M offer earlier this year, both of which were rejected.
The 139-unit building, which was built in 1967, sits four blocks from the site of the Champlain Towers South building that collapsed in 2021, killing 98 people. The tragedy was the impetus behind new state regulations that require condo associations of buildings 30 years or older to conduct reserve studies every 10 years to recertify their legal status. They also mandate that associations fund reserves, which were frequently waived in the past.
Continuum isn't the only New York-based developer that has pursued the Four Winds for a buyout. Naftali Group offered $115M earlier this year, raising its price from its original $100M offer.
The condo board at the building formed a committee to weigh the offers and explore a potential buyout, only to reject the bids and push forward on paying the higher reserves required by the law, which must be funded by the end of this year. The recertification is expected to cost $5.8M, but 40 owners have yet to pay their share, CO reported.
The latest offer wasn't warmly received by some owners — one resident called the letter “despicable” to CO, claiming the developer was scaring people.
A Continuum spokesperson declined to comment to Bisnow.
Continuum's Florida president, Alexandra Eichner, told Bisnow in March that its approach to condo buyouts was to build relationships with the unit owners and avoid what she called a “hostile takeover.”
“There’s a likability, a personality component, because ultimately you are dealing with real people with real feelings, and developers can often rub people the wrong way,” Eichner said at the time.
Continuum has already executed on at least one condo buyout, taking over the Mariners Bay Condo in North Miami, which it plans to tear down and replace with a 267-unit luxury building.
The looming recertification deadline has put pressure on unit owners in aging buildings who face the unpleasant choice of coughing up potentially huge sums of cash or potentially having to leave their homes.
While condo terminations accelerated last year in South Florida, the number of buyouts has stalled this year because of the difficulties in getting 80% of a building to sign off on a deal and finding a developer with the patience and capital to execute a complex redevelopment.
A judge's ruling in March nixing a developer's attempt to buy out the Biscayne 21 condo tower in Edgewater, even though only 10 of the 192 unit owners opposed the sale, has further chilled the market, Bisnow previously reported.
“It's only going to take one unit owner to stand in the way and make a claim,” Joseph Hernandez, a partner at Bilzin Sumberg who works with developers on buyouts, said in August. “If this precedent holds, it would be extremely difficult to get a termination done in cases with similar facts.”
