THE 1% RULE SNAPSHOT · 🏆 Karim's Top 3 Multifamily Picks

Rate: 7.87% | Down: 25% | Expenses: 35%

Nothing clean cleared 1% this time, and I would rather tell you that than dress one up. All three of these show their rents unit by unit in the listing.

🏙️ Karim's Top 3 Condo Picks

Rate: 7.87% | Down: 25% | HOA, taxes and insurance billed separately

Straight talk first: all three of these lose money every month with 25% down at today's rate. We priced each one off closed rentals in its own building, skipped hotel-style buildings, and checked each unit's lease rules and assessments. These are the closest we found, and they suit a buyer putting more money down.

📊 South Florida Market — September 2026

MIAMI REALTORS published September numbers on October 16 for Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach:

That is two different markets under one roof. Houses are still a seller's game. Condos sit at 12.3 months of supply in Miami-Dade and 10.2 in Broward, which is why the condo picks above look the way they do, and why you have room to negotiate if you buy one anyway.

The Fed held at 3.75% to 4.00% on Wednesday in a 10 to 2 vote, and the two dissenters wanted to raise. The Freddie Mac 30-year fell to 7.24% on Thursday, down from 7.40% two weeks earlier but still above 6.17% a year ago. Add the usual premium for an investment loan and you get the 7.87% that every pick above is underwritten at.

🎶 III Points Helped Make Its Lot Worth $1.1 Billion. Now the Lot Has a New Owner.

Photo: Andy Bridge / Unsplash

Two weekends ago, III Points took over Wynwood. Organizers expected about 40,000 people a day across 13 stages, per NBC 6, and a wristband scanner failure on Friday left a lot of them standing in the rain. The ground they were waiting on had sold less than three weeks earlier for about $1.1 billion. Those two facts are the same story, and it is one of the best real estate stories Miami has.

Before: warehouses, galleries and a $5 million bet. Moishe Mana started buying Wynwood in 2009, beginning with a distressed warehouse for about $5 million, according to Mana Common. He told The Real Deal he paid "$18 a foot, $20 a foot" for the land. That same year Tony Goldman opened the Wynwood Walls during Art Basel. Four years later, in October 2013, David Sinopoli and Erica Freshman launched the first III Points, per World Red Eye. Sinopoli later said the early years drew "maybe five or six thousand people at most", and all of them locals.

Then the zoning caught up with the crowd. In September 2015 the city gave final approval to Wynwood's rezoning, known as NRD-1. It raised allowed density to 150 units an acre, encouraged micro-units, and added incentives to keep the old warehouses, per the Wynwood BID. In 2016 the commission approved Mana's own Special Area Plan, with buildings up to 24 stories on about 24 acres, WLRN reported.

Here is the part worth slowing down on. Those towers mostly never came. What came instead was the convention center that hosts III Points, a marketplace, and a decade of events. By 2016 the festival was running on Mana's lot, straight through Hurricane Matthew. In 2018 it even moved to February to dodge hurricane season, before eventually settling back into October. Mana Common says Mana spent $2 million to $3 million a year on Wynwood culture, festivals included.

An entitled lot that sits unbuilt normally just costs its owner money. This one hosted a festival that drew about 50,000 fans in recent years, per the Miami Herald. The land got famous while it waited. That is the whole trick, and it worked.

After: one buyer, all cash. On September 29, Citadel's Ken Griffin closed on about 30 acres of Mana Wynwood for about $1.1 billion, all cash. Mana's own release calls it the largest land assemblage deal in Florida history. Mana told TRD he paid about $50 million for most of the portfolio and $20 million more for the last piece. Griffin's first offer, roughly three years ago, was about $800 million, per Commercial Observer. Mana said no, then came back three days later.

Now our math, not anyone's press release. $1.1 billion over 30 acres works out to about $842 per square foot of land. That is roughly 40 times what Mana says he paid. One caveat: the price includes buildings, so treat it as a headline number rather than a clean land comp.

The land is headed for a Carnegie Mellon campus. Griffin is giving the university $3 billion, the largest single gift ever to a US university, with $2 billion of it for a Wynwood campus serving about 3,500 students, AP reported. Construction is slated for 2027, with graduate students arriving in 2028 and undergraduates in 2032. The site plan still has to be amended to allow a university, Mayor Eileen Higgins told Commercial Observer. Mana keeps more than 15 acres in the neighborhood.

🔮 My take: what happens to III Points next

Start with what is known. The Herald reports that Mana will operate the venue through the end of 2027, and that 2027 "could see a final festival" there. Sinopoli told the paper that "planning for 2027 is underway," and as of this week I can find no announced date or venue. Hialeah's Factory Town, the obvious backup, sits on seven acres, and its developer says that is not big enough.

So here is my read, and it is an opinion, not a forecast. I think October 2027 is the last III Points on this lot, and it gets marketed as a farewell. After that, I see three paths, in order of how likely I think they are.

First, a smaller festival on the acres Mana kept. More than 15 acres is roughly half of today's site and twice the size of Factory Town. Mana has spent more than fifteen years using events to build value on land he is not ready to develop. I would be surprised if he stopped now, with a university about to raise the value of everything around it. The catch is whether those acres are contiguous and free.

Second, something closer to the early years. The festival started small and local, and this year it already ran a citywide satellite program across the week. A III Points that rents venues across Wynwood, Allapattah and Little River instead of fencing one giant lot is the cheapest version to run. It also follows the artists, who follow cheap rent.

Third, a big site somewhere else. Bayfront Park, a stadium lot, a county property. It is possible, but Ultra's Bayfront years came with neighbor fights and a detour to Virginia Key before it came back. A festival this tied to Wynwood loses something every mile it moves.

🧠 What It Means: Culture is the cheapest tenant a waiting piece of land can have, and III Points is the proof. Whatever neighborhood the festival lands in next is worth watching, because attention tends to arrive before the price does. Closer to home, a 3,500-student campus opening in stages from 2028 is real rental demand, even with some housing planned on campus. If you own small multifamily in Wynwood Norte, Allapattah or Edgewater, this is a slow story, so underwrite today's rents and treat the campus as upside.

🗳️ Two Days Out: What Tuesday Does to Your Tax Bill

Early voting in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach ends today, and Election Day is Tuesday, November 3. A City of Miami voter has thirteen questions to get through. Three of them touch a rental owner's bill, and they work very differently.

Amendment 3 is the one that gets the headlines. It would raise the non-school homestead exemption to $150,000 in 2027 and $250,000 in 2028, and cut the non-school assessment cap on rental and business property from 10% to 5%, per WUWF. Your duplex gets the cap and none of the exemption. It needs 60% to pass. UNF had it at 50% and the latest St. Pete Polls survey had it at 44%. Do not write the 5% cap into your 2027 underwriting yet.

The school levy is the one with a known number. Miami-Dade and Broward are both asking voters to keep one mill for schools. It is a renewal, so a yes changes nothing on your bill. On $500,000 of taxable value, that line is $500 a year you are already paying.

The Safe and Ready Miami Bond is the one nobody can price. Referendum 1 lets the City of Miami borrow up to $450 million for fire stations and a public safety headquarters. The city's July notice calls 0.5935 mills a maximum, with no increase to the current debt rate. The ballot calls that same number the current rate. The city's budget shows the debt line at 0.2536 mills. Those three descriptions do not line up, so I am not going to hand you a dollar figure I cannot defend. The backdrop is worth knowing: WLRN puts unfunded pension and retiree health obligations at about $2 billion.

🧠 What It Means: The bond only touches owners inside City of Miami limits. Pull your TRIM notice and find the debt service line, because that is the number that settles this. Then go vote before the line gets long.

🏗️ Sell Early or Hold Out? At the Edition Site, It Was a $5 Million Question

Photo: EDITION Residences, Miami Edgewater logo

Picture two neighbors in the same 1964 bayfront condo. One takes the developer's check. The other hires a lawyer.

The condo is Biscayne 21 in Edgewater, the site of the planned Edition Residences, a 55-story Marriott-branded tower. In 2022, 176 owners sold to Two Roads Development at roughly $785,000 a unit. Their brokers said that was more than three times the one-off price. By any normal standard, those owners won.

Ten owners in eight units did not sell. In September, Two Roads paid $46.19 million for those eight units.

A source told The Real Deal the total was about $50 million, and Two Roads declined to give a number. These are averages across different units, so treat 7.4x as the headline, not the exact premium.

How did eight units get that expensive? The condo documents. Biscayne 21's declaration required 100% of owners to end the condo, and the developer-controlled association lowered that to 80%. An appeals court sided with the holdouts, and the Florida Supreme Court declined to step in. Then a judge ordered the building restored, a job estimated at $65 million. Suddenly $46 million was the discount option.

The part that stings. Robert Murphy, a holdout and retired lawyer, told The Real Deal he was offered nearly $1.3 million in early 2021 and asked for about a third more. He says nobody answered. By his math, $600,000 to $700,000 for him and a neighbor would have avoided the whole fight. Two Roads ended up paying about 70 times that.

So should you hold out? Not as a plan. The holdouts lost access to their homes in 2023, when the building became uninhabitable, and were not paid until this deal closed. Murphy's unit was gutted. Legal fees are not public, so $5.8 million is before costs. The 176 had their money four years earlier.

🧠 What It Means: Before you judge a buyout offer on an older condo, read the declaration with a real estate attorney. Check the termination threshold, and look for the phrase "as amended from time to time." Biscayne 21's declaration lacked it, and that gap turned eight units into a veto. Edition units started at $1.7 million, more than twice what the 176 were paid, and Two Roads expects completion in September 2029.

🏫 Your Next Competitor for a Workforce Tenant Might Be the School Board

On October 14 the Miami-Dade school board voted to advance an unsolicited proposal from Pinnacle. The plan puts 150 units on about two acres of district land on SW 152nd Street, northwest of Zoo Miami. Pinnacle is asking for the highest density the Live Local Act allows. Board member Mary Blanco said the vote is "not in any way binding," and the parcel still faces an appraisal and an environmental review.

That would not be the district's first deal. In August the board approved a 99-year ground lease on the Arthur & Polly Mays Conservatory campus for about 364 affordable and workforce units on roughly 10.3 acres, per Holland & Knight, which advised the district. The capitalized lease is worth about $12.74 million, and tax credits finance the building. The district keeps the land.

Why does a duplex owner care? A developer who never has to buy the land, and who builds with tax credits, can rent below what you charge and still make money. That is good news for renters. For a small landlord leasing a two-bedroom nearby, it is new supply you will be priced against for years.

🧠 What It Means: If you own or are underwriting in South Dade, check what is being entitled within a couple of miles before you assume rent growth. Public land is the pipeline nobody puts on a broker's flyer.

🎉 What's Happening in Miami

Three ways to spend the next week, one of which ends today.

Hocus Pocus 2026 wraps up today at Factory Town in Hialeah, the venue that is too small to host III Points. It is 18 and up. Tickets here.

Miami Film Festival GEMS runs through November 5. Lineup and tickets here.

Time to Drive Fest rolls into Mana Wynwood from November 6 to 8, a reminder that the lot is still doing what made it famous. Tickets here.

Until next time. If you know someone who owns a building anywhere near Wynwood, forward this to them. A university is on its way, and that is going to change the math on rentals nearby, just not as quickly as the headlines suggest.

Reply to this email with an address if you want me to run the numbers on a specific building. I will send back the 1% math and tell you honestly when it does not work.

Karim Samy Real Estate Agent The Keyes Company d. 407.405.2969 [email protected] karimsamy.keyes.com

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