Luxury Condos Planned At Surfside Collapse Site Fail To Draw Any Buyers

The developer looking to build a luxury project on the site of the deadliest building failure in modern American history hasn't sold a single unit more than a year after launching marketing efforts.

Damac International, the international arm of Dubai-based Damac Properties, purchased the site at 8777 Collins Ave. in Surfside a year after the Champlain Towers South condo building collapsed in 2021, killing 98 people.

But after soft-launching sales in January 2025 for a 15-story building with 37 "mansions in the sky" and opening its sales gallery in May, Damac has no signed contracts, Senior Vice President of Development Jeffrey Rossely told Bisnow.

"A lot of the feedback we had had was that a lot of people did not want to be the first purchaser," Rossely said. "They wanted to see some activity."

Damac was the sole bidder for the waterfront property and paid $120M for it. The developer began clearing the site in June 2023 for its debut U.S. project.

It planned to open its sales gallery in February 2025, a month after launching sales, but Rossely said the process was rushed. The gallery wasn't ready because of tariffs, and out-of-country materials had trouble clearing customs, creating a four-to-six-week lag in building the sales gallery, he said.

The Real Deal first reported the lack of sales on Wednesday.

When the gallery opened in May, it was too late for a sales season that is most active between November and April, he said, adding that the condo market was also particularly slow during October and November due to the election.

The collapse was cited as a reason not to buy a unit by less than 10% of potential buyers, Rossely said.

"We don't believe that the site's history, per se, is a major detriment," he said. "Let's be clear: There are many properties around the world where there have been the tragedies, not necessarily in terms of the building collapse, but the building being blown up in wars."

This is Damac's first property in the U.S. Its experience has been night and day compared to its projects in Dubai, which is the leading global market for branded condos. Damac's founder, billionaire Hussain Sajwani, has built thousands of units across the Middle East.

"We're used to placing 2,000 to 3,000 villas or a whole building on the market and seeing it sold out in a day," Rossely said.

"We're going through a learning curve, and we're not afraid to admit that we're going through a learning curve," he added.

But interest wasn't completely lost. Damac had a potential buyer who was willing to spend more than $200M on units. The potential buyer came in at the beginning of the 2025 winter season, but after an in-depth review of the offer, the source of the funds "could not be clearly identified," and the company's legal team advised against it, Rossely said.

But by the time Damac passed on the deal in February, the company had once again missed the bulk of another sales season.

"We're back in the same situation we ended up in at the end of the beginning of 2025," Rossely said.

The building's units are projected to span 7K SF to 10K SF at prices starting at $15M. Residents would have access to residential butlers, a private restaurant, 55K SF of amenities and a 75-foot-long swimming pool suspended 125 feet in the air.

The developer is in the process of obtaining the master building permit, Rossely said.

Damac's sluggish Surfside sales come amid an otherwise robust ultra-luxury market. There were 364 home sales of $10M and up in Miami last year, the most since 2021, according to the Miami Association of Realtors. Those numbers don't include preconstruction figures.

The project is still on track to open by 2029, but in the meantime, outside developers are looking to get in on the project, Rossely said. He declined to comment on who the company is in talks with.

The developer has already invested $200M in the project and plans to invest another $500M.

"We probably didn't get everything right, made a few mistakes, but that doesn't mean we have lack of faith in the project," Rossely said.