Azure Waterfront | Featured Luxury Properties

With condominium prices in the Luxury market such as South Florida, climbing to $50 million or more, brokers have taken up ever more aggressive marketing efforts to find qualified buyers.

They are marketing worldwide — To China in the past year, to Shanghai to pitch multimillion-dollar condominiums to a crowd of Chinese investors at the U.S. Real Estate Showcase and Forum.

As marketing suggests, developers are giving the luxury market something more to brag about than beaches. It’s all part of a boom that just a few years ago seemed most unlikely: South Florida was reeling from one of the deepest real-estate-driven recessions in decades. And the butter-soft demand was nowhere more in evidence than in the luxury condo market.

Today, bolstered by foreign buyers, the market has roared back and the luxury market is undergoing an explosion of stylish and sophisticated luxury and ultra-luxury projects, including at least eight designed by world-renowned winning architects. The lists of amenities include rooftop soccer pitches and balcony plunge pools and individual car elevators for whisking prized automobiles — and their owners — in privacy to their condominiums high in the sky.

All this exuberance raises the question: Is this a new bubble on the rise?

[Is the luxury market headed for another housing slide]

Housing prices have leveled off since a post-recession peak in 2013. A similar price slowdown in 2005 swayed like a wrecking ball that would soon land its blow to the housing market.

The glut of foreign buyers, who often pay in cash, could help, however. The constantly rotating field of foreign buyers serves to keep the luxury market hot, according to brokers and developers who, when one foreign economy falters, quickly target buyers in another where things are picking up.

These exceedingly rich buyers are often savvy investors who want to buy U.S. real estate as a currency hedge, effectively converting a portion of their wealth to dollars to protect it from devaluation.

That is what is happening on in China. Faced with a series of devaluations of China’s currency, wealthy investors see luxury condos here as a way to convert their money into strong dollars.

Wealth comes up to you and says, ‘How do I get my money out? I’ll buy. Just tell me how to get my money out.

Welcome to the luxury real estate market!

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