Cloisters on the Bay

What is actually inside the building

The Miami-Dade County Property Appraiser holds 42 folios at 3471 Main Highway, of which 40 are residences, with a common-area folio and a reference folio making up the rest. The declaration’s common-element shares close once one folio for which the county records no share at all is accounted for — the roll is short there, not the pull, and no share-derived figure is published for that home.

The defining fact is the size. The smallest residence in this building is 4,960 square feet. Not the median — the smallest. They run to 7,100, with a median of 5,660. There is no compact stock, no investor unit, nothing under 4,960 square feet.

What makes that genuinely unusual is the bedroom count. Thirty-three of the 40 homes are three-bedrooms, with five four-bedrooms and one two-bedroom. A 5,660 square foot three-bedroom is a very different thing from a 5,660 square foot six-bedroom — these are large rooms rather than many rooms, which is a real distinction if you are choosing between this and a comparably sized home elsewhere.

Four floorplates cover 29 of the 40 homes: 5,660 square feet (14 homes), 5,090 (7), 4,963 (6) and 5,860 (2).

The 2026 assessed values run $971,186 to $6,149,595, with a median of $2,121,812.

Three sales in four years

Qualified, arm’s-length sales from the county record, retrieved 21 August 2026.

Three qualified sales in four years, in a 40-home building: about one home in fifty-three each year. The median across the buildings in my Miami Condo Index is one home in 23.

Two of the four years produced nothing at all. No price direction can be established from this and I am not going to attempt one. The 2025 sale came in at $936 per square foot against a 2024 pair at $864, but that is one sale against two and the homes were different sizes.

What the record supports is a level. The three most recent sales here cleared between $801 and $936 per square foot, median $928. That is the honest answer to what the recent record shows per foot.

The most recent transaction is $5,750,000 in 2025, for a 6,140 square foot home. If you are buying or selling here, that is your comparable — and it is the only recent one.

Very large homes at a low price per foot

Put the two halves of this building together and something worth saying emerges.

The homes are enormous — a 5,660 square foot median, nothing under 4,960. And the price per square foot is low — $801 to $936, against roughly $1,500 to $2,500 in the oceanfront Miami Beach and Bal Harbour buildings measured on this site, and $1,635 to $1,941 at the newer Coconut Grove towers a few streets away.

The result is that a home here costs roughly what a much smaller home costs elsewhere on the water. The $5,750,000 paid in 2025 bought 6,140 square feet. The same money on Miami Beach, at the per-foot levels this site has measured, buys somewhere between 2,300 and 3,800.

I am not going to tell you why the discount exists, because the county record shows transactions and not reasons. Age, layout, finish level, association costs, the specific position on the bay, the fact that a 5,660 square foot three-bedroom suits a narrower set of buyers than a 2,000 square foot two-bedroom — any of those could be doing the work, and none of them is in the tax roll. What is established is the gap. Whether it represents value or a warning is a question to answer by walking the building and reading the documents, not by reading this page.

Who this building suits

It suits a buyer who genuinely wants five to seven thousand square feet in Coconut Grove and is prepared to buy something that trades rarely. On a per-foot basis it sits well below the oceanfront and newer Coconut Grove buildings compared above, and the space is not marginal: it is far larger than a typical condominium home.

It suits anyone who might need to sell within a few years extremely badly. Three sales in four years, with two empty years, is close to no market. If two owners list at once they are competing for what may be a single buyer, and neither has a current comparable to price against.

The other consequence of forty owners is concentration. A special assessment, an insurance renewal or a reserve shortfall divides forty ways, so each owner carries a larger share than in a big tower. Ask for the reserve study and the last three years of budgets, and ask specifically about insurance.

If you are selling here, your comparable is the 2025 sale and there is nothing else recent. Price against it, be realistic that the buyer pool for a 5,600 square foot three-bedroom is small, and plan for a long marketing period rather than a competitive one. Ask me before you set a number — with three transactions on record, pricing is essentially the entire outcome.

Interested in selling at Cloisters on the Bay?

Learn more about selling your condo at Cloisters on the Bay with Josh Stein.

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