Ocean Five

What the county records at 448 Ocean Drive

The Miami-Dade County Property Appraiser holds 16 folios at 448 Ocean Drive, all in one declaration recorded as OCEAN FIVE CONDO. The common-element shares sum to exactly 100.0000%, which is the cleanest possible confirmation that the pull is complete and that no apartment has been missed.

Of those 16 folios, 13 are saleable homes and all 13 are classified RESIDENTIAL – TOTAL VALUE : CONDOMINIUM – RESIDENTIAL. The remaining three carry HOTEL OR MOTEL : CONDOMINIUM – COMMERCIAL and are the hotel operation itself. So this is literally a small hotel with thirteen apartments recorded alongside it — and on the county’s own classification, none of those thirteen apartments is lodging.

The homes are unusually generous for this part of the site. They run 830 to 1,507 square feet with a median of 1,118, across four plans — 830 sq ft (six units), 1,118 (three), 1,446 (three) and a single 1,507. Seven of the thirteen are two-bedrooms and six are one-bedrooms. There is not a studio in the building. Compare that with the 45 studios at 1215 on West or the 300 studios at Trump International and you are looking at a different kind of property altogether.

For 2026 the county assesses the condominium at $9,917,548, a median of $890,188 per home across a range of $533,340 to $1,043,410.

Five years of silence in the sale record

The record holds just 17 qualified transactions in the building’s entire history. Nine of them closed in 2007, when the condominium was created. Since then: one in 2011, three in 2013, one in 2014, one in 2016, and two in 2021.

The four-year table is empty. Every row. The last qualified arm’s-length transaction at this address closed on 17 November 2021 — unit 501, 1,118 square feet, $1,095,000, or $979 per square foot.

I could have left this page silent about that and published the older figures as though they were current. I would rather say plainly that this building has no recent price record at all, because a buyer who does not know that will be shown a 2021 comparable and told it is the market.

Look at it per home and the picture is starker. The median last-sale year across the thirteen residences is 2007 — nineteen years ago — and four of the thirteen have never had an individual qualified sale recorded at all.

The consequence is that the county’s assessment is the only current valuation anyone has, and it has drifted a long way from the last recorded prices in both directions:

Two apartments of similar size (1,507 and 1,446 square feet), both last sold in early 2007, are now assessed 63% above and 35% below what was paid for them. That is not a statement about which one was a good buy. It is a statement about how little the transaction record can tell you here, and about how much weight ends up resting on the roll.

What about the rental claim this page used to make?

This page previously described Ocean Five as one of the few licensed short-term rentals in Miami Beach and said it could be rented without restrictions, and called it a great investment property. I have removed all of that.

None of it is supportable from the public record, and the second half is the kind of claim that gets relied on. The county classifies all thirteen homes here as ordinary residential condominium — only the three commercial folios carry a lodging code. That does not settle the rental question either way; a use code is a tax assessment category and decides nothing about rental rights in either direction.

What actually decides it is Florida’s state preemption of vacation-rental regulation, the City of Miami Beach’s zoning and licensing rules, and the condominium declaration and the association’s rules. If rental income is central to your purchase, check all three against their primary sources: the statute, the City of Miami Beach’s rules and the condominium declaration before you commit — not against any listing page.

Who this building suits, and who it does not

Thirteen large apartments in a small Ocean Drive building is a genuinely scarce thing, and if you want a two-bedroom of over a thousand square feet on this street, the choice is narrow enough that this belongs on the list.

It suits you badly if you need any confidence about value or exit. A building with no qualified sales in nearly five years, four homes that have never traded individually, and a median last sale in 2007 gives you almost nothing to price against. You would be negotiating with the county roll and the seller’s opinion, and very little else. It also suits you badly if the rental proposition is the point, for the reasons above.

If you are selling here, the same silence works for you: there are no recent comparables to hold you down either. But expect a slow, evidence-light negotiation, and expect any serious buyer’s agent to pull the same 17 transactions I did and arrive at the same conclusion — that the last real market signal in this building is nearly five years old.

Interested in selling at Ocean Five?

Learn more about selling your condo at Ocean Five with Josh Stein. 

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