321 Ocean

What is actually in the building

The county returns 22 folios at 321 Ocean Drive. 21 are homes. The remaining folio is a reference folio carrying no dwelling, and it is excluded from every figure here.

The homes run from 1,705 sq ft to 5,497 sq ft, median 2,675. The mix is 13 three-bedrooms, seven four-bedrooms and one seven-bedroom. Four floorplans carry most of the building: five homes at 2,530 sq ft, five at 2,926, three at 1,730 and two at 1,705.

One home needs flagging before any per-foot figure is read. Units 800 and 801 have been combined into a single residence, now recorded as one folio of 5,497 sq ft carrying two undivided interests in the common elements. The only sale attached to that folio — $4,700,000 in May 2015 — was paid before the combination, for a single apartment. Divided by the combined square footage it reads as $855 per square foot, which would be the lowest figure in the building by a wide margin and is simply an artifact. No price per square foot is published for that home anywhere on this page, and it is excluded from every per-foot figure below.

For 2026 the county assesses the homes between $1,833,287 and $14,141,012, median $6,059,337.

Has anyone lost money at 321 Ocean?

No. Not one owner, on the whole county record.

That is a rarer finding than it sounds. Across the buildings I measure, a quarter to a third of resellers are typically underwater, and at some the figure is above half — I have measured buildings where 80% of resales lost money and one where 81.8% of a single year’s buyers did. At 321 Ocean the county records ten resales and every single one sold for more than the owner paid. The median gain is 41.8% over a six-year hold.

Here is the complete list, so you can see the range rather than just the median:

Unit 301 is the building in miniature. The same 2,530 sq ft home has sold three times: $4,000,000 in May 2015, $5,375,000 in June 2021, and $8,025,000 in November 2025. That is up 100.6% across ten years — a home that has exactly doubled, with each of its three owners taking a share.

Two honest caveats belong with this.

The first is that ten resales is a small record, and it covers only ten of the 21 homes. Eleven homes here have never resold, and their owners’ outcomes are unknown — a building where the losses simply have not been tested would look identical to one where there are none. On the evidence available, though, there is nothing pointing the other way: the weakest result on the record is a 3.3% gain, not a loss.

The second is that the gains are not evenly spread. Unit 701 gained 3.3% over six years, which after carrying costs is a loss in real terms; unit 201 gained 59.3%. Both are in the same building. Which home you buy and what you pay for it matters more here than the headline.

The price record

No four-year change is published and the building carries a dash in my Miami Condo Index. Two of the four years are empty and the other two hold three sales between them. My rule is that a change requires at least five qualified sales in both the opening and closing year, and this record is nowhere near it.

What the record does support is a direction, stated carefully. The three sales in the window — $2,478, $2,708 and $3,172 per square foot — are all materially above what the same floorplans fetched in the 2015 sell-out, when 2,530 and 2,926 sq ft homes went at $1,401 to $1,880. The direction is almost certainly real. The magnitude is uncertain on three sales, and I would not put a percentage on it.

Across the four-year window the building cleared a median $2,708 per square foot in a band from $2,478 to $3,172, at a median price of $8,025,000.

The record price is $11,687,500, paid on 29 July 2020 for a 3,041 sq ft home — $3,843 per square foot. Its neighbour sold on the same day for $10,312,500, and at 2,675 sq ft that works out at $3,855 per square foot, the highest per-foot price the building has recorded. Those two homes sit well above the rest of the building on both price and assessment, and they are best read as their own tier rather than as comparables for anything else here.

Sixteen of the 29 recorded sales fall in 2015, when the building sold through. Since then it has averaged roughly one sale a year, which works out at one home in 28 across the four-year window — slower than the median building in my index, which turns over one home in 24.

Who this building suits, and who it does not

It suits a buyer who wants a large home in South of Fifth in a building of 21 rather than 200, and who is buying for a long hold. The ownership record here is genuinely good, and the homes that did best were held six years or more.

It suits a buyer who will pay attention to which home they are buying. The spread between the best and worst outcome on this record is 3.3% against 59.3%, and the two 2020 sales at $3,843 and $3,855 per square foot are a different tier from the rest of the building.

It suits badly anyone who may need to sell quickly. Three qualified sales in four years, and eleven of the 21 homes have never resold at all. This building does not trade often.

It suits badly a buyer relying on automated valuation. As set out above, one of the 21 homes carries a per-foot figure that is roughly half what it should be, and in a 21-home building that distorts any building-level average badly.

If you are selling here, you are in an unusually strong evidential position and you should use it precisely. The two 2025 sales at $2,708 and $3,172 per square foot are recent, and the fact that no owner in this building has ever resold at a loss is checkable by any buyer’s agent in ten minutes on the county record. What you should not do is lean on the 2020 pair at $3,843 and $3,855 unless you own one of those two homes — they are the top tier of the building, and a well-prepared buyer will say so.

Interested in selling at 321 Ocean?

Learn more about selling your condo at 321 Ocean with Josh Stein.

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