Baltus House

A Building of Studios and One-Bedrooms

I pulled every folio the Miami-Dade County Property Appraiser holds for Baltus House at 4250 Biscayne Boulevard. The county returns 168 folios, of which 167 are residential dwellings and one is not. The declaration is filed under the address rather than the marketing name — as 4250 Biscayne Boulevard Condo — which is worth knowing if you search the county record yourself and find nothing under “Baltus House”.

This is a small-home building. Heated area runs from 472 to 1,626 square feet with a median of just 730. The bed mix follows: 85 one-bedroom homes (50.9%), 53 two-bedroom (31.7%), 24 studios (14.4%) and five three-bedroom homes (3.0%). Studios and one-bedrooms together are 65.3% of the building. The plates repeat modestly — 19 homes at 640 sq ft, 11 each at 616 and 648, and ten at 472.

On the 2026 tax roll, assessed values run from $159,033 to $815,480, median $312,243, the 41st lowest median of the 468 buildings with 20 or more homes in my county archive, which follows directly from the size profile.

The county file gives a year built of 2015. Story count, architect and amenity detail are not in it.

What Happened Between 2024 and 2025

The rate per square foot held steady across 2023 and 2024 — $608 then $616, on 14 and 11 sales — and then fell to $513 in 2025, a drop of 16.7% in a single year. 2026 has recovered part of it, to $539 on six sales, but the level is still well below where the building sat two years ago.

My honest reading: the 2024-to-2025 fall is the one real movement in this table, and I would treat the direction as established while holding the magnitude loosely — 2025 rests on only six sales, and six sales in a building of 167 small, fairly similar homes can move a median more than the underlying market did. The 2023 and 2024 readings are the firmest on the page, and both sit near $610.

Volume itself has thinned sharply: 14 sales in 2023, 11 in 2024, then six and six. Across the four years that is 37 qualified sales, or one home in 18 each year, but the recent half of the window is running at roughly half the rate of the earlier half. The county carries 237 qualified sales at this address across its full record.

Nearly Half of Documented Resales Lost Money

The county record holds 89 completed round trips on 75 of the 167 homes. A round trip here is every pair of consecutive sales on a home, both legs qualified and arm’s-length, with pairs across a foreclosure dropped (two were). A home that traded three times counts twice.

Of those 89, 47 sold for more than the previous owner paid, 40 sold for less and two closed at the identical price. So 52.8% gained and 44.9% lost, the 15th highest loss rate of the 378 buildings in my data with 50 or more round trips. The median gain across all 89 is 1.0%; among the 47 that gained, 14.2%. The range runs from -30.2% to +72.3%, and the median hold is 6.1 years.

One percent across about six years is, in practical terms, nothing — a seller in the middle of that distribution did not cover the ordinary costs of buying and selling. That is what this building’s own record shows, and a buyer is better served knowing it than discovering it.

Two qualifications, both real. The 6.1-year median hold is short, and short holds are systematically less likely to show gains than the twenty- and thirty-year holds that flatter older buildings. And the downside is contained: the worst outcome is -30.2%, milder than in most buildings in my data, where 201 of the 378 with 50 or more round trips carry an individual loss beyond -50%. Baltus House has not been a place where owners lost badly. It has been a place where a large minority did not gain.

The highest price on the county record here is $975,000, closed 24 January 2023, for a 1,623 sq ft home at $601 per square foot. The next two are also among the building’s largest homes: $964,000 in June 2022 and $920,000 in April 2026, the latter a 1,626 sq ft home at $566 a foot. The pattern is consistent — the top of this building is set by its handful of large homes, and even those trade at rates per foot close to the building’s general level rather than at a premium to it.

Who Baltus House Suits, and Who It Does Not

It suits a buyer who wants a low entry point on the Biscayne Boulevard corridor and intends to live in the home. The median assessed value is $312,243 and half the building is one-bedroom homes; for a first purchase or a pied-à-terre that is a genuinely accessible position, and the tight resale distribution means the downside has historically been contained.

It suits badly a buyer counting on appreciation. 44.9% of documented resales here closed below their purchase price and the median round trip returned 1.0% over 6.1 years. That is the clearest statement this record makes and it should be weighed before an offer, not after.

It also suits badly a buyer who needs to be confident of a quick exit. Sales have halved from 14 a year to six, and a thinning market in small, similar homes means competing directly with other sellers of near-identical units.

If you are selling: price against the recent $513 to $539 band rather than the $608 to $616 of 2023 and 2024, and recognise that in a building of repeating small plates your competition is other units in the same building. The building’s large homes are the exception worth arguing separately — the April 2026 sale at $920,000 shows that end still transacts.

Interested in selling at Baltus House?

Learn more about selling your condo at Baltus House with Josh Stein.

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