Echo Brickell

What is actually inside the building

The Miami-Dade County Property Appraiser holds 174 folios for Echo Brickell at 1451 Brickell Avenue, of which 171 are homes. The other three are two ground-floor commercial units and an aggregate reference folio, and all three are excluded from every figure below. The declaration’s common-element shares close at 100.4340% — above the whole rather than short of it, which means nothing is missing from this pull.

The homes run 690 to 7,773 square feet, with a median of 1,148. The mix is 94 two-bedrooms and 53 one-bedrooms, with thirteen three-bedrooms, ten four-bedrooms and one six-bedroom.

Three floorplates cover 51 of the 171 — 1,287 square feet, 777 and 1,137, seventeen of each — and above them the building thins out quickly into plates that appear three to six times.

The 2026 assessed values run $286,108 to $25,825,790, with a median of $983,112. That maximum is one apartment, and it is the reason this page needs two separate sections.

The penthouse and everyone else

On 18 October 2024 the 7,773 square foot penthouse here sold for $33,000,000 — $4,245 per square foot. Of the 31 Brickell buildings I have pulled the county record for, that is the highest price anything has ever sold for, and it is not close: the next highest anywhere in the cluster is $14,000,000. It is not, for what it is worth, a Miami record — several oceanfront buildings have traded higher per square foot — but within Brickell nothing comes near it.

Now the rest of the building, which is a very different page.

One hundred and seventy-eight homes recorded a first qualified sale between 2017 and 2019, at a median of $945,000 and $924 per square foot. By the standards of Brickell in 2017 that was an expensive opening, and it is the number every outcome here is measured against.

One hundred and three of those buyers have since sold. Sixty-eight gained and 35 lost — a 34.0% loss rate — at a median of +5.6% over a median holding period of 4.5 years. Sixty-eight homes have never resold.

Timing does not explain it. Ninety-three of the 103 sold in 2021 or later, through the strongest stretch Miami has had, and 29.0% of them still sold below what they paid, at a median of +7.2%.

The entry price does explain it. Sorted by what each buyer paid per square foot in the sell-out:

A majority of the buyers who paid above about $1,100 per square foot in 2017 have sold at a loss, and the group as a whole is down. The buyers who came in below $750 are up 30%. Same building, same seven-year window.

By floorplate the same thing shows up at the larger sizes: of the five 1,625 square foot homes with a completed round trip, four sold at a loss, at a median of −12.0%.

The extremes:

• A 1,287 square foot home bought for $755,900 in November 2017 sold for $1,450,000 in July 2022 — up 91.8%.
• A 1,614 square foot home bought for $2,782,100 in December 2017 sold for $1,550,000 in July 2020 — down 44.3%.

That second buyer paid $1,724 per square foot in 2017. The first paid $587. The county record shows transactions and not reasons — it cannot say why anyone agreed either number — but it establishes plainly that in this building the developer’s price varied enormously by home, and that variation, not the market, is what separated the outcomes. All figures are gross, before commissions, closing costs, taxes and assessments.

The price record

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

Thirty-eight qualified sales in four years across 171 homes is about one home in eighteen each year.

Per square foot the four years run $1,045, $1,149, $1,075 and $1,004 — a drift of −4.0% across the period. On 38 sales I would call that flat rather than falling; the direction is not supportable at this sample size and I am not going to claim it.

What is worth stating is the relationship between that band and the sell-out. The building opened at a median of $924 per square foot in 2017 and has traded around $1,050 since 2023. Nine years, roughly 14% on the median rate, before any cost of ownership. That is the plain arithmetic behind a 34% loss rate, and it is more informative than any single sale.

The $33,000,000 penthouse sits entirely outside that band at $4,245 per square foot and should not be read as evidence about anything else in the building.

Who this building suits

It suits a buyer who is buying a specific apartment on evidence and is prepared to be unsentimental about price. The single most useful fact here is that the 2017 developer price varied from under $600 to nearly $1,900 per square foot across the same building, and that variation has driven every outcome since. Establish what the seller paid before you discuss anything else.

It suits a buyer at the lower end of the building better than the upper. The cheapest quarter of 2017 entries is up 30.0% with a 20% loss rate; the dearest quarter is down 9.2% with a 60.7% loss rate. Nothing in the record suggests that has reversed.

It suits a buyer expecting appreciation from a new Brickell tower badly, and this building is one of the clearer cautionary records available. A third of everyone who has bought and sold here lost money, most of them selling into a rising market.

It suits someone who wants the address and the apartment for their own sake. A median home of 1,148 square feet on Brickell Avenue, assessed at a median of $983,112, is a perfectly sound proposition — provided it is bought at a price the resale record supports rather than at the 2017 one.

If you are selling here, the first thing a prepared buyer will look up is what you paid in 2017, and there is a good chance it was high. If you were in the lower half of the sell-out range, the record is genuinely with you and you should show it. If you were not, price against the current per-foot band of roughly $1,000 to $1,150 rather than against your entry, because 35 owners before you have already tested the alternative. Ask me for the per-foot record on your line before you set a number.

Interested in selling in Echo Brickell?

Learn more about selling your condo in Echo Brickell with Josh Stein.

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