Building facts
- Address
- 120 Ocean Drive
- Neighborhood
- South of Fifth
- Year built
- 2015
- Floors
- 10
- Residences
- 18
- Status
- Completed
- Architect
- Rene Gonzalez
- Pricing
- Starting at $4.5 Million
Key Takeaways
- Half of everyone who has resold here lost money — four of the eight resales on the county record sold for less than the owner paid, at a median outcome of −0.8% over a five-year hold. This is one of the few buildings I measure where the median owner has made nothing at all.
- The five resales rank in exact inverse order of what each buyer paid in 2015 — the highest-priced original buyer lost 15.7%; the lowest-priced gained 5.9%; and the three in between fall precisely in order. In a building of seven identical homes, that is about as clean a demonstration as the record ever gives.
- One home sold for exactly the same price eight years apart — unit 600 sold for $4,500,000 in December 2016 and $4,500,000 in May 2024. Identical figure, seven and a half years apart, on the same 1,938 sq ft home.
- Seven of the ten homes are the same 3,389 sq ft floorplan — which is what makes the comparison above meaningful — there is no mix effect to explain it away. The others are two at 1,938 sq ft and a 7,538 sq ft penthouse.
- The record is $20,000,000 and it is eleven years old — paid on 20 October 2015 for the 7,538 sq ft penthouse — $2,653 per square foot. It has not traded since, and the county now assesses it at $16,040,275.
- The only recent evidence is two sales in 2024 — $7,200,000 and $4,500,000, at $2,125 and $2,322 per square foot. The county records no qualified sales here in 2023, 2025 or 2026 to date.
120 Ocean Drive, Miami Beach, Florida 33139 | Neighborhood: South of Fifth
What is actually in the building
The county returns 12 folios at 120 Ocean Drive. Ten are homes. One is a reference folio carrying no dwelling, and one is a 708 sq ft ground-floor store classified commercial, which the county assesses at $1,699,200. Neither is included in any figure on this page.
The building is unusually simple. Seven of the ten homes are the same 3,389 sq ft floorplan — one to a floor. Two more are 1,938 sq ft, and the tenth is a 7,538 sq ft penthouse. Seven of the homes are three-bedrooms and two are two-bedrooms; the county leaves the bedroom field blank for the penthouse, so I am not stating a figure for it.
That structure matters more than it might sound. When seven of ten homes are identical, the building offers something most do not: a clean like-for-like comparison across time, with no floorplan mix to muddy it. Most of what follows depends on that.
For 2026 the county assesses the homes between $3,475,393 and $16,040,275, median $5,877,060. Among the seven identical 3,389 sq ft homes the assessments still rise steadily with height, from $5,200,937 to $6,970,229 — a 34.0% spread on homes of exactly the same size.
Did the buyers who paid the most do the worst?
At this building, yes — and the record is unusually clean about it.
Glass sold through in October and November 2015: ten of its eighteen recorded sales fall in those two months. Within the seven identical 3,389 sq ft homes, the developer priced by floor, and buyers paid between $1,888 and $2,626 per square foot for the same floorplan — a 39.1% spread driven by height alone.
Five of those seven have since resold. Here is every one of them, ordered by what the 2015 buyer paid per square foot:
| Home | Paid in 2015 | 2015 $/sq ft | Resold | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 900 | $6,800,000 | $2,006 | $7,200,000 (Jan 2024) | +5.9% |
| 1100 | $7,335,000 | $2,164 | $7,450,000 (Apr 2021) | +1.6% |
| 1000 | $7,800,000 | $2,302 | $7,200,000 (Sep 2021) | −7.7% |
| 1200 | $7,865,000 | $2,321 | $6,750,000 (May 2020) | −14.2% |
| 1500 | $8,900,000 | $2,626 | $7,500,000 (Sep 2019) | −15.7% |
The order is exact. Rank those five homes by what the original buyer paid per square foot and you get precisely the same order as ranking them by outcome, from best to worst, with no exceptions. The cheapest entry was the only clear gain; the most expensive was the worst loss.
I want to be careful about what this does and does not establish, because five data points is five data points.
What it does not mean is that the higher floors are bad homes, or that height is not worth paying for. The county still assesses the top of this building 34.0% above the bottom on identical square footage, and the resale prices themselves still rise with height — unit 1500 resold at $2,213 per square foot while unit 900 resold at $2,125. Height retains a premium; it simply retained a smaller one than the 2015 buyers paid for.
What it does mean is that the developer’s floor premium was priced ahead of what the resale market has since been willing to pay for it. The homes that were cheapest relative to the building have closed the gap; the ones that carried the largest premium have given part of it back. Because every one of these homes is 3,389 sq ft, none of that can be explained by size, mix, or which floorplans happened to trade.
The other five sales on the record tell the same story more bluntly. Unit 600 sold for $4,500,000 in December 2016 and for $4,500,000 in May 2024 — the identical price, seven and a half years apart, on the same 1,938 sq ft home. Before that it had gone $3,400,000 in October 2015 and $4,575,000 in February 2016, a 34.6% gain in four months, and it has given back nothing and gained nothing since.
The price record
| Year | Qualified sales | Median price | Median $/sq ft |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | No qualified sales | ||
| 2024 | 2 | $5,850,000 | $2,223 |
| 2025 | No qualified sales | ||
| 2026 to date | No qualified sales | ||
No four-year change is published and the building carries a dash in my Miami Condo Index. Three of the four years are empty and the fourth holds two sales. That is not a trend and I will not present it as one.
What those two 2024 sales do establish is a level: $7,200,000 for a 3,389 sq ft home in January at $2,125 per square foot, and $4,500,000 for a 1,938 sq ft home in May at $2,322. Both are the most recent evidence this building has, and both sit within the range it has occupied since 2019.
The record price is $20,000,000, paid on 20 October 2015 for the 7,538 sq ft penthouse — $2,653 per square foot. It has never resold. The county now assesses it at $16,040,275, though that figure is a tax assessment rather than a valuation and should not be read as a market view.
The ownership record is the weakest part of this building’s case. Of the eight resales on the county record, four lost money — 50.0% — at a median outcome of −0.8% over a five-year hold. A median of essentially zero is unusual. Most buildings I measure sit clearly in positive territory — Capri South Beach at +17.9%, The Neville at +40.9%, 321 Ocean at +41.8% — and several have never recorded a single loss. Glass has recorded four in eight.
Turnover is one home in 20 a year, close to the middle of the buildings I track. The building trades; it simply has not traded at rising prices.
Who this building suits, and who it does not
It suits a buyer who wants a full-floor home in a ten-home building on Ocean Drive and is buying it to live in. The product is genuinely scarce — one 3,389 sq ft home per floor, in a building where the entire ownership is nine other households.
It suits a buyer negotiating from evidence. This is a rare building where you can point to five like-for-like resales of an identical floorplan, four of them at or below the original price, and where the pattern of who lost is not a matter of opinion. That is a strong position to negotiate from and very few buildings hand it to you.
It suits badly anyone expecting the 2015 pricing to be reasserted. It has not been in eleven years, and the homes that carried the largest floor premium are the ones that have given the most back.
It suits badly a buyer who needs current comparables. There have been no qualified sales here since May 2024.
If you are selling here, be realistic about which half of the building you are in. If you bought low in 2015 or later, the record supports a modest gain and the January 2024 sale at $2,125 per square foot is your anchor. If you are one of the higher-floor original buyers, the evidence in your own building says the floor premium you paid has not held, and a well-prepared buyer will find that in ten minutes on the county record. The stronger argument in that case is not the 2015 price but scarcity: full-floor homes on Ocean Drive, ten households in the building, and a market where nothing comparable has come up since 2024.
Verified 19 August 2026 against the Miami-Dade County Property Appraiser record for 120 Ocean Dr — all 12 folios retrieved individually and grouped by subdivision, filtered to residential homes, excluding one reference folio and one 708 sq ft commercial store. Completeness was confirmed by checking that the undivided common-element interests across the folios sum to 100%. The county leaves the bedroom field blank for the penthouse, so no bedroom count is stated for it. Sale figures are qualified, arm’s-length transactions only, with bulk/portfolio transfers collapsed to a single transaction. The county records no qualified sales here in 2023, 2025 or 2026 to date. 2026 is an incomplete year. Assessed values are the county’s, not market valuations. Building age, storey count, architect and amenity detail are omitted: no primary source has been confirmed for them. Re-check when the next tax roll publishes.
Glass Miami Beach — Frequently Asked Questions
How many homes are there at Glass Miami Beach?
Ten. The county returns 12 folios at the address, of which one is a reference folio and one is a 708 sq ft commercial store. Seven of the ten homes are the same 3,389 sq ft floorplan, two are 1,938 sq ft and one is a 7,538 sq ft penthouse.
How much does a home at Glass Miami Beach sell for?
The most recent evidence is two sales in 2024 — $7,200,000 for a 3,389 sq ft home at $2,125 per square foot in January, and $4,500,000 for a 1,938 sq ft home at $2,322 in May. There have been no qualified sales since.
Have owners at Glass Miami Beach made money?
Half of them have not. Of the eight resales on the county record, four sold for less than the owner paid — 50.0% — at a median outcome of −0.8% over a five-year hold. That is among the weakest ownership records of the buildings I measure.
Which buyers at Glass Miami Beach did worst?
The ones who paid the most. Among the seven identical 3,389 sq ft homes, five have resold, and ranking them by what the 2015 buyer paid per square foot gives exactly the same order as ranking them by outcome. The highest-priced buyer, at $2,626 per square foot, resold 15.7% down; the lowest-priced, at $2,006, resold 5.9% up.
Are prices at Glass Miami Beach rising or falling?
The four-year record cannot say — three of the four years have no qualified sales and no four-year change is published. Over the longer record, prices for the identical 3,389 sq ft floorplan have not returned to their 2015 levels: the four resales of that plan since 2019 all landed at or below what the original buyer paid, except unit 900.
What is the highest price ever paid at Glass Miami Beach?
$20,000,000, on 20 October 2015, for the 7,538 sq ft penthouse — $2,653 per square foot. It has never resold, and the county now assesses it at $16,040,275, which is a tax assessment rather than a valuation.
Is a higher floor at Glass Miami Beach worth paying for?
It still carries a premium, but a smaller one than the original pricing assumed. The county assesses the top of the identical-floorplan stack 34.0% above the bottom, and resale prices do rise with height. What the record shows is that the floor premium paid in 2015 has not fully held on resale.
How often do homes at Glass Miami Beach come up for sale?
About one home in 20 a year, which is close to the middle of the buildings in my Miami Condo Index. Eighteen qualified sales are on the record, ten of them in the October and November 2015 sell-out.
Sources and further reading
It’s called Glass for a reason. This 18-story condo building is like an oceanside chandelier, perched above the exclusive South of Fifth Street neighborhood of Miami Beach, designed explicitly so that as it rises, it seems to dissipate into the atmosphere. Josh Stein loves to market these units not only because they are perfectly situated, spacious, and modern — they’re also largely customizable. “Each owner was encouraged to work with Rene Gonzalez, the architect, to develop the interior lighting and design,” Josh says.
Completed in 2015, Glass was part of a new boom in sleek, modern luxury in one of Miami’s most desirable neighborhoods. But Glass is particularly special because of its exclusivity: It has 18 floors and only 10 units. Sales range between $7.5 million and $9 million.
And each residence is designed to be uniquely glamorous. The 18th floor is a master suite. The 17th floor has a floating glass interior staircase, all-marble kitchen, and 40-foot-long infinity pool. The 16th floor has a media room and gym. Every square foot is designed to be an experience, from the interactive wall in the lobby to the elevator installation that mimics the sea and sky as it climbs. “Elsewhere, the building’s mirrored walls at each entry were put there to reflect the spectacular view of the Atlantic Ocean,” the building’s designers said. In the residences, each owner can see it for his or herself through sprawling floor-to-ceiling windows.
Interested in selling at Glass Miami Beach?
Learn more about selling your condo at Glass Miami Beach with Josh Stein.
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Part of Miami Luxury Condos.