Merrick Manor

What is actually inside the building

The Miami-Dade County Property Appraiser holds 285 folios at 301 Altara Avenue — 227 residences and 57 commercial folios. That commercial component is the first thing to understand about this building: roughly one folio in five is not an apartment.

Every figure on this page is drawn from the 227 residences only. But the commercial folios are part of the same condominium, and I would ask directly how they are weighted in the budget and in the association’s voting before buying here. That is a question the county record raises and cannot answer.

The homes are compact and urban, which sets this building apart from everything else in Coral Gables covered on this site. They run 522 to 3,194 square feet, with a median of 905 — against a median of 2,955 and 3,165 square feet at the Gables Club towers on the water. The mix is 104 one-bedrooms, 89 two-bedrooms, 30 three-bedrooms and four four-bedrooms.

No single floorplate dominates. The most common are 703 square feet (14 homes), 778 (10), 1,104 (10) and 1,107 (10) — a wide spread of small plates rather than a few repeated ones.

The 2026 assessed values run $254,326 to $2,086,185, with a median of $606,563. Assessed value is the county’s figure for tax purposes, not a sale price.

How often homes here change hands

Merrick Manor recorded 82 qualified, arm’s-length sales across 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026 to date, in 227 homes: about one home in eleven trading each year. Same-day, same-price transfers are counted once.

These are sales of a building delivered in 2019, so the 82 are mainly resales rather than developer closings. The original sell-out is in the record too: 110 qualified sales in 2018 and 2019, which are left out of the turnover figure above.

That changes what you can know here. A building with only a handful of sales in four years cannot support a trend; this one recorded 34, 24, 18 and 6 sales in the four years, and the evidence follows.

The price record, and why it is worth trusting

Qualified, arm’s-length sales of residences from the county record, retrieved 21 August 2026. Same-day, same-price transfers are counted once.

$804, $796, $817, $852: up 6.0% across four years, and no single year more than about 4% away from the four-year average. A curve this flat on 82 sales is a different kind of evidence from a per-foot figure that swings on a handful of transactions.

Note the median price column doing something else entirely — $767,500 down to $583,500 and back to $691,500. That is the usual trap and it is worth seeing clearly: the median home that sold went 906 square feet in 2023, 756 in 2024, 814 in 2025 and 804 in 2026. Smaller homes sold in 2024, so the median price fell while the price per foot barely moved. The price column is measuring the mix; the per-foot column is measuring the market.

The floorplate evidence agrees, which is what makes me comfortable stating it. Most plates with sales in three or more years have held inside a narrow range: the 713 square foot home went $799, $785, $810, $783 per square foot across all four years, and the 1,104 square foot home went $856, $863, $829. The one plate that has moved meaningfully is the 932 square foot home — $823 in 2023 to $971 in 2026, up 18.0%.

The highest price recorded here is $2,700,000, on 1 September 2023, for a 3,194 square foot residence — $845 per square foot, and notably close to the building’s ordinary per-foot level rather than far above it. That is another sign of a building priced consistently across its range.

Who this building suits

It suits a buyer who wants Coral Gables at a price that most of Coral Gables does not offer. A median assessed value near $600,000 and a median home of 905 square feet puts this building in a different market from the waterfront towers — and for a first purchase, a pied-à-terre or an income property, that is the point rather than a shortcoming.

It suits an investor who wants a deep record to price against. One home in eleven trading each year means you can price a purchase against many recent, near-identical comparables. The per-foot figure has moved 6.0% in four years with little volatility, and that is what the record shows, not a prediction.

It suits a buyer looking for space or water badly. There is neither. The largest home is 3,194 square feet and most are well under a thousand; the waterfront Coral Gables product is at Gables Club, at roughly the same price per foot but three times the size and a fraction of the liquidity.

Ask about the 57 commercial folios before you commit — how they are assessed, how they vote, and what happens to the residential budget if retail occupancy changes. The county record establishes that a fifth of the condominium is commercial; the declaration will tell you what that means.

If you are selling here, the record gives you real comparables and a per-foot history that has drifted upward rather than jumped. Price against the current per-foot figure for your floorplate — there will be several recent ones — rather than against a headline median that follows unit size. Ask me for the comparables on your line before you set a number.

Interested in selling at Merrick Manor?

Learn more about selling your condo at Merrick Manor with Josh Stein.

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