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. That is the most accessible pricing of any Coral Gables building measured for this site, by a wide margin.

The most liquid building on this site

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.

Measured against the 162 buildings on this site with 40 or more homes, that is the third-highest turnover of any of them. The two above it — at one home in three and one in four — are small buildings still working through their original developer sell-out, where a high count is an artefact of first closings rather than a resale market. Among established buildings with a genuine resale record, this is the most liquid one I have measured.

That single fact changes what you can know here. Most of the luxury buildings covered on this site produce six to twenty sales in four years, which is why so many of those pages have to say plainly that no trend can be established. This one produces more sales in a year than most produce in four, 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.

$804, $796, $817, $852 — up 6.0% across four years, and no single year more than about 2.5% away from the four-year average. After a session spent measuring buildings whose per-foot figures swing 20% on three transactions, a curve this flat on 82 sales is a genuinely different kind of evidence.

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. Every plate with sales in three or more years has 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 better than almost anything else measured on this site. One home in eleven trading each year means you can price a purchase against many recent, near-identical comparables, and you can exit without waiting for the one buyer in the market. Combined with a per-foot figure that has moved 6.0% in four years with almost no volatility, this is a building where the numbers behave.

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, you are in an unusually good position: real comparables, real liquidity, and a per-foot record 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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