Ocean House

What is actually in the building

The county returns 31 folios for 125 Ocean Drive. 30 are homes; the remaining one is a 361 sq ft commercial store unit, excluded from everything below.

Those 30 homes cover a wide range. They run from 372 sq ft to 5,881 sq ft — a factor of nearly sixteen — with a median of 3,256. The bedroom mix explains it: 18 four-bedrooms with a median of 3,936 sq ft and nine one-bedrooms with a median of 1,334, one two-bedroom, and two homes of 372 and 732 sq ft that the county records with no bedroom count.

The 2026 assessments follow the same shape. The county assesses these homes between $578,054 and $17,207,218, median $7,640,714, a range of 29.8 times.

Why the building average tells you nothing here

On most pages in this series I argue that a building-wide price per square foot is a rough guide that needs adjusting for size. At Ocean House it is not a guide at all, and it should not be used.

The reason is structural rather than statistical. This address contains eighteen four-bedroom homes averaging well over 3,000 sq ft, and nine one-bedrooms with a median of 1,334 sq ft, along with two homes of 372 and 732 sq ft that the county records with no bedroom count. Those are not two ends of one market; they are two different products that happen to share a lobby. The county’s own assessments make the point: the cheapest home is valued at $578,054 and the dearest at $17,207,218.

The four sales of the last four years show the same split with unusual clarity:

The small homes cleared $1,515 and $1,613 per square foot. The large homes cleared $6,098 and $3,445. A median of those four is $2,529, and there is no home in this building for which $2,529 is a sensible number. Anyone quoting a per-foot figure for “Ocean House” is averaging two markets.

The March 2025 sale deserves its own sentence. $24,000,000 for 3,936 sq ft is $6,098 per square foot, the highest price per square foot recorded in this building. It is a genuine, qualified, arm’s-length transaction, and it is also a single transaction. Treat it as the ceiling of what this address can do, not as evidence about the next sale.

The price record

Two of the four years recorded no qualified sales at all. No four-year change is published for this building and it carries a dash in my Miami Condo Index — there is no 2023 base to compare anything against.

Across the four sales the building cleared a median $2,529 per square foot, in a band from $1,515 to $6,098, at a median price of $7,009,250. As the previous section argues, that median is arithmetic rather than information.

Turnover is thin: one home in 30 a year, against a median of one in 23 across the buildings in my Miami Condo Index. In a 30-home building that is one sale a year, and 2023 and 2024 had none.

The ownership record, by contrast, is a good one. The building sold through in 2012, when 15 homes — half the building — changed hands at a median $4,786,000, or $1,470 per square foot. Of those buyers, eight have since resold and not one lost money, at a median gain of 88.9%. Across all 27 resales the county records here, three lost money — 11.1% — at a median gain of 58.3% over a 5.2-year hold. The median loss among the three was 8.9% and the worst 23.9%.

A median gain of 58.3% across a whole resale history, combined with a loss rate of 11.1%, makes this a building whose owners have done well and whose few losers were not badly hurt.

Who this building suits, and who it does not

It suits a buyer at the very top of the South of Fifth market who wants a large home in a building of thirty rather than a tower of three hundred. Eighteen four-bedrooms, an ownership record with an 11.1% loss rate, and one sale at $6,098 per square foot.

It suits, quite separately, a buyer looking at the small homes. Nine one-bedrooms exist here and the two that traded in 2025 cleared $1,515 and $1,613 per square foot — a fraction of what the large homes command, in the same building at the same address.

It suits badly anyone who needs recent comparables. Four sales in four years, two of the years empty, and the two ends of the building are not comparable to each other.

It suits badly a buyer who wants to value from a spreadsheet. There is no meaningful building-wide number here, and any automated valuation applied to this address will be wrong by a wide margin in one direction or the other.

If you are selling here, everything turns on which half of the building you are in. If you own one of the large homes, your comparables are the March 2025 sale at $6,098 per square foot and the June 2026 sale at $3,445 — two transactions, far apart, and you should be honest with yourself about which one your home resembles. If you own one of the small homes, your comparables are the two 2025 sales at $1,515 and $1,613, and the large-home prices are not evidence for you in any direction. In both cases the strongest general argument you have is the ownership record: 27 resales, three losses, a median gain of 58.3%.

In the research: 8 Miami Pre-Construction Projects: What the Record Shows, as of 1 September 2026 · Miami Pre-Construction Condos: The Complete 2026–2031 Pipeline Guide

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