Opera Tower

What is actually in the building

The county returns 655 folios at 1750 N Bayshore Drive. 635 are homes. The other twenty are commercial: the county classifies each as office building — multistorey, condominium, and they run from 140 sq ft to 4,516 sq ft, assessed for 2026 between $59,500 and $991,780. They are real offices inside a residential tower, not parking or storage, and they are excluded from every price, size and assessment figure below.

The homes run from 401 sq ft to 1,048 sq ft, median 821 — the largest home is a little over two and a half times the smallest. The mix is 114 studios, 343 one-bedrooms and 178 two-bedrooms. Six floorplates carry almost the whole building: 178 homes at 1,048 sq ft, 172 at 791, 86 each at 821 and 825, 45 at 503 and 44 at 508. An exact comparable is nearly always available here, which is worth more than it sounds in a building this repetitive.

There is a real gap in the middle of the size range, and it matters for reading the price record. Nothing in this building measures between 508 and 791 sq ft. That is not a rounding artefact — it is two distinct products in one tower: 113 small homes at 401–508 sq ft, and 522 larger ones at 791–1,048. Over the last four years the small homes traded at a median of $589 per square foot and the larger ones at $485. Any single median for the whole building sits between two populations that do not price alike, and I have separated them below rather than average across the gap.

For 2026 the county assesses the homes between $89,197 and $495,361, median $258,748 — a spread of 5.6 times, which is wide for a building whose largest home is only 2.6 times its smallest.

The price record

Across the four years that is 131 qualified sales, a median of $499 per square foot in a band from $315 to $711, and a median price of $384,000. The four-year change is −17.4%. On 131 sales that is a real direction, not a small-sample wobble.

The magnitude, though, is smaller than the headline — and the reason is the size gap. Small homes here carry a higher price per foot than large ones, and far fewer of them changed hands in 2025 and 2026 than in 2023. When the cheaper-per-foot product is a bigger share of the sample, the building’s median per foot falls even if nothing repriced. Controlling for that by holding the size band constant:

Within one size band the fall is 14.5%, not 17.4%, and 2026 is the first year that has ticked up rather than down. I would not call that a recovery on seventeen sales, but I would not hide it either. My honest reading: the direction is real and well evidenced; the true magnitude is nearer 15% than 17%; and the 2026 uptick is not yet a level. The small-home band cannot be checked the same way — it recorded fourteen sales in 2023 and one in 2026, and I will not publish a trend on that.

Turnover runs at one home in 19 per year, against a median of one in 24 across the buildings in my Miami Condo Index. This is a liquid building. If you need to sell here, you will not be the only listing, and that cuts both ways.

What happens when a building sells out at the top

228 of this building’s 635 homes recorded their first qualified sale in 2008, and 230 qualified sales closed that year in total. Everyone who bought this building new bought it at the peak of the cycle. The county record shows exactly what that did to them.

69.0% is the highest original-buyer loss rate I have measured in any building in this series, and it is measured on 171 completed resales rather than a handful. The same tower, bought a few years later, produces a materially different result: 46.3% and a median gain rather than a median loss.

Time helped, but less than you would hope. Of all resales completed in 2021 or later the loss rate falls to 33.4% with a median gain of +7.8%. Narrow that to the original 2006–08 buyers who held all the way to 2021 or beyond and 40.4% of them still sold at a loss, median +4.0%. Thirteen years of holding was not reliably enough to get an original buyer back to par here.

The two ends of the record: the worst outcome is a 791 sq ft home bought for $361,544 on 1 December 2007 and sold for $150,000 on 9 July 2011, down 58.5%. The best is an 825 sq ft home bought for $170,000 on 22 July 2011 and sold for $380,000 on 22 June 2022, up 123.5%. Same building, same decade, opposite results — separated by when the owner came in.

Two caveats I would rather state than bury. 62 folios recorded a sale in 2008 and have never sold again, and 264 of the 635 homes have no resale on the county record at all. Those owners’ outcomes are untested and appear nowhere in the figures above. And a building’s all-time high tells you something too: the highest qualified price ever recorded here is $755,000, for unit 4601 on 10 December 2014. The nearest approach since was $699,000 in September 2024. Twelve years on, the 2014 peak still stands.

Who this building suits, and who it does not

It suits a buyer who wants a liquid, well-comped, genuinely affordable home on the Edgewater bayfront and is buying to live in it. At a median of $384,000 over four years this is one of the lower entry points on the water, the floorplates repeat enough that you can price a purchase properly, and one home in 19 trades each year so you are not guessing at value. The offices in the base are a real feature of the building rather than a defect, but you should know they are there.

It suits badly anyone buying on the assumption that a bayfront address protects the price. Nothing in this record supports that. Prices per foot are down 14–17% over four years depending on how you control for size, more than half of all resellers here have lost money, and the building has not revisited its 2014 high. If your plan needs appreciation over a three-to-five year horizon, this record does not underwrite it.

If you are selling here, price against the size band, not the building. A 503 sq ft home and a 1,048 sq ft home in this tower are not the same product and have not traded like it — the small ones carry roughly $100 per square foot more. A listing priced off the building-wide median will be wrong in one direction or the other by a margin that matters at this price point. And with turnover at one in 19, you will be competing with roughly thirty other sales a year.

Interested in selling in Opera Tower?

Learn more about selling your condo in Opera Tower with Josh Stein.

I'M READY

Edgewater Condo & Loft Buildings

Edgewater runs along Biscayne Bay between the Venetian Causeway and the Julia Tuttle. Every building below is covered in this series, with its own county sales record:

• 1800 Biscayne Plaza
• 1800 Club
• Aria on the Bay
• Bay House
• Biscayne Beach
• Blue Condominium
• Cite on the Bay
• City 24
• Edgewater Lofts
• Elysee Miami
• Gallery Art Condominium
• Gran Paraiso
• Icon Bay
• Moon Bay
• New Wave
• One Paraiso
• Onyx on the Bay
• Paraiso Bay
• Paramount Bay
• Platinum Condo
• Quantum on the Bay
• The Crimson
• The Grand Condos Miami
• Uptown Lofts