Palau Sunset Harbour

What is actually inside the building

The Miami-Dade County Property Appraiser holds 59 folios at 1201 20th Street, and only 43 of them are homes.

The other sixteen are:

• nine commercial folios, recorded by the county as retail store units, and
• seven marina-slip folios — recorded as UNIT MV-1 through MV-7, of 72 to 154 square feet each.

A raw folio count for this building overstates the number of residences by more than a third, and any per-unit figure derived from 59 rather than 43 is wrong. Every number on this page uses the 43 homes.

Those homes run 701 to 4,079 square feet, with a median of 1,442. The mix is 17 three-bedrooms, 14 two-bedrooms and 12 one-bedrooms — genuinely mixed, with no dominant product.

The 2026 assessed values run $541,224 to $3,631,501, with a median of $1,546,757.

The marina slips are part of the condominium

This is the fact about Palau that is worth knowing before anything else, and it does not appear on a listing sheet.

Seven boat slips are deeded units of this condominium in their own right. The county records them as UNIT MV-1 to MV-7, each with its own folio, its own assessed value and its own undivided share of the common elements — between 0.0921% and 0.1955% apiece. They are property, not an amenity.

That has real consequences and they cut both ways.

If a slip is included in a purchase, it is a separate deed — with its own transfer, its own taxes and its own resale. Confirm whether the home you are buying comes with one, whether it conveys, and whether it is a separate folio. That question changes the price and it changes what you own.

If it is not included, no amount of association goodwill creates one. There are seven slips and 43 homes, so most residences here do not have one and cannot get one except by buying from another owner.

The nine commercial folios raise a second question worth putting to the association: how retail units are assessed and how they vote. The county establishes that they exist and form part of the same condominium; the declaration governs the rest, and it is not in the tax roll.

The price record, and why it swings

Qualified, arm’s-length sales of homes from the county record, retrieved 21 August 2026. The commercial and marina-slip folios are excluded.

I have included the median size sold because without it this table is actively misleading.

The per-foot column appears to fall 29.0% and then recover 40.2%. Look at the last column instead: the median home that sold went 1,260 square feet, then 1,156, then 866, then 1,700. In 2025 the small apartments traded; in 2026, so far, the larger ones have. Eleven sales across four years in a building spanning nearly six times in size cannot produce a meaningful building-wide figure, and this one does not.

The only like-for-like reading available is the 701 square foot plate, the smallest home in the building, which traded at $1,006 per square foot in 2023 and $1,034 in 2025 — up 2.8%, essentially flat across three sales.

So no price direction is published for this building. Eleven qualified sales in four years works out at about one home in sixteen each year, which is reasonable activity for 43 homes but far too few transactions to separate price from mix.

Two records are worth separating. The highest price is $3,863,000, on 25 August 2016, for the 4,079 square foot penthouse — $947 per square foot. The highest price per square foot is quite different: $1,818, on 28 June 2022, when a 2,090 square foot home sold for $3,800,000. The largest home in the building is not the most expensive per foot, which is worth knowing if you are comparing across sizes here.

Who this building suits

It suits a buyer who wants Sunset Harbour and wants a boat. Seven deeded slips in a 43-home building is a genuinely scarce combination, and if one conveys with the right home that is a material part of the value — not a facility you share, but property you own.

It suits a buyer who wants a defensible valuation less well. Eleven sales in four years across homes ranging from 701 to 4,079 square feet means the building-wide numbers cannot be used, and the only stable evidence comes from the smallest plate. Price the specific home and the specific size band, and treat any single per-foot figure quoted for “Palau” as close to meaningless.

The mixed-use element deserves attention rather than alarm. Nine retail folios in the same condominium is normal for this part of Sunset Harbour, but it means the association’s budget, insurance and voting arrangements are more complicated than in a purely residential building. Ask for the declaration and the last three years of budgets.

If you are selling here, establish first whether a marina slip conveys with your home — it is a separate folio and a separate deed, and it changes both the buyer pool and the price. Then price against your own size band rather than against the building: the 2025 median of $1,070 per square foot reflects small apartments trading and does not describe a larger home. Ask me for the comparables closest to yours before you set a number.

Interested in selling at Palau Sunset Harbour?

Learn more about selling condo at Palau Sunset Harbour with Josh Stein.

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