Urbin Miami Beach

What Actually Happened at Urbin Miami Beach

Location Ventures, led by CEO Rishi Kapoor, broke ground on Urbin Miami Beach at 1260 Washington Avenue on 15 November 2022 — a 7-storey, co-living-style condominium designed by Touzet Studio, reported sold out at groundbreaking. Construction never finished. The Real Deal reported the City of Miami Beach halted work over unpermitted construction, and by July 2023 an affiliate of Spectrum Mortgage Group had sued a Location Ventures entity for nonpayment of a $14.8 million mortgage covering the 1260 Washington Avenue site and an adjoining commercial parcel at 1234 Washington Avenue. Kapoor resigned from Location Ventures that same month, and the firm announced it would liquidate assets to pay creditors.

What follows is not a construction delay story. It is a federal receivership and criminal fraud case, and the Miami Beach site is one of the assets caught inside it.

What the Land Record Shows

The Miami-Dade Property Appraiser carries the site under folio 02-4203-009-0040, still classified vacant land — commercial and assessed at $9,300,000 for 2026 — flat for three straight years (2024 through 2026), itself unusual and consistent with a site sitting idle rather than progressing toward completion. Two recorded sales tell the ownership story: a qualified multi-parcel sale on 4 May 2021 for $20,000,000 — Location Ventures’ original site acquisition — and a second sale on 3 January 2025 for $17,500,000, which the county itself classifies under the code for “trustees in bankruptcy, executors or guardians.” That is the county’s own classification, not an editorial characterization, and it lines up exactly with The Real Deal’s reporting of a court-approved sale of the site to Fort Lauderdale-based Pakman Miami Beach, cleared by U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Becerra in November 2024 to pay off the foreclosing lender. The reported approved price ($18 million) and the recorded closing price ($17,500,000) differ slightly; both are stated here rather than one silently chosen.

The Federal Case Behind the Collapse

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission brought a civil action against Kapoor and a group of Location Ventures entities — SEC v. Kapoor, Case No. 23-24903-CIV-JB, in the Southern District of Florida. The court appointed Bernice C. Lee as receiver over 20 named entities, including URBIN Miami Beach Partners LLC by name, alongside sister entities for Urbin’s Coconut Grove and Coral Gables projects and the Villa Valencia development in Coral Gables. A permanent injunction was entered against Kapoor on 20 November 2024.

The civil case was followed by a criminal one. The Real Deal reported on 14 and 15 May 2026 that Kapoor pleaded guilty to money laundering and payroll tax conspiracy tied to an $85 million fraud scheme, admitting he misappropriated investor funds across his failed real estate projects and — specifically — unlawfully used $10.6 million in deposits from preconstruction condo buyers. Sentencing is scheduled for August 2026; reporting indicates Kapoor faces at least 10 years in prison. These are facts on the record from his own guilty plea, not allegations awaiting resolution.

What Happened to Buyer Deposits

The Real Deal reported on 20 July 2026 that Judge Becerra approved a distribution of receivership funds to buyers who had put deposits down across Kapoor’s projects, including Urbin Miami Beach. 38 Urbin Miami Beach buyers were approved for refunds of 10 percent of their deposits, with 3 additional buyers receiving escrow refunds, drawn from a reported $4 million in available receivership funds. Buyers under contract at the project had collectively been reported to have lost more than $10 million in deposits before this distribution. A 10 percent recovery on a lost deposit is a partial remedy, not a resolution — stated here plainly rather than as a success story.

What This Means If You Are Researching This Building

If a listing, a database page, or a search result anywhere still describes Urbin Miami Beach as an active pre-construction opportunity with units for sale, that description is out of date. The site changed hands in January 2025 to a buyer unconnected to the original Urbin brand or Location Ventures, and no source used in this research reports any construction resumption, new development plan, or unit sales since. Anyone who holds a purchase contract, deposit, or claim tied to the original project should direct questions to the receivership — Bernice C. Lee, court-appointed receiver in SEC v. Kapoor, Case No. 23-24903-CIV-JB — rather than to any active sales office, because none is known to exist for this address.

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