David Martin’s Terra landed a $245 million refinancing for a huge apartment complex it completed this summer, just as the multifamily market oversupply started balancing.
Coconut Grove-based Terra finished the first phase of Upland Park with 578 units this summer, as part of the firm’s wager on garden-style complexes near public transit. It’s on a 47-acre site at 1455 Northwest 121st Avenue in Sweetwater, and near both the Miami-Dade County’s Dolphin Station Park & Ride Transit Terminal and the Dolphin Expressway/State Road 836. Terra leases the land from Miami-Dade County.
Slate Property Group, based in New York, provided the permanent loan, paying off the $170 million construction loan that Terra secured for the project in 2024 from Slate’s affiliate Scale Lending.
The refinancing breaks down to $423,875 per unit.
The $1 billion completed phase marks the first chapter of what’s planned as an even larger project, with construction of the second 484-unit phase expected to start this year, according to the release. Future phases also are planned to include commercial spaces, including retail.
Upland Park’s first phase consists of studios, as well as one-bedroom to three-bedroom apartments, including some with dens, ranging from 700 square feet to 1,528 square feet. Monthly rents start in the $2,000s.
More than 60 percent of the apartments are leased, the release says.
The project was completed at a wobbly time for South Florida’s multifamily leasing market. Demand has been rebounding since late last year, but a hefty pipeline of nearly 28,000 units expected to open late next year threatens leasing to fall behind supply again.
Over the past three years, leasing fell behind deliveries as developers rushed to build apartments, completing a record 18,600 units in 2024, according to CoStar Group. In the 12-month period that ended in the second quarter, new leasing reached 13,774 units, surpassing the 12,751 units completed, the first time in three years for demand to edge past supply.
Despite the questionable leasing future, developers’ confidence hasn’t wavered, with many starting projects this year and lenders continuing to finance new buildings.
New York-based LCOR is developing a 544-unit luxury tower in Edgewater, after scoring a $192.5 million construction loan in July. Also, Acre secured $123 million to build the six-story, 337-unit Adela II complex just off Biscayne Boulevard at Northeast 64th Street in the MiMo Biscayne Boulevard Historic District, and Evolve Companies landed $48.5 million for the eight-story, 141-unit Evolve Wynwood 35 project in Wynwood Norte.
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