Lennar, already south Miami-Dade County’s largest homebuilder, is setting its sights on its next project in the area: a complex with 185 single-family homes.
Miami-based Lennar, led by CEO Stuart Miller, is asking the county to amend its development regulations to allow the project on 40 acres of agricultural land, according to filings to the county. The site is between Southwest 272nd and 278th streets, and between Southwest 157th and 158th avenues.
The Miami-Dade Comprehensive Development Master Plan & Zoning Board, which consists of county commissioners, will vote on the item at its meeting on Thursday.
Lennar is asking to change the land use of the site from “estate density residential,” which allows up to 2.5 residences per acre to “low-density residential,” which allows up to six residences per acre, county agenda records show.
Miami-Dade staff members who reviewed the application recommended approval subject to an agreement that Lennar will build no more than 185 single-family homes, according to records.
Property records show Dunagans Fruit Groves LLC, tied to south Miami-Dade’s Dunagans farming, owns the land. Lennar has the site under contract for an undisclosed price.
Lennar, the second-biggest homebuilder in the U.S., dominates in south Miami-Dade, an area consisting of the neighborhoods Goulds, Leisure City, Naranja and Princeton, as well as the municipalities of Princeton and Florida City. The area is attractive to homebuilders due to its healthy supply of developable land that usually sells at a discount compared to prices in Miami’s urban core.
Over the past six-year South Florida residential boom, Lennar completed over 8,000 single-family homes and townhomes in the area, or 70 percent of the deliveries, according to Colliers Research for the timeframe from 2020 through late last year.
Immediately west of the Danagans site, Lennar is developing the Wildwood Groves community with 96 homes. East of the Danagans site, Lennar is developing a 266-townhome complex.
Miami-based Lennar is led by Stuart Miller, whose late father, Leonard Miller, sowed the seeds for the company in the 1950s and formally named it Lennar in the early 1970s, when he also took it public.
The homebuilding behemoth has felt the sting from a slowing home sales market, as mortgage rates have remained elevated, and also increased slightly in recent months. The average 30-year mortgage rate hit 7.22 percent to 7.25 percent last month, as the Federal Reserve increased the benchmark interest rate, amid geopolitical uncertainty and soaring 10-year Treasury yields.
According to its third quarter earnings report, revenues from home sales hit $7.7 billion, or 6 percent down from $8.2 billion in the third quarter of last year, primarily due to a 3 percent decrease in the average home sale price and a 3 percent drop in the number of delivered homes.
Much of Lennar’s homebuilding machine relies on its use of land banks, which hold land on behalf of Lennar until it is ready to develop, allowing the firm to free up cash flows to keep building.
Also in south Miami-Dade, Lennar and its partners last year revived the 990-acre City Park mixed-use project, which is proposed outside the county’s Urban Development Boundary that’s meant to stop suburban sprawl onto farmland and wetlands, and toward the Everglades. As a whole, City Park is proposed as a 15-minute self-contained mini-city with 7,800 homes and 2.4 million square feet of commercial space.
The proposal to expand the UDB to allow for City Park is yet to come in front of county commissioners.
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