The 2026 Pre-Construction Boom: Who’s Delivering, Who’s StuckEl Boom de la Pre-Construcción 2026: Quién Entrega, Quién Está Atascado

Walk the Brickell waterfront on a Sunday morning in May 2026 and count the tower cranes. I do it sometimes between client showings — it’s the fastest sanity check on a market that has, by every conventional measure, gone parabolic. Right now I count eleven cranes from the Rickenbacker Causeway alone, and that’s before you turn the head toward Edgewater, Wynwood, or Sunny Isles.

The numbers underneath the visual are the same story at higher resolution. Forty-six luxury pre-construction towers are in active sales or under vertical construction across Miami-Dade. Together they will deliver roughly 12,400 new residences between today and 2029, at an aggregate contracted value of approximately $28 billion. The peak delivery year is 2027, when fourteen of these projects are scheduled to hand over keys.

That is not a market. It is a supply shock. And inside it, every project is its own story — on its own schedule, with its own developer financing, its own absorption rate, its own structural risks. This is the buyer’s map: who’s actually delivering, who has quietly slipped, who has sold out, and where I’m steering my Compass clients right now.

The 46-tower map, in one paragraph

Brickell carries the largest share — fourteen towers between 1428 Brickell, Cipriani, St. Regis Brickell, Baccarat, JEM, Lofty, Smart Brickell II, One Twenty Brickell, Casa Bella, Mercedes-Benz Places, Una, Dolce&Gabbana, Domus Brickell Center, and the recently launched Cove. Edgewater follows with five (EDITION, LILLI, Elle, Cipriani Residences, Vida). Coconut Grove has three (Four Seasons, The Well, Vita Grove Isle, Opus). Miami Beach and the islands account for nine more (Aman, Bvlgari, Faena Residences, 72 Park, The Perigon, Shore Club, Six Fisher Island, Ora by Casa Tua, the Ritz-Carlton Residences Miami Beach). Sunny Isles and Bal Harbour add another five (Bentley, Rivage, 7200 Collins, Twenty-Nine Indian Creek, the Delmore Surfside). Wynwood’s Cloud One, Anantara Miami, Waldorf Astoria, Mandarin Oriental, Okan Tower, Midtown Park by Proper, Villa Miami, Ella, Colette, and Miami Tropic round out the list.

That’s the inventory. Now the dispersion.

Tier one: shovels in the ground, schedule holding

These are the projects where I tell clients the published delivery date is real. The general contractor is mobilized, the slabs are pouring on a predictable cycle, the sales velocity is matching the financing covenants, and the developer’s balance sheet doesn’t depend on any single deal closing.

1428 Brickell. Ytech’s 70-floor Arquitectonica tower with ACPV interiors is the cleanest pre-construction story in Miami right now. Topped out structurally in Q1 2026, on-track for 2027 delivery. Approximately 85% sold; remaining inventory is concentrated in the upper one-third and the Penthouse collection. The story to know: Ytech bought the land in cash, didn’t need traditional construction financing for most of the spend, and pre-sold faster than the underwriting projected. The premium today on remaining contracts is roughly 18–22% above the original launch pricing.

EDITION Residences Miami Edgewater. Arquitectonica + Studio Munge, 55 floors, 185 units, Marriott’s EDITION brand on the bayfront. Vertical construction began Q4 2025 and is running ahead of the published schedule. Approximately 60% sold. The bayfront waterline alone is doing the marketing — every closing I’ve seen has had at least one bidder for the lower-floor bay-front lines.

Cipriani Residences Brickell. 80 floors, Arquitectonica + 1508 London. The first U.S. Cipriani residential building. Construction is on schedule for 2027 delivery; sales velocity has been strong since the brand activation last fall. The Cipriani buyer pool is unlike any other in Miami — tightly networked European and North American families who travel between the brand’s Venice, New York, and St. Tropez properties — and resale liquidity at this building will be substantially better than the broader market.

St. Regis Residences Brickell. Related Group and Integra. Topped out late 2025, delivering early 2027. Approximately 92% sold — effectively a sold-out building with only a handful of upper-half units circulating in the resale market at this point.

JEM Private Residences. Naftali Group, Rockwell-designed interiors, in the heart of Miami Worldcenter. Vertical complete, finishing work underway. On schedule for late-2026 delivery. The unusual story here is the rental program structure — JEM is configured as a flexible-use building that allows shorter-term residency than most luxury buildings on the market, which has pulled in a distinct buyer profile.

Baccarat Residences Miami. Related Group with the Baccarat brand. Riverwalk site at Brickell’s northern edge. Vertical underway, scheduled for 2027 delivery. About 78% sold. Quiet but excellent execution.

The Perigon Miami Beach. Mid-Beach oceanfront. OKO Group and Mast Capital with Tadao Ando-influenced architecture and a Rebecca Robertson-led interiors program. Already 80% sold and on schedule for 2026 delivery; this one will close before most of its peers begin pouring.

Six Fisher Island. The last buildable site on Fisher Island, period. Pre-sold 50 of its 50 residences within the first months of launch. Construction is on schedule for 2027 delivery. By the time the building delivers, the only way to buy in will be resale.

72 Park Miami Beach. Studio Sofía and Major Food Group amenity programming. On schedule for late-2026 delivery, approximately 70% sold. The Major Food Group anchoring — a real restaurant by the people who run Carbone — is doing real work in the resale narrative.

Tier two: building, but slipped

These are projects where construction is genuinely happening but the original delivery date has moved. None of them are in distress; all of them require a buyer to update their assumptions about when keys arrive.

Waldorf Astoria Residences Miami. Originally projected for 2025 delivery, now 2027. The supertall complexity (1,049 feet, the tallest residential tower south of NYC) means every phase of construction takes longer than a standard tower. The slip is structural to the project type, not a sign of trouble. Sales remain strong and resale on the early contracts is already trading at meaningful premiums.

Aman Miami Beach. 22 units across an oceanfront site that includes the historic Versailles building restoration. Originally targeted for late 2026, now mid-2027. Sales are restricted to a curated buyer list; published pricing is essentially a starting point. The slip here is about getting the brand activation perfect rather than any construction issue.

Mandarin Oriental Residences Miami. Two-tower complex on Brickell Key. Has slipped roughly nine months on the original schedule due to a foundation re-engineering required by the seawall geometry. Construction has resumed at full pace and 2028 delivery is now the realistic call.

Rivage Bal Harbour. Bayfront/oceanfront on the Bal Harbour spit. Excellent design pedigree but the project required permitting revisions in 2024 that pushed the schedule out. Now targeting 2027.

Faena Residences Miami. The third Faena project in Miami Beach, continuing the Alan Faena partnership with Len Blavatnik. Construction is underway but has moved more cautiously than the first two Faena buildings. Delivery now targeted late 2027.

Bentley Residences Sunny Isles. Famous for its car-elevator program. Vertical construction is underway but the engineering complexity of the elevator system has added time. Currently projecting 2027 delivery, six to nine months later than originally announced.

Tier three: stuck

I want to be careful here. “Stuck” doesn’t mean dead. Most projects that fall into this tier eventually break ground — sometimes under new ownership, sometimes after a quiet repositioning. But a buyer signing today needs to know the difference between “starting late” and “starting soon.”

Anantara Miami. Announced with significant fanfare for a downtown Miami site, sales launched, deposits collected — and construction has not meaningfully begun more than two years later. The project is in active discussion with replacement capital and the brand affiliation is intact, but the build start has slipped indefinitely. I am not currently steering clients toward signing here.

Okan Tower. A complex multi-use project with hotel, residential, and commercial components. Foundation work began but vertical construction has been intermittent. The schedule has reset multiple times. The project is too far along to abandon but is far enough behind that the delivery date is genuinely unknown.

Casa Bella Residences (Related/Versace). Pre-construction was strong; the project was paused after the original developer encountered financing complications. Has changed hands and is in active relaunch planning. The brand and the site are both intact, but the original 2025 delivery is no longer realistic and the new timeline has not been firmly published.

For each of these, the right move for a prospective buyer is the same: wait for verified construction milestones (slab pours, structural percentage complete, hard-money date hit) before signing a new contract or transferring an existing one.

Tier four: sold out

Projects you can’t buy from the developer anymore, only from another buyer. The resale market here is the entire story.

• The Residences at Mandarin Oriental Boca Raton — sold out at launch, resale forming a clear secondary market.
• Aston Martin Residences — delivered 2023, every floor traded at minimum once, the building is now an established resale market with predictable per-SF pricing.
• The Estates at Acqualina — two of the three towers delivered, the third in active resale-driven trading.
• Una Residences. Sold out at developer level, several units in resale circulation, premium of 25–30% over original sale prices.
• Lofty Brickell. Strong absorption pre-completion, now in the resale market at the high end.
• Six Fisher Island (as noted above) — effectively sold out before construction completion.

The sold-out tier is where most of my client conversations actually start in 2026. The question isn’t “what should I buy from the developer?” It’s “what’s the smartest entry point now that the launch window has closed for the buildings I want?”

Where the smart money is buying right now

Two specific positions I’m putting clients into in Q2 and Q3 2026.

Position one: the “late-shovels-in-the-ground” trade. A small number of tier-one projects where vertical construction just started and the developer is still releasing the initial launch pricing for the next 90–120 days, but the absorption rate suggests sold-out within 12 months. The window to buy at developer pricing is closing. EDITION Edgewater is the cleanest example. Cipriani Brickell at the upper-floor lines is another. These are the buys where the buyer captures the developer-discount-to-resale spread.

Position two: the resale of tier-one early contracts. Buyers who locked into 1428 Brickell, St. Regis Brickell, or Six Fisher Island at the 2022–2023 launch prices are now selling those contracts — either because their financial situation changed, because their two-residence plan shrunk to one, or because the cash-out is too compelling to refuse. These trades are priced 15–25% above the original contract but still meaningfully below what comparable units will trade for after delivery. For a buyer with cash readiness, this is the single highest-conviction opportunity in the market right now.

What to ask before you sign anything

Five questions I make every client ask before transferring funds at any pre-construction project. The developer’s sales team will know the answers. If they hedge, hesitate, or escalate the conversation to their attorney, that itself is information.

1. What is the hard-money date? The date at which the buyer’s deposit becomes non-refundable. Get it in writing in the contract, not just in the marketing material.
2. What percentage of the building is sold and what percentage is under hard contract? Two different numbers. The second one matters more.
3. Is the construction financing closed, and with which bank? A developer who hasn’t closed construction financing is borrowing from buyer deposits. That can be fine, but you should know.
4. What is the deposit-release schedule, and is escrow held by a third party? Florida law requires escrow protections; how the developer structures the releases tells you a lot about how cash-tight the project is.
5. What is the actual current construction percentage, certified by the general contractor? Not what marketing says. The GC’s monthly draw certification is the truth.

The 2027 picture

Fourteen of the 46 projects are scheduled to deliver in 2027. If even ten of them hit on time, the Miami luxury inventory will receive approximately 4,200 new residences in a single twelve-month window. That is the largest single-year delivery cycle in the city’s history at this price point.

The market will absorb it — the international buyer pool for Miami in 2026 is wider, deeper, and better-capitalized than at any prior point. But the dispersion in pricing power between tier-one projects and the rest will widen. Buildings with real branded operators, real architectural pedigree, and tight unit counts will command premiums that compound. Buildings with generic positioning, undistinguished design, and overlarge unit counts will face the most resale pressure.

If you are buying for a primary residence or a long-hold investment, the tier-one path is structurally protected. If you are buying as a speculation against the 2027 delivery wave, you want to be in the resale market for tier-one early contracts — not in the launch pricing for the tier-three projects still trying to get vertical.

Final word

Every market cycle has a moment where the consensus narrative and the on-the-ground reality drift apart. Miami pre-construction in mid-2026 is in that moment. The published delivery schedules are aspirational. The financing structures vary widely. The brand affiliations matter more than they have at any prior cycle. And the buyer-protection tools available in the contract — if you know to ask — are unusually robust.

If you’re evaluating a specific project, this is the work I do every day for Compass clients: walking the site, reading the GC’s monthly draws, calling the developer’s legal counsel, and pressure-testing whether the marketing matches the construction reality. Schedule a private consultation and I’ll send you the project-specific tear sheet before our first conversation.