Porsche Design Tower, Sunny Isles Beach: What Buyers Should Check

Porsche Design Tower is the building the car elevator was invented for. It is a 60-story oceanfront condominium at 18555 Collins Avenue in Sunny Isles Beach, completed in January 2017 — the world's first tower where residents drive their car into an elevator, ride up inside it, and park in a private glass-walled sky garage beside their own front door. It was developed by Dezer Development (Gil Dezer) with branding by the Porsche Design Group, designed by Sieger Suarez, and built by Coastal Construction at a reported construction cost of about $560 million. Inside are just 132 residences in 60 stories — an exceptionally low unit count for the height — and almost all of them are three-bedrooms: 128 of the 132, with the 3,171-square-foot floor plan repeated 47 times. Every balcony has its own plunge pool and summer kitchen, and the monthly bill is among the highest on the strip at about $2.28 per square foot. Two things a buyer must go in with eyes open about: the price per square foot has fallen in each of the last four years on the county record, and the building was named in a University of Miami study as settling toward the upper end of the measured range — about eight centimetres between 2016 and 2023. Neither fact is a reason to walk away on its own. Both are reasons to ask the association specific questions before offering, and the most important one is about the car elevators themselves: three bespoke lifts serve 132 households, and nothing has been published about what they cost to maintain, who services them, or what the reserve study assumes for their eventual modernisation.

The facts

• Address: 18555 Collins Avenue, Sunny Isles Beach, FL 33160
• Completed: January 2017; temporary certificate of occupancy November 2016; year built 2016 on the county roll
• Stories: 60 (several sources say 57 or 56)
• Height: 641 feet
• Residences: 132 (county records: 132 folios at the address, every one a home; one directory says 135)
• Developer: Dezer Development (Gil Dezer), with residential branding by the Porsche Design Group
• Architect: Sieger Suarez (Sieger Suarez Architects)
• General contractor: Coastal Construction
• Groundbreaking: April 19, 2014; construction cost about $560 million
• Unit mix: almost entirely three-bedroom — 128 of the 132 residences (county records); three- to five-bedroom layouts, plus a small collection of triplex penthouses reaching six bedrooms
• Unit sizes: 3,130 to 8,566 sq ft, median 3,171 sq ft (county records); published floor plans run 4,252 to 16,915 sq ft
• Waterfront: oceanfront, direct beach access, on a 2.2-acre site with 400 feet of private beach per ReHub (one source says 200 feet)
• Parking: 284 spaces for 132 residences, via three car elevators; most owners can keep two cars beside their residence, some four

Amenities and day-to-day living

The defining feature is the Dezervator, the patented car-elevator system designed by Rob Bailey, a 35-year veteran of complex industrial elevator systems (including work for NASA's Vehicle Assembly Building). Three elevators carry vehicles — driver still inside — from a ground-floor auto court directly to a private sky garage adjacent to the residence, in roughly 75 seconds. The system uses an 8,000-pound-capacity industrial car shuttle built by Palis, guided by RFID tags on each car, with turntables and sensors positioning the vehicle; the elevators travel at a reported 800 feet per minute. It was built and tested at full operation at a test site near Chicago before installation. The sky garage is visible from the residence through a full-height glass wall, so the car is displayed as part of the home rather than stored away. A car concierge washes cars, rotates tires, and handles routine service maintenance. Inside the residences: 10-foot ceilings standard (20-foot in duplex homes), Poggenpohl kitchen cabinetry with motorized doors, fully integrated Miele appliance packages with induction cooktops, Dornbracht fixtures, Toto automatic toilets with integrated bidets, granite or marble counters, and oceanfront terraces that include a private 10-by-15-foot plunge pool and summer kitchen on every balcony. The amenity program spans an oceanfront pool with food and beverage service, a private restaurant, a lounge bar overlooking the Atlantic, a sunset terrace with two oversized swim spa tubs, a spa and fitness center, a movie theater, a game room with Porsche racing simulators and a golf simulator, an oceanfront ballroom, a children's playroom, and 24-hour valet and concierge. The building trades at the top of the sweep's residential towers and has been getting cheaper on the county record: 7 sales in the 12 months to October 26, 2026 at a median of $4,000,000, or about $1,198 per square foot. The median price per square foot has fallen in each of the last four years — $1,408 in 2023, $1,339 in 2024, $1,230 in 2025, $1,198 in 2026 — and the median price is down about 22% since 2023. The record sale remains $16,600,000 (unit 5205, July 2021). About 19 residences were listed for sale in November 2026, from about $3.7 million to $47.5 million (the PH-1 penthouse, 9,560 sq ft), at an average asking price of about $2,279 per square foot. This is an illiquid building — roughly one home in 20 changes hands each year — which means a same-floorplate comparable is almost always available to test an asking price against, and it currently argues for the buyer.

What to check before you buy

• The Dezervator — the feature the building is sold on, and the question nobody asks about it. After ten years in service, the system is proven in the sense that it exists and works: it is the delivered version of the car-elevator concept that Bentley Residences, two blocks south, is still building. What has not been published is anything about how it has actually performed — no owner reports of breakdowns or downtime, no maintenance costs, no service-contract terms, and no reserve-study treatment. A proprietary vertical vehicle transport system is a long-lived, high-consequence mechanical asset with no off-the-shelf replacement, and three lifts serve 132 households. Before offering, establish in writing: what the reserve study assumes for the vehicle elevators (servicing, component replacement, eventual modernisation) and whether that line is funded; who maintains them, under what contract, and with what response time — a vehicle lift out of service means an owner cannot retrieve their car; what the redundancy position is when one lift is down for scheduled work, and what the contingency is if two are; and whether there is an obsolescence plan for a bespoke system installed in 2014–2017. In this tower, the amenity is the mechanical plant — read the reserve study line by line rather than skimming the amenity list. Also confirm the garage capacity (two versus four cars) for your specific residence, and whether the car concierge service is included in dues or billed separately.
• Monthly cost, honestly. No verified building-wide dues figure was found for this building. Across 17 current listings, the median association fee is about $9,400 a month, or about $2.28 per square foot per month (ReHub); Homes.com reports a similar median of $9,468 a month, with a range of $5,560 to $19,725. That per-square-foot figure puts the building among the 25 most expensive in Miami on ReHub's September 2026 ranking. One single-unit MLS example conflicts sharply with the median: unit #3005 (3,415 sq ft) was listed with an association fee of $14,509 a month — about $4.25 per square foot — which does not reconcile with the building median and may reflect a different fee basis or a listing error; it is cited here only to show why a per-unit figure must be confirmed, not assumed. The same unit's MLS record shows taxes of $50,939 a year. Get the exact figure for the residence you are considering, including what the dues cover, whether the Dezervator maintenance and car concierge are in the dues or billed separately, and whether any special assessment is already levied or pending — and use the monthly-cost worksheet in the Buyer's Guide, not just the mortgage payment. At about $9,400 a month, a wrong dues assumption is a six-figure mistake over a decade.
• Settlement — ask, don't panic. University of Miami researchers used satellite radar interferometry to measure vertical movement in high-rise buildings along Miami-Dade's barrier islands between 2016 and 2023. Thirty-five buildings showed measurable subsidence of 2 to 8 centimetres, and Porsche Design Tower has been reported as settling toward the upper end of that range — as much as eight centimetres, about three inches over seven years. The causes given are inconsistent limestone layers and groundwater movement, with construction vibration accelerating the compaction of sandy layers. What that actually means: a newly completed 641-foot tower consolidating into sandy layers over its first years is expected structural behaviour, not an anomaly, and the researchers noted that subsidence in most high-rises slows over time. The researchers declined to characterise any building in the study as unsafe, and the same team analysed the Champlain Towers South site for the years before June 2021 and reported that no displacement signals were detected before the collapse, indicating that settlement was not the cause of collapse — the mechanism being measured here is not the mechanism that killed 98 people at Surfside. Follow-up research reported in October 2026 found the settlement is uneven in some buildings, which matters more than the total: uniform settlement is a utilities-and-finishes issue, while differential settlement is the one engineers care about. Ask the association whether it has commissioned its own elevation or settlement survey since December 2024, what that survey shows about rate (still moving, or decelerating) and about differential movement across the footprint — and ask for 24 months of board minutes, where settlement, mechanical failures, and engineer engagements appear long before they appear in reports. The building's own construction also drew a neighbour dispute: in 2016 the Millennium condominium association sued the Porsche Design Tower development team for nearly $4 million, alleging construction vibration cracked its lobby, garage, and pool deck; the case reached an undisclosed settlement.
• Milestone inspection — not due yet, but ask anyway. Florida milestone inspection rules generally apply at 30 years, or 25 years within 3 miles of the coast. Miami-Dade County has exercised its discretion to apply the 25-year clock to coastal buildings completed in 1998 or later, and Sunny Isles Beach follows the county's programme. This is an oceanfront building that received its temporary certificate of occupancy in November 2016, so its first milestone inspection falls around 2041 on the 25-year coastal rule — a derived estimate, not a confirmed date. One caveat: a temporary certificate and a final certificate of occupancy can fall in different years, and no final certificate date for this building is public — the certificate date is what legally controls, so confirm it from the record. At about ten years old, this building is roughly fifteen years out from that first milestone, which is a better position than the older towers in the sweep — but confirm the association's own timeline, since inspection deadlines depend on the certificate of occupancy and local requirements.
• Reserves and assessments. Ask what reserves are funded, what assessments are planned or already approved, and where the building stands on its Structural Integrity Reserve Study (SIRS). Under Florida's SIRS rules, reserves for SIRS items are no longer waivable — but confirm this building's position with its association. No verified reserve or assessment figures were found in public sources for this building. The reserve question matters more here than in a standard tower, because the vehicle elevators are a bespoke system facing eventual modernisation at a cost not comparable to a standard elevator programme — ask specifically how that line is funded.
• Owner-occupancy and financing. Lenders check the owner-occupancy ratio before approving a mortgage. No verified figure was found for this building. Confirm the current ratio with the association and talk to your lender early, before you fall for a residence. There is a second financing point specific to this building's age and price: since August 3, 2026, Fannie Mae's Lender Letter LL-2026-03 has retired the Limited Review path for established condominium projects over ten units, so Full Review now applies at every down-payment level — the lender reads the milestone report, the reserve study, the budget, and the master insurance policy. A per-unit deductible above $50,000 breaks Fannie Mae eligibility outright, and from January 4, 2027 minimum reserves rise from 10% to 15% of annual budgeted assessment income. A project that fails Full Review becomes cash-only and loses roughly half its buyer pool (in June 2026, 48.5% of Miami-Dade condominium sales closed in cash). Ask the association for the master insurance policy's per-unit deductible and the current reserve position before you assume financing will be available.
• Rentals. This is a long-term rental building, not a short-term one. MLS records report a six-month minimum lease, with no nightly or seasonal rentals. Confirm the current lease rules, any rental caps, and the association approval process with the association before buying for income — and do not buy here expecting Airbnb-style income. Rentals listed in November 2026 ran from $25,000 to $29,900 a month, but the count of available rentals conflicts between sources (9 per ReHub, 1 per Josh Stein, 0 per MyCondoPlans).
• Pets. MLS records for the building indicate pets are allowed — one listing says pets are OK for owners and renters, with large pets allowed for owners and renters — and one 2026 pet-friendly guide lists Porsche Design Tower among towers with no weight limit or a very high one. But Homes.com lists a pet size limit and breed restrictions for the building, and ReHub reports 16 of 27 current listings describing the policy as restricted, which reads as pet-friendly with restrictions. Those descriptions do not sit together cleanly. Confirm the current rules — including any size, number, or breed limits — with the association before you buy if a pet is part of the plan.

Who this building suits

Porsche Design Tower suits a buyer who wants the most car-centric residence on the Sunny Isles Beach oceanfront — a large three-bedroom where the car rides an elevator to a private glass-walled garage beside the living room, every balcony has its own plunge pool, and the building is the delivered, ten-year-proven version of the concept Bentley Residences is still building — and who can carry a monthly bill of about $9,400 and is comfortable buying into a building whose price per square foot has fallen four years running, which is an advantage at the negotiating table if the asking price is tested against same-floorplate sales. It is a poor fit for a buyer who wants a small or low-priced entry, a short-term rental, or a low monthly bill: the smallest residences are about 3,130 square feet, the cheapest recent listing is about $3.7 million, leases run a six-month minimum, and the dues are among the highest in Miami. It is also a poor fit for anyone who needs a firm pet answer from public sources, or who wants the car-elevator maintenance picture settled before offering — both must be confirmed with the association. If you are choosing between this and another tower, send Mike the buildings you are comparing and he will walk through the finances with you, building by building.

Next step

Get the free Sunny Isles Beach Buyer's Building Guide — the ten questions to ask before you sign, applied to the tower you are actually considering. Or book a call with Mike to walk through Porsche Design Tower together.