Residences by Armani/Casa, Sunny Isles Beach: What Buyers Should Check

Residences by Armani/Casa is the fashion-house tower on the Sunny Isles Beach oceanfront — a 56-story curved glass condominium at 18975 Collins Avenue, developed by Dezer Development with The Related Group, designed by the late César Pelli, and finished inside and out under the artistic direction of Giorgio Armani. It is Armani's first branded residential project in the United States, and it shows in the pitch: more than 35,000 square feet of amenities across two floors, a two-story spa, a private oceanfront restaurant, a cigar room, a wine cellar, and a movie theater, all furnished by the Armani/Casa Interior Design Studio, with sculptures by Sandro Chia in the building. The county record gives it one of the cleanest pricing stories on the strip: 308 residences divided almost exactly into thirds — 102 two-bedrooms, 102 three-bedrooms, and 102 four-bedrooms — with three floor plans repeated 51 times each, so almost every home has fifty near-identical comparables. Recorded prices have been remarkably steady, around $1,673 to $1,763 per square foot in each of the last three full years, at a median of about $3.8 million. The catch is on the selling side, not the buying side: in a 2026 ranking built from closed sales, this building had the largest standing inventory in Sunny Isles Beach (32 units live) and the highest listing failure rate in the market — 53% of listings expired, cancelled, or withdrew. That is a buyer's advantage at the negotiating table, and a warning about resale. Two things a buyer must go in with eyes open about: the building was named among the 35 barrier-island towers measured as settling in the University of Miami's subsidence study, and its monthly bill runs about $2.11 per square foot — roughly $5,200 a month on the median 2,468-square-foot home — so the dues deserve the same scrutiny as the price.

The facts

• Address: 18975 Collins Avenue, Sunny Isles Beach, FL 33160
• Completed: year built 2019 on the county roll; temporary certificate of occupancy received by March 2020, with first residents moving in then; one brokerage says finished in 2019 and 2020, another says year built 2021
• Stories: 56 (several sources say 57 or 60)
• Height: 649 feet
• Residences: 308 (county records: 323 folios at the address, of which 308 are homes, 14 are deeded parking spaces, and one is a reference folio)
• Developer: Dezer Development (Gil Dezer) and The Related Group
• Architect: César Pelli of Pelli Clarke Pelli (design architect); Sieger Suarez Architects (executive architect)
• Interiors and amenities: Armani/Casa Interior Design Studio, under the artistic direction of Giorgio Armani; landscaping by Enzo Enea
• General contractor: Coastal Condominiums (Coastal Construction Group)
• Unit mix: 102 two-bedrooms, 102 three-bedrooms, 102 four-bedrooms, and two studios (county records); some five-bedroom listings exist, which appear to be combined residences
• Unit sizes: 1,080 to 5,336 sq ft, median 2,468 sq ft (county records); published floor plans run 1,350 to 6,138 sq ft
• Waterfront: oceanfront, direct beach access, on a 3.11-acre site with 300 feet of oceanfront per one brokerage directory
• Parking: valet parking; 14 parking spaces are separately deeded folios (PS-1 to PS-15, with no PS-13), each 209 sq ft, and at least one recorded sale conveyed a parking folio with the home

Amenities and day-to-day living

The amenity program fills more than 35,000 square feet across two floors, all designed and custom-furnished by the Armani/Casa Interior Design Studio. It includes a two-story spa with indoor and outdoor treatment rooms, a beauty salon, and his-and-hers sauna and steam rooms; a state-of-the-art fitness center overlooking the Atlantic with a yoga studio and Pilates equipment; an oceanfront terrace with a heated swimming pool, hot tub, and poolside food and beverage service; a private oceanfront restaurant with indoor and outdoor seating and in-residence delivery; a coffee bar; an ocean-view bar; a movie theater (seating for 24); a game room and billiard room; a children's playroom; a cigar room; a temperature- and humidity-controlled wine cellar; a business center; and beach service with attendants, chaise lounges, and umbrellas. The building also has a car wash area, bike storage, a hobby room, and a playground. Residences have 10-foot ceilings, floor-to-ceiling glass, 10-foot-deep private balconies with glass railings and summer kitchens, Armani/Dada kitchens with Sub-Zero and Wolf appliances, Armani/Roca sinks and faucets, imported stone counters, and master baths with marble, spa showers, and Toto Neorest toilets. The building is marketed as a smart building, with digital thermostats and app-based access to select amenities. In 2026 the building joined a FirstService Residential program with Forbes Travel Guide's ATELIER CX, one of seven inaugural U.S. residences applying hotel-level service standards to residential living, and at least one listing describes it as a Forbes Travel Guide VERIFIED Luxury Residence. The building trades near the top of the Sunny Isles Beach market and has been unusually steady on the county record: 9 sales in the 12 months to October 26, 2026 at a median of $3,880,000, or about $1,699 per square foot, with the latest recorded sale on August 10, 2026. Across four years, 55 qualified sales ran at a median of $3,800,000, or $1,709 per square foot, in a band from $1,529 to $2,298 — and the year medians barely moved: $1,673 in 2023, $1,763 in 2024, $1,673 in 2025. The record sale is the PH-04 penthouse (4,821 sq ft): $7,250,000 in June 2021, then $12,400,000 in April 2022 — up 71% in ten months, the highest price on the county record here, and a single transaction nobody should price a home off. Of the original buyers who have resold, 23.0% sold at a loss, at a median gain of 15.3% — but more than half the building (166 folios) sold once in the 2019–21 sell-out and has never traded since, so most ownership outcomes are still untested. About 26 to 32 residences were listed for sale in November 2026, from $799,000 (a cabana, not a residence) to about $7.6 million, at an average asking price of about $1,835 per square foot. Turnover runs at about one home in 22 per year. A 2026 market ranking built from closed sales found this building the hardest in Sunny Isles Beach to sell in: 20 closings against 23 failed listings (a 53% failure rate), 32 units live — the largest standing inventory in the city — and a median 194 days to contract. Sellers took 93.5% of their original asking price.

What to check before you buy

• Monthly cost, honestly. No verified building-wide dues figure was found. The best available figure is CondoBlackBook's average association fee of $2.11 per square foot per month, which on the median 2,468-square-foot home works out to about $5,200 a month. That rate is consistent with a separate 2026 market ranking that puts the building's fee at $24 per square foot per year — $2.00 per square foot per month — and with individual MLS examples: unit #4705 with cabana (1,273 sq ft) at $2,750 a month, or $2.16 per square foot; unit #5105 (1,291 sq ft) at $2,720; unit #5200 (3,481 sq ft) at $7,500. Homes.com gives two conflicting ranges on the same page ($400–$5,600 and $150–$7,500 a month), which is why the per-square-foot figure is the one to use — and even that is derived from listing-agent-reported fees, not an association budget. Get the exact figure for the residence you are considering, including what the dues cover (Homes.com says they include common areas, cable TV, internet, reserve fund, sewer, trash, and water), 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 $5,200 a month on a median home, a wrong dues assumption is a six-figure mistake over a decade.
• Resale liquidity — the building's real risk. This is the single most important thing to understand before offering. The county record is steady, but the listing record is not: 53% of listings here failed to sell in the 2026 ranking, against 20 closings, with 32 units live at once — the largest standing inventory in Sunny Isles Beach — and a median 194 days to contract. A buyer who may need to sell within a few years should treat that as the central fact of the purchase, not a footnote: price against the recorded band ($1,529–$2,298 per square foot, median $1,709), test the asking price against the fifty near-identical floorplate comparables this building uniquely offers, and do not pay a premium for the Armani name that the resale record does not support. Note also that 2026 has recorded only four qualified sales so far — too few to state a direction for prices this year — and that the top of the published price band ($2,298 per square foot, unit 5200, April 2024) conveyed a deeded parking folio in the same transaction, so that ceiling is slightly overstated.
• 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 Residences by Armani/Casa is on the published list of those buildings. The causes given are load-induced, prolonged creep deformation of sandy layers within the limestone, accelerated by nearby construction activity, with nearly 70% of buildings in northern and central Sunny Isles Beach affected. What that actually means: a newly completed 649-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. No per-building magnitude has been published for Armani/Casa — the study reports only the 2–8 cm range across all 35 buildings — so 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.
• 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 early 2020 (year built 2019 on the county roll), so its first milestone inspection falls around 2044–2045 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 seven years old, this building is roughly eighteen 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.
• 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. At least one current rental listing states a minimum lease of 6 months + 1 day, and no nightly or seasonal rentals were found in the sources checked. 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 about $13,000 a month (two-bedroom) to $39,500 a month (four-bedroom), but the count of available rentals conflicts between sources (19 per Bogatov Realty, 13 per CondoBlackBook, 0 per MyCondoPlans).
• Pets. The sources do not sit together cleanly. CondoBlackBook's building record says pets are OK for owners and renters, with large pets allowed for owners; Homes.com lists the policy as pets allowed with restrictions with a pet size limit; and a CondoBlackBook MLS record for a rental unit (#3000) says no pets for renters. The reading that reconciles them is that owners may keep pets (possibly with size limits) while renters may not — but that is an inference, not a verified rule. Confirm the current rules — including any size, number, or breed limits, and the owner-versus-renter distinction — with the association before you buy if a pet is part of the plan.
• The cabana and parking folios — check what you are actually buying. The county record shows 14 separately deeded parking spaces and, in the listings, cabana units that trade on their own: CABANA 20 was listed in November 2026 at $799,000 for 2,271 sq ft with 0 bedrooms — which is why the building's published asking range starts at $799,000. That is not a residence at residence pricing. Before offering on any unit, confirm in writing whether parking and any cabana are included, deeded separately, or available at all — and whether the asking price you are comparing against other sales included a parking folio, as the record $2,298-per-square-foot sale did.

Who this building suits

Residences by Armani/Casa suits a buyer who wants a large, design-led oceanfront home — a median 2,468 square feet, 10-foot ceilings, Armani interiors, a two-story spa and a private restaurant in the building — and who values knowing exactly what it is worth: three floor plans repeat 51 times each, the recorded price band is unusually narrow, and the price level has barely moved in three years. It suits a buyer who can carry about $5,200 a month in dues on a median home, who plans to hold long enough that a slow resale market does not matter, and who will use the building's 53% listing failure rate as leverage at the negotiating table. It is a poor fit for a buyer who wants a small or low-priced entry (the smallest residences are 1,080 square feet and the cheapest residence listings start above $2 million once the cabana is excluded), a short-term rental, a quick resale, or a firm pet answer from public sources — the rental rules and the pet rules both need confirming with the association, and the resale record says this is the hardest building in Sunny Isles Beach to sell in. 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.