Miami Developer Abandons Rental Project For Condo Tower In Little Havana

In this episode of The Peter Zalewski Show™, veteran developer Henry Torres is betting the next opportunity in Miami is not luxury towers or rental projects but moderately priced condo buildings.The weekly podcast The Peter Zalewski Show™ features interviews with South Florida business leaders focused on real estate, finance and the economy.The program - hosted by Peter Zalewski of the Miami Condo Investing Club™ - is broadcast live every Wednesday at 4 pm (Miami time) at MiamiCondo.Club and on Peter Zalewski’s social media accounts to watch the free live broadcasts.The objective of the show is to deliver straight talk, share institutional knowledge and provide data-driven analysis on the macro and micro economic forces shaping the tricounty South Florida region of Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach.Episode OverviewIn the April 29, 2026, episode of The Peter Zalewski Show™ podcast, host Peter Zalewski interviews veteran developer Henry Torres of the Astor Cos. in Coral Gables about why he is betting that the most overlooked opportunity in Miami real estate right now is moderately priced condos in the Little Havana neighborhood.The conversation focuses on why Torres—who had 85 contracts fall through on the 128-unit Nordica tower on Coral Way in Miami during the Great South Florida Condo Boom and Bust of 2002 to 2011—relied on his development experience to change the focus of a rental project that he is currently constructing into the Havana Enclave condo tower with 179 units at 315 NW 27th Ave.During the 77-minute episode, Torres—who spent 25 years selling seafood to nearly every major cruise line sailing out of South Florida before unloading his company Empire for $88 million in 2001—shared his insights from 24 years of developing condo and rental units about the future of the Miami residential real estate market at this tenuous moment.Torres makes the argument that the rental market in South Florida is overbuilt, the luxury condo market is concentrated between Greater Downtown Miami and the Miami-Dade County barrier island and the working-class buyer in Little Havana has been ignored by every developer chasing a wealthier customer somewhere else.Havana Enclave, he said, is built for that buyer. Studios start in the mid-$300,000s. One-bedrooms open in the low $500,000s. Two-bedrooms start in the low $700,000s. Every unit comes with a full-sized refrigerator, a washer and dryer, a walk-in closet and a space the owner can self park.Torres is asking buyers to put down a 30% deposit, a requirement he connects directly to what he watched happen during the go-go days of the 2000s when buyers with little or nothing invested walked away from signed preconstruction contracts.The 30% deposit, he argued, is not a barrier. It is the difference between a condo projects full of committed owners and a building full of investors who leave the moment the market trends change.The episode also gives Torres the opportunity to assess where the broader Miami condo market stands today compared to the last cycle.Torres is not sounding an alarm, but he is not dismissing the risks either.Construction costs have risen between 40% and 50% since before the pandemic.Institutional money built rental towers across South Florida in 2021, 2022 and 2023 without much concern for short-term returns, and that supply is now putting pressure on rental rates across the region.Torres does not see interest rates falling fast enough to change that equation anytime soon.What Torres does see is a city where billionaires are arriving with capital, and working-class families are spending $100,000 to $150,000 to renovate their Little Havana homes as they have nowhere else to go.