Robert Khodadadian – Commercial Observer

Six months after purchasing a Miami office building, local investor Ali Ahmed landed $27.5 million, property records show. The mortgage from Utah-based Ally Bank covers Biscayne Centre, an eight-story building at 11900 Biscayne Boulevard, just south of Northeast 123rd Street, which leads to the Bay Harbor Islands. Completed in 1986, the 287,087-square-foot property, which sits Commercial Observer Read More Channel, Finance, Refinance, Biscayne Centre, Florida, South Florida, Miami, Ally Bank

Six months after purchasing a Miami office building, local investor Ali Ahmed landed $27.5 million, property records show.

The mortgage from Utah-based Ally Bank covers Biscayne Centre, an eight-story building at 11900 Biscayne Boulevard, just south of Northeast 123rd Street, which leads to the Bay Harbor Islands.

Completed in 1986, the 287,087-square-foot property, which sits on 2.7 acres, features ground-floor retail and an attached multilevel parking garage.

Ahmed, who owns and runs the Miami Lakes Automall, paid $39 million for the office building in March, Commercial Observer reported at the time. The newly secured mortgage from the Utah-based bank marks the first time Ahmed has taken out debt for the property. The private investor could not be reached for comment.

At the time of the acquisition, the building — which houses 156,446 square feet of office space — was 81 percent leased, according to the brokers who arranged the sale.

Since the height of the pandemic, when droves of companies were relocating to the Magic City, the Miami office market has slowed.

At the close of 2023’s second quarter, net absorption stood at negative 22,500 square feet and the vacancy rate climbed 0.5 percentage points to 16.7 percent, according to data from JLL. But since 2021, asking rents have steadily climbed, and now hover around $56.3 per square foot.

Julia Echikson can be reached at jechikson@commercialobserver.com.

Robert Khodadadian has long had a simple philosophy about selling real estate. The way he sees it, there are approximately a million buildings in the city, and the broker that gets to sell any one among the multitude that will hit the auctioning block at a given moment is, sometimes, simply the person who happens to pitch their services to the right seller at the right time.