The most talked-about new build in Pinecrest this year was listed at $16.3 million and sold for $13.5 million. The house is at 6290 Chapman Field Drive, in the Bay Ridge Estates enclave. Its developer bought the lot for $1.3 million in 2023, according to The Real Deal's weekly luxury contract coverage. When the sale was reported on September 8, 2026, The Real Deal noted that the house had been on the market at $16.3 million and that the buyer's company paid $13.5 million. That's roughly 17% below the ask.
For anyone weighing a finished spec home in Pinecrest against an older house or a Coral Gables alternative, that gap matters more than any median on a portal. A Pinecrest spec's asking price is where the builder starts. The recorded sale price is the market's answer, and in this cycle the two have been far apart.
The ask, the close, and the per-square-foot math
The Chapman Field house is a large, recently completed home of about 11,700 square feet, depending on the source. It sits on a 1.1-acre lot with eight bedrooms, 10 full baths and two half-baths, a pool and a sky terrace. It was designed by Ignacio Permuy of Coral Gables-based Permuy Architecture and built by local developer Fouad Kraishan. The listing worked out to about $1,400 per square foot.
At $13.5 million, the recorded price comes to roughly $1,150 per square foot. Sources put the square footage anywhere from 11,670 to "nearly 12,000," so the per-foot figure is approximate. Even so, the difference is about $250 per square foot between the number on the listing and the number in the property records.
When the contract was signed in the week of August 24–30, The Real Deal described the house as "landing a contract price at an asking price of $16.3 million." The weekly report, compiled from Douglas Elliman's Eklund-Gomes team tracking Miami-Dade listings asking $4 million and up, records asking prices at the moment of contract. The negotiated number only shows up later, in the deed. Buyers who use contract-week headlines as comps are using asks.
What the land paid tells you
The Chapman Field house is one of several. Over the late summer, three Pinecrest new builds reached contract. Each sits on a lot bought between 2020 and 2023 for well under $2 million.
| Address | Lot purchase | Year bought | Asking at contract | Status reported |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6290 Chapman Field Drive | $1.3M | 2023 | $16.3M | Closed at $13.5M |
| 13500 SW 69th Avenue, "Casa Negra" | $1.9M | 2023 | $13.2M | Under contract Sept. 14–20 |
| 6060 SW 118th Street | $1.1M | 2020 | $9.6M | Under contract Aug. 24–30 |
Casa Negra sits on a 35,200-square-foot lot with seven bedrooms, nine baths, a car gallery and an elevator. The house on SW 118th Street was built in 2023. It has about 6,800 square feet, seven bedrooms and a private tennis court, and it was also asking about $1,400 per square foot.
The asks run from roughly seven to more than twelve times the reported land cost. That spread isn't profit. Construction, financing, carrying costs and design all sit inside it, and none of those numbers show up in the public coverage. What the spread does show is how much of the price is the builder's projection about the finished house, as opposed to the land under it. When two new builds both ask about $1,400 per square foot, they're signaling the same expectation. The one recorded close in the group shows where that expectation actually met a buyer.
This is the practical difference between a spec and an older Pinecrest house. With a resale home, the price is anchored by the land and by sales of similar houses nearby. With a finished spec in this cycle, a large share of the price is a forecast, and forecasts can be negotiated.
Time on market is the builder's real cost
The Chapman Field house didn't land its buyer on day one. The Miami Herald reported in August 2026 that the home, listed at about $16 million, had been on the market for several months without offers while Kraishan showed it unstaged, with no furniture or art. Marisa Salas, chairwoman of the staging firm Showhomes, told the Herald that empty rooms in a house that size often leave buyers struggling to picture living there. Her team brought furniture and artwork into the 11,670-square-foot home, and within a few weeks the house looked different. The contract came after that.
Salas told the Herald that the average value of the homes her Miami franchise stages has more than doubled, from $2.5 million in 2019 to more than $6 million. Jennifer McCloskey of All About the Wow said in the same article that staging is now practically a requirement at the top of the market.
For a buyer, this history is useful information. A finished spec that has sat for months is costing its builder money every month: taxes, insurance, maintenance and interest. A recent restaging is often a sign the original presentation didn't produce offers. Neither guarantees a discount. But they explain why a builder holding a completed house might accept a number well below the one printed on the listing.
The broader luxury tier shows the same patience at work. Single-family homes asking $4 million and up across Miami-Dade that went under contract during August 24–30 had averaged 108 days on market. During September 14–20, the average was 117 days. Countywide in August 2026, across all price points, MIAMI REALTORS reported a median of 40 days from listing to contract and a median sale at 95% of original list price. At about 83% of its ask, the Chapman Field close fell well below that countywide norm.
The ceiling is still being tested
None of this means demand is weak. MIAMI REALTORS counted 194 Miami-Dade sales at $10 million or more through August 2026. That's already 14.1% more than the 170 recorded in all of 2025, and the association projected about 291 for the year. In Pinecrest, a house built in 2022 sold for $19.5 million in 2025, a village record according to The Real Deal.
What the market is still working out is where the Pinecrest ceiling sits. In May 2026, the Miami Herald reported a new listing at 6701 SW 101st Street asking $25 million, the most expensive home ever listed in the village. It's a tropical modern house of more than 11,000 square feet on over an acre, with a putting green and a 70-foot pool. The Herald's report also described older homes, some from the 1940s, being expected to give way to new builds in that style.
A $25 million ask and a $19.5 million record sale are both data points, but only one of them is a transaction. Sales of $10 million and up are clearly growing across the county. The village's Chapman Field close shows that the price a builder sets and the price a buyer pays can still be millions apart.
The risk on the other side of the spread
The spec model has another side, and it matters for anyone thinking about buying land or a partly built house. The Real Deal reported in August 2026 on a one-acre site at 8800 SW 64th Court. A builder-investor joint venture paid $1.6 million for it in 2021, and the house has sat as a partially built shell since 2022. According to that coverage, the partners couldn't agree on construction financing. An arbitrator ultimately awarded the investor partner, Navja Corp., about $1.8 million plus damages.
That's the same lot-to-house spread from the table, seen when a project stalls. The value of a finished Pinecrest spec depends on someone completing it. For buyers, it's a reminder that a finished, staged and fully built house carries a premium partly because the construction risk has already been absorbed. For investors looking at sites, financing structure is as much a part of the deal as the dirt.
A few common questions
Do Pinecrest new builds always sell below asking? The research covers one recorded close in this group, at about 17% below its $16.3 million ask. The other two homes in the table were under contract as of their reported weeks, and their final prices hadn't been reported. One sale doesn't make a rule, but it shows how wide the gap can be.
Where can I see what a Pinecrest house actually sold for? Recorded sale prices and prior purchase prices come from public property records, which is where news outlets like The Real Deal pull the lot purchase figures quoted above. Asking prices in weekly contract reports aren't sale prices.
Why do so many Pinecrest specs ask about $1,400 per square foot? Both the Chapman Field and SW 118th Street homes were listed at about that level. The one recorded close came in near $1,150 per square foot, so a shared asking benchmark tells you about builder expectations more than about settled value.
Is the September 2026 market data available yet? As of October 12, 2026, the most recent MIAMI REALTORS monthly release covers August 2026.
If you're weighing a Pinecrest new build, the gap between the ask and the recorded sale is where most of the negotiating happens. The Cromer Team can pull a home's property records, lot purchase history and time on market before you make an offer. Request a Private Consultation, and we'll go through the specific house you're considering.
