Developers of a North Miami apartment project scored a $57.8 million construction loan as Miami-Dade County’s multifamily pipeline chugs along despite a slowdown in leasing activity.
Continua Developments, led by principals Felipe, Enrique and Pablo Echeverri, and SP Developments, led by Daniel Jaramillo, obtained an Abanca USA mortgage for Urbania NoMi 6ave, a 12-story project with 240 apartments and roughly 20,000 square feet of ground-floor retail that started construction in December, the South Florida Business Journal reported.
The joint venture assembled the site at 12830 Northeast Sixth Avenue in 2022, paying $6.9 million. Continua, the U.S. arm of Colombia-based Constructora Capital, and SP demolished a school and a church on the site to make way for Urbania NoMi 6ave, designed by Denver-based G3 Architecture. The developers plan to complete the project by next year.
It is part of a small wave of multifamily projects in North Miami amid a development boom in Miami-Dade where developers built 8,690 affordable apartments from 2020 to 2024, according to RentCafe, a Yardi Systems-owned apartment listing and research platform. That represents a 97 percent increase compared to affordable apartment deliveries between 2015 to 2019.
When North Miami city officials approved Urbania NoMi 6ave in 2024, representatives for the developers said they would consider using tax benefits afforded by Florida’s Live Local Act by setting aside at least 70 of a project’s apartments for households earning between 80 percent and 120 percent of the area median income. In Miami-Dade, the AMI is $87,200 per year.
A few blocks north of Urbania NoMi 6Ave, Continua is also developing Urbania NoMi 125, a 12‑story, 195‑unit project at 1150 Northeast 125th Street that landed $50 million in construction financing in August.
Still, apartment leasing activity and rent growth has slowed. A record 18,600 units were completed in South Florida last year, outpacing 15,000 leases, according to CoStar. Median asking rents in the tri-county region decreased 3 percent last year compared to the previous year, Realtor.com shows.
— Francisco Alvarado
