Azora Private sells a Coconut Grove office as 20 stories of zoning

Azora Private, the vehicle Azora set up in 2025 to drive the global growth of its private investor business, has completed two Miami transactions worth more than $84 million, IREI reports. The larger of the pair is a sale: Continental Plaza, a Coconut Grove office building, is going to a real estate developer for $62.3 million less than a year after Azora paid $47.5 million for it.

Azora Private said it ran an extensive zoning study and engaged with local authorities to increase the site's development potential from eight to 20 stories under the Florida Live Local Act, turning the office parcel into a residential development site; the buyer will build a high-end project on a main Coconut Grove thoroughfare, two blocks from the Four Seasons Residences. The $62.3 million sale price is $14.8 million, or roughly 31 percent, above the $47.5 million paid less than a year earlier, a spread owed to the twelve added stories of residential capacity.

The second deal runs in the other direction: Azora Private is acquiring Santona Corner, on terms IREI's report does not disclose, while framing both moves as higher-value-add opportunities and another step forward in its U.S. strategy.

Continental Plaza traded as an entitlement, the twelve added stories of residential capacity accounting for all of the spread. Office prices, as this publication has argued, are increasingly set by what a property can become, and the buyer here is a developer rather than an alternative-credit lender taking the keys; that suggests the office clearing bid is forming on both sides of the conversion trade.