170 NE 79^TH STREET

DEAL STORY

The Alpha Commercial Advisors® is proud to announce the closing of 170 NE 79th Street, a one-of-a-kind creative flex asset positioned along the rapidly evolving NE 79th Street corridor in Miami’s Little River submarket. Closing on July 7th, 2026 at a final sale price of $2,000,000, Jamie Rose Maniscalco and Steffanie Jacobson represented the seller in this on-market transaction.

Listed to contract in just a matter of weeks, this one quietly (and quickly!) went on to establish a new benchmark for the corridor at a whopping $653 per building square foot, shattering the historical high-water mark for improved commercial properties (defined here as assets with a building-to-lot ratio greater than 25%). By comparison:

• The highest sale from 2025 reached only $638/Sq. Ft. against an annual average of just $483.
• In 2024, the market high was $540/Sq. Ft. off an average of $479
• While 2023 topped out at roughly $422/Sq. Ft. from an average closer to $362/Sq. Ft.

Perhaps equally as noteworthy, this transaction now stands as one of only two commercial market comps recorded along the entire NE 79th Street corridor AND within a couple blocks of the peripheral NE 2nd Ave / N. Miami Ave corridors in all of 2026, of any size or asset type. The other sale being a tiny 2nd generation restaurant at 646 NE 79 ST which sold for $1MM ($544/Sq. Ft.) in May. That is an incredible decline in transaction volume for an entire market to pause dead-stop, and this speaks to the absolute slow-down that brokers and owners have been party to now for years as the financial markets create unfavorable conditions for both buyers and sellers alike, but accented by macro-level conditions on the corridor (more on that later..). This is a light at the end of the tunnel that should signal buyers are back and action is forthcoming. 

Micro-level, this deal was like an iceberg. From the outside looking in, people saw a property hit the market, go under contract almost immediately, and close just a few weeks later. But the real work—the other 95%—happened long before. This sale was the culmination of a years-long pursuit from which a relationship was built through patience, mutual respect and a commitment toward prioritizing the owner’s best interests ahead of making a sale. It was about truly recognizing when a selling event made the most sense for him personally rather than a one-track-minded ‘sell now’ philosophy, that was the real difference-maker amounting to ultimately being entrusted with this critical assignment when the time really was right. For specific context — our original valuation of the property dates all the way back to early 2021, estimating a value at literally half of where the asset would eventually trade just a few years later.

To back up even further, the then-owner, a young entrepreneur who acquired the building in 2019 for just $800,000—before anyone was even really paying attention to NE 79th Street (they’re only just starting to today, more on that still to come, we promise)—operated his business directly from the property and curated his own vibe through a blend of art gallery, recording studio and content creation space, all packaged into one discreet, graffiti-covered stretch of street retail. Truly in love with the building he had nurtured, renovated and built a community from and within off pure blood, sweat and tears, we honestly never thought we’d see the day he would be ready to part ways with it. But now with a clean bill of health after a long, tiresome permitting process that left him questioning whether the City was really on the side of property owners—the timing finally aligned right alongside a likely very directly-related trend of end-users becoming increasingly bullish on authentic flex-style buildings with direct NE 79th Street frontage, with clean building health, and immediate plug-and-play functionality where they would be able to bypass building department headaches and get straight to business.

The result was an immediate connection with a like-minded buyer who understood that spaces like this aren’t easily recreated, especially on a corridor actively redeveloping around them from nearly every direction (with the corridor’s first sizable new construction project “Little River Plaza” already approaching top-off right across the street). The buyer was represented by Ayoub Haidoufi of Deal Flow Realty, whose professionalism and collaborative approach contributed tremendously to one of the cleaner transactions we’ve had the pleasure of working on. We sincerely appreciate their partnership and commitment to getting this one across the finish line alongside us.

For us, this one carries a little extra meaning. The 79th Street corridor—our home base and admittedly our favorite emerging corridor—has been asleep for a long time. That’s due in large part to its ownership profile: primarily independent investors and small business owners, with no single majority ownership entity controlling any more of the street than the next. These owners saw the vision a long time ago, when the corridor was largely (and honestly still mostly is) a collection of aging automotive repair shops. These owners, recognizing the street for what it truly is: one of only three major east-west causeways after its southern counterparts the MacArthur and Julia Tuttle Causeways, mostly bought with the foresight and intention of sticking around for the long-haul, many debt-free by this point and owning outright, with little reason to sell before the street’s major appreciation event.

That event is here. 

And things are already changing with velocity not seen before. As always, we’re incredibly grateful to everyone involved in another meaningful chapter of the NE 79th Street story. If this sale is any indication, the corridor we’ve believed in for years may finally be entering the appreciation chapter so many long-time owners have patiently waited for and we’re here to keep making magic happen.