An acre of nothing just sold for more than most finished houses in South Florida. In late July, a nearly half-acre lot at 10312 West Broadview Drive in Bay Harbor Islands closed for $18 million. There was a house on it. Nobody who bought it cared.
The buyer, an affiliate of David Burstyn's Winston Capital Management, purchased the north-facing parcel from a family trust in an off-market deal, with the agreement signed by trustee Noah Burton. Priscilla Burstyn of The Baron Agency represented the buyer. Zalmy Shapiro and Joel Lusky of The Brokerage South Florida, working with Jordan Karp of Jordan Karp LLC, represented the seller. The plan for the site is a spec home of roughly 12,000 square feet, one of the largest new waterfront estates the town will have seen. Whatever structure currently occupies the lot will not survive the transaction.
What $914 a Foot Is Actually Measuring
The sale breaks down to about $914 per square foot of land. Not living area. Not finished interior. Land. That distinction matters because the same parcel traded for $12.3 million in 2023. Nothing was built on it in the meantime. The house did not get renovated. The dock did not get upgraded. The only thing that changed was the number a buyer was willing to pay for the ground beneath it, and that number rose by roughly 46 percent in under three years.
When a buyer pays that kind of premium for undeveloped land in a town this small, they are not pricing a house. They are pricing scarcity: the fact that Bay Harbor Islands' West Island is entirely single-family, entirely canal or bay-facing, and entirely built out. There is no vacant subdivision waiting in the wings. Every lot that changes hands is a lot someone else no longer owns, and the supply of bay frontage on this island is fixed in a way that condo supply, a few blocks away on East Island, is not.
The Same Street Just Set Two Other Records
West Broadview Drive has quietly become the address where this dynamic shows up most clearly. Three transactions on or near the same corridor now bracket the story from both directions, the land side and the finished-house side.
| Address | Sold | Price | What was priced |
|---|---|---|---|
| 9520 West Broadview Drive | 2024 | Just under $22 million | An 8-bedroom, 10-bath finished home, the town's priciest single-family sale |
| 9640 West Broadview Drive | Earlier in 2026 | $21.8 million | An 8,000-square-foot finished home, sold by developer Menachem Kranz, a record $2,700 per square foot on the structure |
| 10312 West Broadview Drive | Late July 2026 | $18 million | A half-acre teardown lot, $914 per square foot of land, house included but irrelevant |
Look at what those first two numbers are doing. A finished, move-in-ready home at 9640 West Broadview sold at $2,700 a square foot, a record for the town. A vacant lot two doors down sold at a third of that per-foot figure and still cleared $18 million outright, because the lot itself is nearly half an acre. Buyers are not discounting the teardown for having an outdated house on it. They are pricing the frontage, the setback, the buildable envelope, and treating whatever sits there now as a line item in the demolition budget.
Why an Empty Lot Beats a Finished Condo on Price
Here is the part that should reframe how a seller thinks about this market. In the 180 days before March 2026, condos that actually closed in Bay Harbor Islands carried a median price of $785,000, or about $446 a square foot. That is a real, closed-transaction number, not a listing aspiration. Compare it to the $914 a square foot paid for raw dirt on West Broadview Drive, or the $2,700 a square foot paid for a finished home on the same street. A buyer purchasing an empty lot on the West Island paid roughly twice the per-foot price of someone buying a finished, move-in-ready condo on the East Island.
That gap is not a pricing error. It reflects two different products being sold under one town name. East Island condo supply can still expand. New boutique towers continue to deliver units, and each new building adds finished square footage to a market that can absorb it. West Island cannot do the same thing. It is two kidney-shaped pieces of land with a fixed number of lots, and once a parcel like 10312 West Broadview trades, the town has one fewer of them available for the next buyer who wants a private dock and open bay exposure without a condo board attached to it.
What This Means If You Own an Older Home on West Island
If you own a single-family home on West Island and the kitchen has not been touched since the Reagan administration, this is better news than it might first appear. The transactions on West Broadview Drive show that condition and finish level are not driving these prices. Lot frontage, orientation, and dock potential are. A developer evaluating your property is not walking through with a punch list. They are measuring the parcel.
That does not mean cosmetic work is worthless if you plan to sell to an owner-occupant who wants to move in without construction. But if your lot has the characteristics that made West Broadview Drive attractive, meaningful water frontage, a buildable footprint large enough for a substantial new home, and clean title with no easement complications, your leverage in a negotiation comes from documenting those specifics clearly rather than from a fresh coat of paint. Have your survey, your dock permits, and your setback calculations ready before you list. That paperwork is what a land buyer underwrites against, and sellers who can hand it over quickly tend to close faster and with fewer contingencies.
What This Means If You're Buying
If you are shopping West Island with a renovation budget in mind, understand who else is bidding. The buyer on 10312 West Broadview was a development firm planning a 12,000-square-foot spec home, not a family looking for a fixer-upper. When you compete against that kind of buyer, the existing structure's condition is irrelevant to their offer, which means your evaluation of "how much work does this house need" is answering a different question than the one the market is actually pricing.
Before writing an offer on an older West Island home, ask what comparable land, not comparable houses, has traded for recently. A $914-a-square-foot land comp tells you more about what a teardown-eligible lot is worth than a condo closing three blocks away ever will. If your intention is to renovate rather than rebuild, factor in that you may be bidding against a land price, not a renovation price, and structure your offer accordingly.
A Few Direct Questions
Does this pricing pattern apply to East Island condos too? No. The $914 to $2,700 per square foot range described here applies to West Island land and finished single-family structures. East Island condo pricing, at a median of roughly $446 a square foot on closed sales in the six months before March 2026, follows a separate supply dynamic tied to ongoing new construction.
Is every older West Island home a teardown candidate? Not automatically. Lot size, frontage, and buildable envelope determine whether a parcel attracts developer interest at land-value pricing. A qualified opinion on your specific lot is worth more than a general rule.
Bay Harbor Islands is a small market where one closed deed can reset how every other parcel on the block gets valued. If you are trying to figure out what your West Island lot is actually worth, or you are underwriting an offer against a teardown candidate, Allen Davoudpour and his team track these transactions as they close, not months later. Schedule a Consultation to walk through the specifics of your property or your search before the next deed resets the comp set again.
