Ask a Downtown Miami sales gallery when a pre-construction tower will deliver, and you'll get a specific year, sometimes a specific quarter. Ask again eighteen months later, and the year may have changed without anyone calling it a delay.
That's exactly what happened at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel & Residences Miami, the 100-story supertall rising at 300 Biscayne Boulevard. Early brokerage marketing in 2021 pointed to a summer 2025 opening. By January 2022, the development team was quoting 2026. By June 2024, the number had moved again, to the second quarter of 2028, and that new date didn't arrive as a standalone announcement about the schedule. It arrived inside a financing release, folded into the language describing a $668 million construction loan from Bank OZK and Related Fund Management, according to Miami New Times reporting published in August 2026. As of that same report, some of the developer's own marketing channels still listed 2027 as the completion year, even as the official target sat at 2028.
None of this means the building is in trouble. It means the date printed on a brochure or repeated by a sales team is a projection, not a closing disclosure. For anyone comparing a live construction site against an already-delivered building a few blocks away, that distinction changes how you should read every number on the page.
The Date Moved Three Times. The Floors Didn't.
Here's what makes this useful rather than just a cautionary anecdote: while the calendar kept resetting, the physical tower kept climbing on a pace anyone standing on Biscayne Boulevard could track with their own eyes.
- Summer 2025 was the completion estimate circulating in 2021 brokerage marketing
- 2026 became the target after the development team's January 2022 statement
- Q2 2028 is the current target, disclosed in 2024 and reaffirmed since
The construction record tells a steadier story. The concrete superstructure passed the 50th floor in December 2025 and the 60th floor in February 2026. By May 2026 it had reached the 75th floor. By August 23, 2026, per Florida YIMBY's reporting relayed through Haute Residence, it stood at level 85 and had started pouring the ninth and final of the tower's nine stacked glass cubes, the design signature that gives the building its stepped, spiraling silhouette. Contractor John Moriarty & Associates has been averaging roughly one floor every ten days, a pace that's held steady enough to become the most trustworthy figure in the entire project.
Topping out, meaning the structure reaches its full 1,049-foot height, is expected sometime in winter 2026. Delivery, meaning residents actually move in, is still targeted for the second quarter of 2028. Those are two different milestones separated by roughly a year and a half of interior work, hotel buildout, and final inspections. Buyers who only remember "2028" often forget that a topped-out tower can still be well over a year from a certificate of occupancy.
What a Deposit Actually Buys You While You Wait
If you're the one signing a contract for a unit in a tower that's still climbing, the completion date isn't an abstraction. It's the length of time your money sits committed before you get a key.
Florida law requires the first 10 percent of any pre-construction deposit to sit in escrow, untouched, until closing. That protection is real. What it doesn't cover is everything developers typically ask for beyond that first 10 percent. On most Downtown Miami ultra-luxury towers, cumulative deposits by the time a building tops out land somewhere between 30 and 50 percent of the purchase price, staged across:
- A reservation deposit, which recent 2026 buyer guides put anywhere from $20,000 to $100,000 depending on the tower
- A contract deposit at signing, commonly bringing the cumulative total to 20 to 30 percent
- Milestone deposits tied to construction events like foundation completion and structural top-off, typically around 10 percent each
Florida also gives buyers a 15-day rescission window after receiving all required condominium documents. That window is the one point in the whole process where a buyer can walk away and get a full refund without negotiating anything, which makes it worth using deliberately rather than treating it as paperwork to sign quickly.
None of this is a reason to avoid pre-construction in Downtown Miami. It's a reason to read a deposit schedule the way you'd read a lease: as a binding calendar, not a suggestion.
The Other Lesson Sitting a Few Blocks Away
For a sense of what happens after delivery, look at Aston Martin Residences, the sail-shaped tower at the mouth of the Miami River that's now several years past its own construction milestones. When G&G Business Developments released official pricing in December 2016, the building launched at $2,865 per square foot, a starting price the developer's team called a record for Downtown Miami at the time. The tower topped out in December 2021 and was substantially complete and selling through remaining inventory by 2025.
Compare that 2016 starting figure to what the building looks like on the resale market now. Sales data covering 2024 through 2026 puts the median transaction at roughly $1,266 per square foot across the building. Brokerage data covering the twelve months through July 2026 shows a similar range, with units changing hands at an average of $1,346 per square foot and taking an average of 159 days to sell.
That gap between a $2,865 starting number in 2016 and resale in the $1,266 to $1,346 range a decade later looks, at first glance, like a building that lost more than half its value. It almost certainly isn't that simple. A "starting at" launch price describes the cheapest available line in a building, usually a smaller, lower-floor unit released early to build sales momentum. A building-wide resale average blends everything, from those same smaller units to the tower's largest layouts, and it reflects whatever the broader luxury condo market did over ten years, not just what happened inside one address. The two numbers measure different populations of units, and treating them as directly comparable is where a lot of "this building underperformed" narratives go wrong.
The real lesson isn't that Aston Martin Residences is a cautionary tale. It's that a launch price and a resale average are different statistics, and a serious buyer comparing a delivered building against a rising one needs to ask what, specifically, each number describes before drawing a conclusion from it.
Two Ways to Own the Same Few Blocks
Buying pre-construction in a tower like Waldorf Astoria means locking in today's pricing on a still-being-finished design, in exchange for a multi-year deposit commitment and a delivery date that has already proven it can move. Buying resale in a delivered building like Aston Martin Residences means paying whatever the current market says the finished product is worth, but skipping the deposit schedule, the construction risk, and the waiting entirely. You can walk the actual unit, see the actual view, and check the actual finish quality before you sign anything.
Neither path is the right one for every buyer. They're two different trades, and the trade only makes sense once you know what you're actually comparing: a floor count you can verify from the sidewalk, or a finished home you can walk into today.
Frequently Asked Questions
How can I check a tower's real progress before I sign a contract? Independent construction reporting is more reliable than marketing timelines because it tracks physical milestones like floor counts and structural cube completion rather than developer-stated target dates. For Waldorf Astoria, that kind of reporting has tracked floor-by-floor progress at a pace of roughly one floor every ten days, which has held steadier than any completion year quoted in marketing materials.
What happens to my deposit if the completion date slips again? The first 10 percent of your deposit is protected in escrow under Florida law and cannot be released to the developer until closing, absent a default or lawful cancellation. Deposits beyond that first 10 percent may be used for construction costs if your contract contains the required disclosure language, which is exactly why reading the deposit and escrow sections of a purchase agreement closely, ideally with an attorney, matters more than the timeline printed on the website.
Is buying resale in a delivered Downtown Miami tower actually cheaper than pre-construction? It depends on the building and the specific unit, and a starting price at launch isn't a fair comparison to a building-wide resale average years later, since the two numbers describe different slices of inventory. The honest way to compare is unit type to unit type, at the same floor range and view corridor, weighing a delivered building's current resale pricing against a still-building tower's current developer pricing for a comparable line.
Ready to compare what's actually rising against what's already finished in Downtown Miami? Marcelo Steinmander tracks construction progress, deposit structures, and resale pricing building by building, and can walk you through exactly what a specific unit in a specific tower is worth today. Reach out for a conversation grounded in what's actually built, not just what's promised.
