MMG Equity Partners Lands $21.5M Loan for West Kendall's Coral Nest

MMG Equity Partners has closed on a $21.5 million construction loan for Coral Nest, a 38-unit for-sale townhome project with three retail outparcels on a 6.5-acre site in West Kendall. JLL Capital Markets arranged the financing through Seacoast Bank.

Why it matters

Coral Nest is the kind of mid-size, developer-driven deal that rarely gets national coverage but matters most to readers tracking who is actually building in South Florida’s suburban core. MMG Equity Partners, a Miami-based firm better known for shopping center ownership, is stepping into ground-up for-sale housing here, partnered with C4 Legacy Builders Group on the residential build. That a construction lender is willing to fund a for-sale townhome product at this scale in West Kendall, rather than the rental multifamily the site was originally entitled for, is a signal that for-sale housing still pencils in supply-constrained submarkets near major job anchors. The project sits at the corner of Southwest 144th Avenue and Coral Way (Southwest 26th Street), close to Florida International University, HCA Florida Kendall Hospital and Dolphin Mall, giving both the townhomes and the retail a built-in draw from workers and students who already commute through the corridor.

The numbers

The $21.5 million loan funds 38 three- and four-bedroom townhomes ranging from 1,885 to 2,039 square feet, plus 24,536 square feet of retail fronting Coral Way on the front 3.5 acres of the 6.5-acre parcel. That works out to roughly $566,000 in construction debt per townhome, a figure not published by MMG or JLL but derivable directly from the loan amount and unit count. Asking prices start around $650,000. The project was 25 percent pre-sold as of early September, three weeks after sales launched, and construction is slated to finish by October 2027. No permit activity at the site has yet surfaced on Miami-Dade’s building permit feed.

What’s next

MMG and C4 Legacy Builders Group will move from entitlement, secured in February 2025 after the site’s original apartment plan was scrapped, into vertical construction. Retail leasing for the Coral Way outparcels, expected to draw a supermarket and restaurant use, will run alongside the residential build through the projected 2027 delivery. For more South Florida capital and deal activity, see the South Florida market hub.