Don't believe the media, warned PR pitchman Seth Gordon.

Speculators and investors are what built these cities out of swampland, added Mark Armstrong, director of Florida operations for development company Leviev Boymelgreen.

The sales agents nodded their heads in agreement. Surrounding them were models of luxury towers and views of the city, shimmering Biscayne Bay and construction cranes tending to partially built buildings.

Others, including a couple at the seminar, took issue with the numbers given out - some of which have become outdated in a matter of weeks or lacked context for the time period they covered.

Sales for single-family homes were still strong in June, but condo sales have been falling off, according to recent numbers from the Attorneys' Real Estate Council of Miami-Dade, which tapped economist Hank Fishkind to analyze the data.

For the third month in a row, the volume of new condo closings decreased, down to 1,537 units, while prices went up, to nearly $400,000. Existing condo closings were flat; so was pricing, at an average of $308,334.

Closings for new single-family homes went up to 691 units and to 3,353 for existing homes.

The speakers expressed concern about national and local media reports of a possible housing bubble.

Gordon said he took some developers over to The Miami Herald to meet with new Publisher Jesus Diaz Jr., expressing concern over negative coverage.

What's a bubble?

"The bubble is a term without a definition," Gordon said. "Some think it's a leveling of prices. Some think it's the end of civilization as we know it."

He thinks developers haven't done a good enough job explaining how the industry works, that timetables for building take about three years, and that all the units won't hit the market at once. And that in Miami, the market isn't selling just to locals, but to the world.

"Developers spend millions and millions, selling champagne dreams, naked women and naked boys and the good life with stainless-steel kitchens," he said. "But there's been really no effort at all defending the market."

The publicist's company, Gordon Reyes & Co., recently inked a deal with the Florida Real Estate Showcase, which will bring a three-day exhibit to the Coconut Grove Convention Center in November.

FRES director Maribel Alvarez said in a release that to take the showcase to the next level, organizers needed "to move to the heart of the real estate boom in Miami."

It's in Miami where many worry about the numbers of new construction.

Those numbers were debated at the Aug. 18 real estate gathering - advertised to address "Is there a bubble? Are your clients asking you about the housing bubble? Get answers you need to be able to answer their questions ... and more!"

"The 60,000 units figure is way overblown," said Shuffield, adding that talk of a bubble slows down the market.

As much as 30 percent of the market is foreign buyers, he said, and business has been strong. "I've been here 30 years and I've never seen a market like this."

Leviev Boymelgreen's Armstrong, speaking from inside the sales room of Soleil, one of his company's high-rise projects, said naysayers have been around since the founding of Miami and Miami Beach by the Tuttles and the Brickells, the Collinses and the Fishers.

Avenue during the real estate downswing of the 1980s, although Shuffield blamed it on the crime wave that hit Miami and the devaluation of Venezuelan currency.

Armstrong further argued that inventory numbers are misleading. Only 7,000-plus have been built, he said, without mentioning the time frame, while about 11,000 are under construction.

"That's where it stops," he said. "We have to stick to facts."

In June, city numbers showed that 7,343 units had been completed since 1995. As of August, the city's tally had risen to 9,152 units built and 14,134 more under construction.

An additional 57,392 have been approved, are in the application phase or have been proposed, but the speakers said not all those units may come to fruition.

If they did, the total would reach 80,678 for the city of Miami - equal to all the housing units counted by the 2000 Census in Fort Lauderdale.

The speakers did not include projects in Coral Gables, Sunny Isles Beach, the rest of Miami-Dade County or the rest of the region. They also did not include condo conversions under way in the tri-county area. Deerfield Beach-based McCabe Research and Consulting expects 25,860 conversion units to sell or hit the market this year.

BS and 'totally useless'
One Realtor remained unconvinced by the answers proffered.

That's BS, said Katia Smith of Classic Realty Group, after Armstrong finished speaking and Gordon rejected her request to ask a public question at the end of the session. "This was totally useless."

Her concern: too much luxury product has flooded the market, while housing that can be afforded by the working class is non-existent.

Smith said the numbers were disingenuous and didn't address the real problems facing real estate in Miami-Dade. What's the market share of high-end units selling for more than $400,000 among the units under construction, she wondered.

Another naysayer in the audience was Jack McCabe, the local conversion guru and real estate analyst.

"They didn't talk about dark towers," he said. "They didn't talk about projects that were in trouble."

Nor anything about increasing interest rates. Or the weakening euro, which, when much stronger than the dollar, spurred a buying spree from Europeans. No mention of a tightening by lenders either, he rattled off.

The market is at its pinnacle and a correction will be seen in the first half of 2006, McCabe said.

Consider: In the eight-year span from 1992 to 2000, 7,092 new units were absorbed in Miami-Dade County, McCabe said. Just one project was built in 1996.

But in 2003, that number skyrocketed to 7,210 for just one year. In 2004, 7,425 more. The total for this year may push 15,000, he said.

"Why question the visionaries, given that population has increased and we have job growth," McCabe said. "Do you honestly believe that explains a tenfold increase in sales overnight? And twentyfold in the last two years? Or do you believe a more reasonable explanation might be that 70 to 80 percent of these sales are actually driven by speculators?"

And the truth may even be closer to 90 percent speculation within pre-construction sales, realty agent Smith said. It's just the nature of the arrangement.

What remains unclear is how quickly the units will be absorbed.

An FP&L measuring stick
True absorption can be tracked by indicators like the number of electrical hook-ups by Florida Power & Light: 12,454 new connections from June 2004 to May 2005, according to Tom Dixon, 2004 chairman of the Realtors Association of Greater Miami and the Beaches.

Those numbers have been "relatively the same" over the past 20 years with slight shifts, he said. But Dixon sees a greater worry on the horizon, deeper than the debates as to whether the bubble will burst or when the market will correct itself.

"All the condos that have been started will be finished and will be sold at some point," he said. "My concern is when they stop construction, our economy is gong to be in trouble. When that slows down, it's going to have a serious trickle-down or multiplier effect. When it turns off, it's going to be like when the tourists stop coming."

The impact will hit all the companies connected to the building boom, from laborers to suppliers of carpeting, tile, windows and more.

All the units under construction will become occupied - eventually, Dixon said. "I guarantee it."

"The problem is when those units are finished," he said. "When the cranes fly away, then it's coming to an end."

By Susan Stabley

South Florida Business Journal

Updated: 8:00 p.m. ET Aug. 28, 2005