Construction of the two-tower project, located in Miami's Little Havana neighborhood a short hop from downtown and close to where the new Florida Marlins baseball stadium is going up, was begun in April 2006, but stopped several times within the last four years, according to Condo Vultures, LLC, a Bal Harbour-based real estate consulting and brokerage firm. A fourth notice of commencement to finish the project was filed on January 28, 2010 in Miami-Dade County. The development had been scheduled to be completed in late 2007, according to an April 13, 2006 article in the South Florida Business Journal.

Condo projects not on the water, especially in Little Havana (the development is actually on the Miami River, but not on the ocean or Biscayne Bay), do not have the cache of units in more upscale locations, says Jack McCabe, CEO of McCabe Research and Consulting in Deerfield Beach.

Another project, the San Lorenzo Condominium, not far from the Terrazas Riverpark Village, was auctioned off last weekend and the average bid was $121 per square foot for 65 units. At that condominium, the lender is owed $216 per square foot, according to Condo Vultures. About $120 per square foot is probably the going market rate for the Terrazas Riverpark Village development as well, says McCabe.

It will be hard for the lender to sell Terrazas Riverpark Village units at prices low enough that a bulk buyer would be interested, says McCabe. Given the cost of insurance, taxes and homeowner's association dues, he wouldn't be able to rent the units out at a high enough rate to cover monthly operating expenses, he says.

Bulk buyers have usually been attracted to properties which can be flipped to international buyers, says McCabe. But at this location, there is no demand for international buyers, he says.

It was five to seven years ago that condominium developers, who could no longer find waterfront land on which to build, or could not afford it if they could find such land, discovered Little Havana, where land was relatively cheap.

A number of condominiums built in Little Havana over the last few years were categorized as "workforce" housing, because the units in these developments were less pricey than more posh neighborhoods like Miami's Brickell Avenue or suburban Coral Gables. Still, at the Terrazas Riverpark Village project, as well as a number of similar developments, prices for these "affordable " units started at $300,000, even though they were being built in the midst of an otherwise low-income, somewhat rundown, immigrant neighborhood.

Although neighborhoods do change and become gentrified, says McCabe, it takes time, usually 15 or 20 years. "We are seeing changes in some areas of Miami, but many have the blight and high crime which was prevalent before the boom," he says.

In April 2007, corporate sales director for Miami-based B Developments, Sebastian Barbagallo, told the Florida Real Estate Journal, in reference to another one of his company's developments planned for the Little Havana area, that construction would start in the next two months "without (the developer) meeting any pre-sale requirements," because, he said, "we have a local institutional partner who believes in our business plan." At the time, B Developments was led by Miguel Angel Barbagallo.