MICHAEL BENISTY knows what it is to be love struck. “When I have a crush on something or someone, I make a fast decision,” said Mr. Benisty, a stockbroker in New York. 
Seated on his patio overlooking Biscayne Bay, he gestured expansively, showing off his current lust object, his 1950s fan-shaped house.
“I needed a pied-à-terre in Miami,” said Mr. Benisty, a partner in a South Beach restaurant. “But I intended to watch the market at first.”
Temptation got the better of him, and in February, Mr. Benisty, who is 39, snapped up the first house he saw, paying $3,150,000 for a 3,500-square-foot, four-bedroom weekend retreat on Di Lido, one of the Venetian Islands. The house retains many of its prized original features, including travertine floors, a generous patio and coral-stone exterior wall.
To say nothing of the view. Gazing beatifically across his private stretch of palm-fringed bay, Mr. Benisty said, “The thing that I like is that here, there is only you and God.”
He is one in a small number of second-home buyers to discover the serenity of the Venetians. For years, as I can attest, having moved to the Venetians part time in 2003, the islands have stood in contrast to buzzing South Beach and its successive revivals.
This chain of 11 artificial islands, six of which are inhabited, stretches across Biscayne Bay between downtown Miami and Miami Beach. Some are part of Miami, others part of Miami Beach. They are linked by the Venetian Causeway, a scenic road with 12 bridges erected by developers in the mid-1920s to lure buyers.
“People were really into theming,” said Arva Moore Parks, a historian and the author of “Miami: The Magic City” (Centennial Press, 1991). Venice was an obvious point of reference, she said, one with “a very romantic, glorious cachet.”
Today the causeway, with its old-fashioned lampposts, its skaters and cyclists, offers views of some of the most romantically secluded properties in the area.
The islands form a slice of tropical suburbia that extends eastward almost to Lincoln Road in South Beach, with its proliferating shops and restaurants. They stretch west to the mainland and the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, the $461 million downtown complex that opened in 2006.
Their centralized location has helped the islands prosper. A pocket of stability in an otherwise volatile real estate market, they are positioned comfortably between extremes: on the one hand, downtown Miami, with falling prices and climbing inventories that have placed it at the leading edge of the nation’s real estate crisis, and on the other, the strenuously hip environs of South Beach, where prices continue to climb, albeit slowly, keeping waterfront properties out of the reach of most buyers.
“A lot of the heartbeat of Miami Beach is living on the Venetian Causeway,” said Todd Glaser, a developer. Affluent and often young, buyers are enticed, he said, by the prospect of finding that rarity, a relatively affordable home with a water view. Given those attractions, it was only a matter of time before the islands — some with Old World names like San Marco, San Marino, Di Lido and Rivo Alto — would attract attention.
“The Venetian Islands are growing just the way they are supposed to, quietly and with distinction,” said Gary Hennes, a local developer, whose newest property, Lincoln Square, is a 35-unit condominium building in South Beach just east of Belle Isle, an apartment enclave that is the easternmost of the Venetians. “There aren’t McMansions on every single piece of land. And there are affordable properties on many of the islands.”
Pointedly, he added, “The Venetians have not had the hype of other areas in Miami Beach, and they don’t need it.”
Of course, hype in Miami has never been in short supply, especially among real estate insiders eager to exploit an area that, until now, has enjoyed the status of a best-kept secret.
“The Venetians are hot, I think the hottest area of Miami,” said Seth Semilof, a former real estate broker and the publisher of Haute Living magazine. “There’s still an upside here; you can get luxury properties at under $10 million. That’s true nowhere else on Miami Beach.”
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