Finally, South Florida apartment rents flatten. Find out why and in which cities
South Florida apartment rental prices have come back down to earth, after two years of big annual pandemic jumps of 7% in 2022 and 25% in 2021, according to a new residential real estate report.
Median rents in the region this year through July are essentially flat, with a less than 1% increase. This is an indicator the runaway rental market has retreated and the annual pricing conditions are close to what they were in 2019 before the public health crisis emerged in spring 2020. However, many residents, particularly in Miami-Dade County, still struggle with even smaller rent increases after the double-digit leaps in the pandemic.
“What we’re seeing right now is a sharp cooldown of what had been astronomical rent growth,” said Christopher Salviati, senior economist at Apartment List, the online real estate marketplace that recently released a report documenting the shifting rental trend in South Florida and in Miami. “As we got into last fall and winter, and through this year, things started to cool off. Year-over-year rent growth dipped into negative territory. That is welcome news for Miami renters.”
Annually, median rent for one-bedroom apartments dipped 1.1% to $2,052 in July from $2,073 in July 2022 in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties, according to Apartment List’s latest rent report. Comparatively, the rent decline is modest, Salviati said, noting it’s considerably higher than the July 2019 median rent of $1,491 for a one-bedroom apartment.
The U.S. apartment listings digital platform gathered asking rents in buildings with at least 50 apartments, from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey and the company’s listings. The report looks at the largest metropolitan areas — and the largest cities there — in the country. For the report’s purposes, the Miami metro area includes tri-county South Florida region.
The influx of new large apartment complexes in South Florida is the primary reason annual rent hikes have sharply declined through seven months of 2023, real estate experts said. These newer high-rises usually charge high asking rents, pricing out much of the area’s middle-class workers. However, this year the competition has some of these properties offering annual leases with a month or two of free rent for credit-qualified renters.
Developers had flooded the residential real market with apartment projects in recent years, driven by the relocation of corporations into the region and migration of wealthy individuals. The larger apartment buildings with some of the higher rents tend to be concentrated in urban centers, such as Miami’s financial district Brickell and the flourishing Midtown Miami section.
North Miami had the biggest annual rent drop in South Florida, according to the Apartment List survey. Monthly median rents for one-bedroom apartments there fell by almost 7% since July 2022, to $1,527. Meanwhile, one-bedroom rentals in Miami dipped 1.1% to $1,636 a month in July; Hialeah’s one-bedroom units increased 3.3% to $1,328; and monthly rent dropped 5% in Doral to $2,063. In Broward, one-bedroom median rent in Fort Lauderdale fell 1.3% in July to $1,601 and declined 2.1% in Hollywood to $1,503.
Overall, in Miami-Dade County, rental prices across the board over the past year no matter the size and age of the apartment buildings rose by roughly 6%, according to data from John Burns Research and Consulting, a national real estate consulting and housing market research firm.
Miami-Dade’s median rents increased to $2,570 in July from $2,430 in July 2022, driven by strong demand for the cheaper rentals in older buildings in the suburbs. Zachary Nyberg, a senior consulting manager at John Burns, said apartment rents increased the most in Kendall and Hialeah.
Vanny Veras, a housing justice organizer at nonprofit Miami Workers Center, said her clients are hurt by every rent increase, no matter how small. With county emergency rental assistance now gone, Veras said her office sees people earning less than $40,000 a year asking how to push back against annual rent jumps of $300 or more to live in many cases in deplorable conditions.
Florida Atlantic University business professor and housing expert Ken H. Johnson said higher salaries from South Florida employers is really needed to live here in one of the most overpricing residential real estate markets in the country.
“Rents are slowing. They are still going up, but they are not going anywhere near as fast. They are not really coming down,” Johnson said. “We’re now in an affordability crisis as opposed to a rental crisis. Rents have leveled off. The only solution is for salaries to come up, because I don’t think rents are going to come down.”
Renters able to pay moving costs and willing to move every year will have the best fortune landing the lucrative apartment leasing deals.
“If you have a [lease] renewal coming up soon, its a good time to do some homework before you renegotiate that renewal increase,” said Nyberg of John Burns. “Go on Apartments.com, look nearby for new construction, and seek cheaper rents or concessions. If you don’t ask [your landlord], the answer is always no. It is a good time for you to go in armed with some information about the local area to renegotiate a better renewal offer.”
