Renting a home or apartment in South Florida is getting more expensive — in some neighborhoods more than 10% higher than a year ago — as the real estate market is flooded with people relocating from out of state.

After falling in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, average rents have been going up steadily recently and outpacing the national average. The trend mirrors the increase in home prices that’s being driven by low interest rates and high demand.

Compared to January 2020, rents have increased in most ZIP codes in Palm Beach and Broward Counties, according to data from Zillow. For example, Pompano Beach on average saw rents increase by 3%. Suburban areas in major cities like Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach saw rents increase by even more.

The ZIP code with the largest increase, 33055, west of Miami Gardens, saw rents increase by 13.6%.

The influx of people moving to South Florida is largely driving the increases, said Zillow analyst Treh Manhertz.

“We are seeing steady robust increase migration into Miami and not everyone is leaving,” Manhertz said. Following a drop in rent prices during the early months of the pandemic, the area has seen steady, modest growth since at least October.

Overall, the Miami market has grown steadily, gaining momentum back that was lost during the beginning months of the pandemic and at a pace outpacing the national level according to Manhetz. The Miami market grew about 2.1 percent in rent price in January, with other markets in Florida following a similar patter: Orlando’s rent price grew almost 2.2 percent.

Most real estate experts agree that the people are moving mostly from northern states to Florida, where pandemic restrictions are looser and warm weather allows people to be outdoors more often.

“We have seen a massive influx of people from up north in years past, but not like now. We are projected to have an extra 1 million people in the next 10 years,” said Ken H. Johnson, a real estate economist at Florida Atlantic University. “Because we don’t have enough product, the prices keep going up.

There are some aberrations to this trend: areas like downtown Miami, west Miami and the center of Fort Lauderdale have actually seen rents dropping.

“These are the dense downtown areas, and the reason we think that those areas aren’t seeing that rental price increase is that needing to be near the urban core for your job has become less important,” Manhertz explained.

This also hints a growing trend of a widening gap between suburban and urban rental price growth; while both have seen increases, suburban rental prices have grown at a faster pace than urban ones. In the Miami-Fort Lauderdale area, the gap widened from two percent for urban rent growth and five percent for suburban rent growth, according to data from Zillow.

National rent growth prices have followed a similar trend, though analysts believe that the urban rental market will grow as the pandemic starts to end.

And the hot housing market, with houses flying off the shelves, combined with higher rents in South Florida only exacerbates the problem. Some possible sellers are afraid to sell their homes because of the trouble they may have in finding a rental property in the interim, Broward County real estate agent Laurie Reader with Laurie Finkelstein Reader Real Estate, said of the clients she works with.

“On one rental, there can be five to ten different offers. And there is very low inventory. We are flooded in not just from home buyers but with renters,” she explained.

Potential renters are also faced with stricter landlords, who are more cautious about picking possible renters.

“Since Covid started, there is a very high level of fear with landlords due to the eviction moratorium. Now moving forward, when landlords decide who is going to rent their property, the expectations are much higher and there is competition,” she explained.