MIAMI- The home buying market may be slowing down, but the rental market is not.
Inventory simply hasn’t even come close to meeting demand.
“Honestly, I love the beaches here more, and the nightlife, and that’s what draws me to want to stay,” said Renee Westover.
Westover and her husband wanted to stay in downtown Miami.
“As a massage therapist and I have a husband in medical school, we don’t make that 6 figures a year,” she said.
But he did the math and just couldn’t afford it, so the family moved to North Miami.
“In fact, we just moved out of our apartment that raised between $400 and $2,000.”
That’s not surprising, a rent.com check found that rents in Miami-Dade remain high in most metro areas.
The cheapest rent was found in Homestead, where it is $1,300 a month, the highest was in the city center; it’s closer to $3,600.
In Broward, the cheapest rental is Deerfield Beach, while the most expensive is Fort Lauderdale at $2,400
“I did a survey of my classroom and of my class, 70% were neither homeowners nor renters, and that means 70% live with family,” Suzanne Hollander, attorney and professor at FIU Hollo School. Real estate said.
She explained that this was a reflection of the hot rental market.
“People in high-tax states were already moving to South Florida so they wouldn’t have to pay income taxes,” he told CBS4.
Florida has long been known as a place to escape state income taxes, then during the pandemic many people found they could work from anywhere, so why not the Sunshine State?
“In addition to the exodus of SLT (state and local taxes) that is helping to increase revenues in South Florida, we also have a wave of socialist governments being elected throughout Latin America,” he said.
That has pushed more people to leave and immigrate to Miami, a community with a large concentration of expats from South America.
Plus, costs are also going up for condos, and that’s passed on to the renter.
“But if you want to negotiate with your landlord, my recommendation is to be a good tenant,” Hollander said.
There are a few steps you describe to attempt a negotiation.
- Pay on time and establish a good track record.
- Discuss the option of staying early, rather than late in the deal
- Try to extend at least for a longer term, possibly paying in advance.
“It’s hard when you want to live on a budget, you really can’t because a lot of things are expensive, even gas and things like that,” Westover said.
For Westover, it was easier to move further afield and travel, but all of this doesn’t bode well for her to become a long-term Floridian.
“There is a small chance that we can [stay]but it wouldn’t be my first choice,” he said.
Jacqueline Quinn
