Looking to rent in the South Florida area? Heres what you need to know
MIAMI - The home buy market may be slowing down, but it's not the same for the rental market.
Inventory simply has not even come close to demand.
"Honestly I love the beaches more here, and the nightlife and that's kind of what draws me to want to stay," Renee Westover said.
Westover and her husband wanted to stay in Downtown Miami.
"As a massage therapist, and I have a husband in med school, we don't make those 6 figures a year," she said.
But, she did the math and just couldn't afford it, so the family moved to North Miami.
"We actually just moved out of our apartment that got raised up, 400 to $2,000."
That's not surprising, a check of rent.com found that leases in Miami-Dade remain high in most metro areas.
The cheapest rent was found in Homestead, where it's $1,300 a month, the highest was in downtown; it's closer to $3,600.
Over in Broward, the cheapest rent is Deerfield Beach, while the most expensive is Fort Lauderdale with $2,400
"I took a poll in my classroom and of my class, 70% were not a landlord and not a tenant, and what that means is that 70 % live with family," Suzanne Hollander, an attorney, and professor at FIU's Hollo School of Real Estate said.
She explained, that this was a reflection of the hot rental market.
"People in high-tax states were already relocating to South Florida so they wouldn't have to pay income tax," she told CBS4.
Florida has long been known as a place to escape state income taxes, then during the pandemic, a lot of people found they could work from anywhere, so why not the Sunshine State?
"In addition to the SLT (state and local tax) exodus that's helping increase the rents in South Florida, we also have a wave of socialist governments that are being elected throughout Latin America," she said.
That has pushed more people to leave and immigrate to Miami, a community with a large concentration of ex-pats from South America.
In addition, costs are also going up for condominiums, and that gets passed to the renter.
"But if you want to negotiate with your landlord what I recommend to do is to be a good tenant," Hollander said.
There are a few steps she outlines to attempt a negotiation.
- Pay on time, and establish a good record.
- Discuss option to stay early, rather than at end of the agreement
- Try to extend at least for a longer term, potentially paying upfront.
"It's hard when you want to live on a budget, you can't really because so many things are expensive even gas and stuff like that," Westover said.
For Westover, it was easier to move farther away, and commute, but all this doesn't bode well for her to become a long-term Floridian.
"There's a slight chance that we could [stay], but it would not be my first choice," she said.