Rising rents across South Florida pricing some out of town
PEMBROKE PINES - It may come as no surprise, rent and home listings are dropping across the country, except in South Florida.
It's been high since the peak of the pandemic, causing some to leave, though this number doesn't seem to be as high as new residents moving in, it is a changing dynamic.
"Miami will always be home for me, my family is there, my roots are there," Tache' Woods said.
Woods, a mom, and a teacher no longer calls herself a South Floridian. In May of 2021, she left for a suburb outside of Atlanta.
"I decided that when I left school I went back with my parents, my father was like just save your money," she recalled.
But when the time came, she could not find any home she wanted to buy, or anything that fit her budget. That's when she finally started looking at Georgia.
"Where our dollar goes in Miami it does not equal to where it can go somewhere else, so it only makes sense," she explained.
There are thousands more like her leaving, Jerry Vega, a real estate agent with Real Estate Authority has seen prices in Oakland Park jump, causing some long-time residents to say, it's time to pick up and go. Elsewhere home prices continue to stay high.
"February 2022, I sold a house that was $65,000 over asking price, so that's pushing your average Floridian income out of Florida," Vega said.
Some of his clients are also looking for locations with a better cost of living.
"I got another client that sold here in Broward County and moved to Tennessee, and they purchased a home outright and still have leftover money," he told CBS4.
In a way, it's similar to what newcomers from the Northeast are doing down here.
"Same thing with Georgia, a high school friend of mine were renting down here, and got an acre or two of land," he said.
Apartmentlist.com an online apartment search company reported rent in Miami metro areas remains 35% higher than during March 2020 the height of the pandemic.
Another company, Zumper.com which offers listings, and tracked apartments across the country, it said Miami is ranked 5th most expensive market in the country, and the median price of a two-bedroom apartment is nearly $3,400 a month.
"If legislators don't understand if they don't do something about the rise in cost and get the salary or wages to match not even substantially but just something if they don't do something about it, they're going to miss out on a lot of quality people," Woods added.
She misses the place she used to call home, but she's much happier where she can afford to live.