Who Can Afford To Live In South Florida? Rent Is Through The Roof & Expected To Go Higher
MIAMI (CBSMiami) - If you are a renter living in South Florida, you don't need to be told just how unaffordable housing has become. The fact is that rents are sky-high and experts say they are going up even higher.
Affordable housing just has not kept up with luxury condos, making it very hard for some folks to be able to afford housing in the area.
In fact, Miami is the most rent-burdened in the United States, with rent gobbling up 30% of a family's income.
Workers are increasingly moving out of South Florida because of high rents and it is getting to the point where employers are having difficulty finding employees.
"I actually have a client that is relocating their offices from Pennsylvania to Miami to open up an office and he has over 50 employees and he has gotta find housing for them," said Kim Rodstein of Keller Williams Realty.
That type of influx teamed with foreign investors looking for rental investment opportunities, plus the higher cost of building condos and apartments within urban settings, high cost of land, and materials has produced an ugly brew that drives up the cost of South Florida rent.
"Something that would normally rent for fourteen hundred, fifteen hundred, now getting an additional 4 to 5 hundred, so you are over two thousand a month," said Rodstein and that's for a studio in the design district.
Rodstein deals in high-end condos and apartments but is fully aware of the universal rent crunch.
"It is not just the luxury sector. It is all ranges, unfortunately," adds Rodstein.
Any chance of a break in the future? Plenty of projects are in the works.
In the tri-state area, 14,500 new apartments are now online and nearly 27,000 apartments and condos are under construction.
Experts say the rent increase prediction is 6 percent.
Service industry workers are most impacted. The folks that make South Florida's number one industry function.
"So, with all those big luxury buildings going up everywhere, you like to see the community -- especially the larger developers that are the big players in the area -- focus on affordable housing," Rodstein said.
Affordable housing is always a difficult fight. Meanwhile, high rents are driving workers out of town and the result is employers are having difficulties in finding workers.