(Miami) Maria Ruby does not know where she will live in a few days. In December, the owners of his building told him that his rent would increase by 65% from February.
Posted at 11:00 a.m.
His situation illustrates an unintended consequence of the pandemic in Miami: the rise in real estate prices here is one of the strongest in the United States.
With its favorable climate, white sand beaches and zero income tax, the Miami area of South Florida was already an attractive destination before COVID-19. A particularly interesting city for Latin American and European buyers and investors.
The pandemic has accentuated the phenomenon. Health restrictions imposed in other cities in the United States as well as the rise of telecommuting, which has allowed many to carry out their work from anywhere, have caused many people to relocate to Florida.
These, coming mainly from the northeast of the country (New York, Boston, the State of Connecticut) and California, found lower prices there than in their cities of origin and authorities having allowed a rapid reopening. economy.
People “started arriving in South Florida in large numbers,” recalls Jennifer Wollmann, chair of the board of directors for the Miami Association of Realtors.
“Our climate, our business-friendly state and our wide open spaces are very attractive to people coming from states where it was cold and where they were confined,” she says.
The consequences were immediate: these new residents, with their higher wages, drove up prices.
According to a study by the real estate portal Realtor.com published in December, the Miami region is the region in the United States where rents have increased the most over the past year. The average rent in November was 2,800 dollars per month (3,500 Canadian dollars), or 44% more than a year earlier.
“We can’t sleep anymore”
For people like Maria Ruby, 57, it’s a disaster.
This cashier has lived for 25 years in an apartment located in a building that has 20 in Hialeah, a city adjoining Miami where the majority of the population is of Cuban origin.
The new owners of the building, the company Eco Stone Group, announced to all the tenants that they would now have to pay 1650 dollars in rent (2100 $ CAD) against 1000 previously (1275 $ CAD).
With an hourly wage of 14 dollars ($17.85 CAD), Maria Ruby, who lives with her daughter and her husband, knows that she will not be able to pay this new sum.
“We can’t sleep anymore,” she said. “I don’t know what will become of us. »
Miami’s boom in demand has surprised even experts like Florida International University economics professor Ned Murray.
“It was unprecedented,” he says of the phenomenon, which also affected home sales.
An index from the RealtyHop real estate portal places Hialeah at 5and ranking of the least affordable real estate markets in the United States.
According to his estimates, a middle-income family in the city wishing to buy a house will have to put 57.94% of the money earned each year to pay for this accommodation.
For Mr. Murray, it is necessary to increase the real estate supply, which is too meager; and in the long term, it is necessary to diversify the local economy, based on services, to generate jobs with higher salaries.
Last week, Maria Ruby and her daughter went outside the Eco Stone Group headquarters in Miami’s upscale Brickell neighborhood to demand a solution.
Hialeah tenants want to negotiate a lower rent increase, such as $1,200 ($1,530 CAD), for at least six months. But they assure that the company, which did not want to speak to the press, refuses to speak to them.
That day, the mother and her daughter were unlucky. The police barred them from entering the skyscraper. “Private property”, they were told.