In case you haven’t been told lately, the sky is blue, the grass is green and real estate in Miami is absolutely bonkers. Excuse us for stating the obvious but Redfin beat us to it with their latest migration analysis that examines housing trends across the U.S.
According to the report, approximately 30 percent of Redfin.com users looked to move to a different city at the tail-end of 2021, a figure that’s remained consistent throughout the pandemic. Only about 26 percent of users were looking to relocate before the world imploded, in part because few people could work remotely and mortgage rates weren’t as low as they are right now.
If none of this surprises you, Miami, then this finding will surely make you roll your eyes and sigh like some overgrown teenager: Miami is the country’s most popular city for out-of-state homebuyers. Its largest feeder market? It’s New York, of course.
As Redfin puts it, people are leaving big, expensive cities in search of more affordable places to live. It would make sense if living in Miami wasn’t so, well, expensive. Remote workers with substantially greater salaries from cities like San Francisco, Chicago and New York are finding themselves here, overjoyed by Miami’s lower cost of living.
The housing market, however, isn’t budging. According to RealtyHop’s recent affordability index, which studied 100 U.S. cities, Miami’s is the least affordable housing market in the country—even more than New York! Households would need to contribute 78.71 percent of their income toward homeownership costs, which is up 1.5 percent from last month. In other words, look at what you did, New Yorkers.
On the bright side (we suppose even the direst of situations have one), the influx of northerners has resulted in a spate of well-known restaurants, some of which, admittedly, are impossible to book. As Miami’s most influential insiders devolve into the rest of us—on the outside looking in—we now have more bagels, tacos and pasta to stress eat when none of us can invariably find a home.
