Nearly a quarter of all single-family homes in South Florida were occupied by tenants or available for lease last year, according to a report that underscores the changing profile of renters.
In Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties, 22 percent of the 904,700 homes were used as rentals in 2015, according to U.S. Census data analyzed by real estate website Zillow.com. That's up from 19.5 percent in 2014, and it's the highest percentage since 2005, the first year the figures were calculated annually, Zillow said.
Traditionally, renters have been young, single professionals living in apartments, but more families are turning to single-family rentals because they've postponed homeownership or they can't afford to buy, housing analysts and counselors say.
Boca Raton — For the first time, the city of Boca Raton is contemplating a program that would require landlords to register their properties and their tenants with the city.
Complaints about noise, excessive trash and parking led the city to consider the program, Mayor Susan Haynie said. Code enforcement officers interviewed the occupants of properties generating the complaints and determined a majority were student renters, she said.
Neighborhoods closest to Florida Atlantic University — namely those off Northwest 20th Street and Glades Road — have the most complaints, Haynie said.
BY EVAN WILLIAMS | Charlotte County Florida Weekly
Florida homebuyers looking for a traditional mortgage and a place to live year-round continue to face heavy competition from cash buyers who are more often investors and landlords, vacation homebuyers and pre-retirees.
A wave of homes at the lower end of the price spectrum selling for cash, set off by the 2008 housing and foreclosure crisis, is subsiding across the country, but less so in Florida. The state in February had the highest share of cash home sales in the country at 54.6 percent, CoreLogic found, while 37.9 percent of homes sold for cash in the U.S. as a whole.
According to CoreLogic, more homes sold for cash in the Cape Coral-Fort Myers area in February (59.4 percent) than any of the other 100 largest metropolitan areas in the country except for Detroit-Dearborn-Livonia, Mich. (60.5). Four of the top five areas for cash sales were in Florida, with Miami-Miami Beach-Kendall (59.3), Fort Lauderdale- Pompano Beach-Deerfield Beach (58.5) and West Palm Beach-Boca Raton-Delray Beach (58.4) rounding out the list.
Apartment rents continue to rise faster across South Florida than the rest of the country, and renters can expect to keep shelling out more money when their leases expire.
About the only bit of good news for cash-strapped apartment dwellers: The rent increases should start to even out.
The average rent in Broward County in March was $1,436 a month, up 7 percent from the same period a year ago, according to the Axiometrics research firm in Dallas. Over the same period, Palm Beach County's average rent climbed 8 percent to $1,429 a month.
By Dees Stribling, Contributing Editor | MHNonline
For-rent multifamily is long past being the darling property type of the year for any particular year since the recession hit. It’s probably fair to say it’s the darling property type of the entire decade of the 2010s, and if the latest numbers on the industry are anything to go by, that isn’t going to change in 2015. To sum up: rents are still going up; vacancies might be edging up a little, but not too much, as more supply comes on line; and investors are spending money on apartment assets like sailors on shore leave.
Quite a turnaround. In 2004, I attended the National Multi Housing Council’s annual convention in Boca Raton. One of the persistent complaints at the meeting was how federal policy was, in effect, hurting the for-rent side of the residential housing market by (over)promoting homeownership. In fact, around that time (Q2 2004), the percentage of Americans owning a house hit an all-time high, 69.4 percent, up from 64.4 percent at the beginning of 1995. The home-owning high, of course, proved unsustainable for all the sad reasons that the recession unmasked. These days (Q3 2014, according to the Census Bureau), the homeownership rate is 64.3 percent.
This week the NMHC, in its Quarterly Survey of Apartment Market Conditions, reported that the U.S. apartment market’s still doing well. Only the sales volume index (44) dropped below 50–more than 50 means growth and optimism–with market tightness (51), equity financing (55) and debt financing (71) showing continued expansion. Those numbers aren’t quite as high as they’ve been in recent years, but they’re still solid. Demand is still believed to be ahead of supply. Another report by Marcus & Millichap this week generally confirmed these apartment trends.
Even before downtown Boca's tallest building is completed, four new projects that will equal it in size are in the pipeline.
The 12-story apartment building, the Mark at CityScape, is scheduled to open early next year near the southeast corner of Palmetto Park Road and Federal Highway.
Officially, downtown Boca's buildings are supposed to go no taller than nine or 10 stories that measure 100 feet, plus some height for decorative elements.
People seem to be loosening the grip on their wallets.
With the economy improving, household spending in South Florida has risen 6 percent in two years, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says. People are spending more of their money on housing, clothes, groceries and personal care such as haircuts, the BLS said.
Overall, households spent on average $40,604 annually in 2012 and 2013, $2,250 more than the previous two-year period.
Apartment rents in South Florida are rising at a faster rate than many of the nation's largest metro areas.
Palm Beach County rents grew 5.3 percent in the third quarter from a year ago, according to MPF Research in Carrollton, Texas. That ranks ninth among the 50 largest metros.
Broward County saw a 4.4 percent increase year to year, ranking 13th nationwide.