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Happy Sunday Highest & Best! Here’s a rundown of the real estate week:

⏪ Miami’s job boom is reversing itself

🏗 Site sold for Florida’s would-have-been tallest tower

🏌️‍♂️ Boca tees up homes on one-third of a golf course

🚆 Sleep where you commute?

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📈 South Florida’s Job Boom Hits Reverse ⏪

For a few pandemic-era years, South Florida was a magnet for job migration and corporate relocations from other states. But that pull is weakening—fast.

According to a to a new report from the Miami Association of Realtors, the tri-county Miami metro region lost a net 2,487 jobs in the first quarter of 2024, or an annualized outflow of nearly 10,000 positions. That comes on the heels of a 13,860-job net loss in 2023, based on census data.

It’s a stark shift from the boom year of 2021, when South Florida gained a net 19,000 jobs, fueled by remote work policies and a migration wave from New York, New Jersey, California, and Illinois.

🙃 But here’s the twist: The jobs leaving aren’t the same as the ones that arrived.

🚚 The employees leaving South Florida—and driving the region’s net job loss—are largely in lower-paying industries, as workers priced out of the housing market head elsewhere in search of affordability, said Gay Cororaton, chief economist for the Miami Association of Realtors and author of the report.

“Home prices in the Miami Metro area have increased significantly since 2019 and that’s why they’re moving out,” Cororaton said in an interview. “That’s one of the concerning findings here.”

By contrast, the jobs that flowed into South Florida between 2020 and 2024 were among the best-paid poaches from other states.

💰 Jobs migrating from Illinois averaged $213,000
💰 From California: $187,000
💰 From New York—fueled by a wave of finance professionals—$155,000, according to the report.

The new jobs that came may have slowed to a trickle, but they left a lasting mark on real estate values, pushing demand and pricing well above pre-2020 levels—even with more listings on the market.

“Million dollar homes make up 25% of the market,” Cororaton said. “It used to be 8%”

⏪ Catch up on recent Highest & Best issues:

• Get the Parting Started, May 24, 2025

• Level Up, Lauderdale, May 10, 2025

• Pitches, Pit Stops & Penthouses, May 3, 2025

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Florida’s Would’ve-Been Tallest Tower: Canceled and Cashed Out

The dream of building Florida’s tallest office tower in Miami ended quietly this week—with some signatures and a hefty wire transfer.

Swire Properties officially sold the site where it once planned a 1,000-foot office tower in the Brickell neighborhood. The buyer was Miami-based developer Melo Group, which paid $211.5 million in cash for the prime 2.83-acre parcel at 700-799 Brickell Ave.

(The sale price has the potential to increase to $221.5 million, based on some final adjustments, according to published reports).

It’s a full-circle moment for Swire, which bought the site back in 2013 for $64.1 million. By 2022, Florida’s corporate and wealth migration was in full swing, and Miami’s office market was outperforming much of the country.

Sensing an opportunity, Swire partnered with Related Companies to pitch One Brickell City Centre: a 68-story tower in the heart of the financial district, with 1.5 million square feet of office space, outdoor terraces, and—because why not?—a rooftop helipad. The project was meant to be a sky-high symbol of Miami’s ascent as a finance and tech hub.

Until it wasn’t.

Demolition kicked off in 2023, but momentum soon fizzled. With no anchor tenant lined up and the office leasing market cooling, Swire pulled the plug on the project in January and put the site up for sale.

Swire said the proceeds will help fund its ultra-luxury condo project on Brickell Key, Residences at Mandarin Oriental, which recently passed $1 billion in sales. (See our tour and interview here).

The buyer of the parcel, Melo Group, hasn’t shared plans for the Brickell site just yet, but its track record offers a pretty solid clue.

Melo has delivered more than 8,000 apartments and condos to the South Florida market —with another 3,500 in the works. Its current projects include Aria Reserve, a pair of luxury condo towers rising in Edgewater, where units start at $2.7 million.

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Fairway for Sale: 800 Homes Teed up on Boca Golf Course

A half-century-old golf course in the heart of Boca Raton is getting ready to give up a third of its turf, striking a deal with Lennar $LEN ( ▼ 1.0% ) , the nation’s second-largest homebuilder.

Boca Lago Golf & Country Club is under contract to sell nine of its 27 holes to Lennar, which is eyeing the land for nearly 800 condos and townhomes, according to its project site, BocaLagoTogether.com

Lennar is framing the deal as a win-win: a way to help the aging club stay afloat, while delivering housing to an area that’s still long on demand for it. The builder is quick to point out that it’s only buying nine holes. (The remaining 18, plus the clubhouse, would stay under current ownership).

And while land use rules allow for more than 2,500 new residences at Boca Lago, Lennar says it’s going with a far lighter touch. No single-family homes are planned, and buildings would top out at four stories. The new homes, the company adds, will be priced to “maintain or elevate nearby property values.”

(For reference: the median price of a luxury condo in Boca—the bucket that most new development falls into—was $1.82 million in Q1, per Miller Samuel and Douglas Elliman.)

Before anything moves forward, Lennar needs Palm Beach County Commission approval to rezone the land (at 8665 Juego Way) and amend Boca Lago’s master plan. That review is expected by year’s end.

Not everyone is sold. The plan drew a packed house at a recent community meeting, where Boca Lago residents raised concerns about traffic, green space loss, and how nearly 1,000 new residences might change the vibe of the place.

Even if it gets the green light, construction wouldn’t start for another 18 to 20 months, Lennar said.

Next Stop: Apartment Boom at a Miami Rail Hub

Anyone hoping to rent near Miami’s Douglas Road Metrorail Station in a couple of years won’t be starved for options. This month brought enough development news to fill a few train cars:

🚆 First up: 13th Floor Investments, Related Group, and New York’s LeFrak just filed plans for two new towers at 3650 Bird Road, a 2.4-acre site formerly occupied by a car dealership.

The project calls for 743 apartments across 27- and 29-story buildings, with pool decks, rooftop padel courts, and ground-floor retail. Like others nearby, it’s riding Miami-Dade’s Rapid Transit Zone incentives, which sweeten the deal for developers near transit, allowing them a greater number of apartments and looser parking requirements.

🚆 Next: 13th Floor and partner Barings secured a $125 million construction loan this week to kick off Cadence, the third residential tower at their megaproject, Link at Douglas. That 35-story high-rise will bring 432 more market-rate apartments by 2028, with 12.5% earmarked for workforce housing, the developers said in a statement.

Link at Douglas already includes two fully leased towers, with a fourth 400-unit building in the pipeline.

🤔 So why all the action around the Douglas Road station? For one, it’s wedged between Coral Gables and Coconut Grove—two of Miami’s most desirable neighborhoods. But its flagged as one of the few spots in Miami where one could aspire to live car-light, with the Metrorail connecting to downtown, the airport, or to the Tri-Rail or Brightline trains.

That’s it for today!

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