🔥The Roaring Renties

In partnership with

Happy Saturday Highest & Best! Here’s a rundown of the Florida real estate week that was:

💰Miami more unaffordable than NYC?

🐠 The luckiest Catch

🏈 Tom Brady attempts a (real estate) record

🫶 Lenders still crushing on Miami condos

🏠 A century-old house in Miami for sale

Let’s get to it!

Miami Beats New York — in Unaffordability!?

Miami is America’s second-least affordable rental market—outpacing both New York and Los Angeles in this not-so-coveted category.

While rents in Miami’s metro area are technically lower than in NYC or LA, the real hitch is Miami’s median income, which trails far behind those bigger cities, according to a report by Redfin.

💰To comfortably afford Miami’s median asking rent of $2,373 a month (as of December), renters would need to earn $94,920 a year. (Based on the financial premise that rent shouldn’t devour more than 30% of your paycheck).

😲 The problem in Miami’s metro? The median renter brings home just $57,157 annually, which is 40% less than what’s needed to afford rent without financial strain.

(For context, the typical U.S. renter falls just 14% short of the income needed to rent comfortably).

🤔 Redfin ranked New York and Los Angeles as the third and fourth least affordable U.S. metros for renters, with tenant incomes falling 36% and 34% short, respectively, of what’s needed for comfortable living. (These figures are based on December’s median rents—prior to the wildfires in L.A., which triggered a surge in both rental demand and prices).

😎 Other locales in Florida saw affordability improve for renters in 2024, compared to a year earlier: in Tampa, the required income to afford the typical apartment fell more than 10% to $69,400. In Jacksonville, you now need income of $58,000 to reasonably afford a place, whereas the year before you needed $62,200.

Here’s a Redfin chart of the country’s least affordable regions for renters:

⏪ Catch up on recent Highest & Best issues:

• Sticker Shocked, January 18, 2025

• Not Your Grandpa’s Boca, January 11, 2025

• Topping Off, January 6, 2025

Start learning AI in 2025

Everyone talks about AI, but no one has the time to learn it. So, we found the easiest way to learn AI in as little time as possible: The Rundown AI.

It's a free AI newsletter that keeps you up-to-date on the latest AI news, and teaches you how to apply it in just 5 minutes a day.

Plus, complete the quiz after signing up and they’ll recommend the best AI tools, guides, and courses – tailored to your needs.

Sign up to start learning.

The Luckiest Catch?

What’s the value of a Miami Beach restaurant space with a trendy eatery inside? If you’re El Paso-based River Oaks Properties, the answer is: 146% more than the last guy shelled out.

This week, River Oaks purchased a two-story building at 200 South Pointe Drive (in Miami Beach’s “South of Fifth” neighborhood) for $28.2 million, according to property intel site Vizzda. The price was nearly $17 million higher than what the seller, Black Lion Investment Group, bought it for in 2022, when it paid $11.5 million.

The deal marks the highest recorded value for a freestanding restaurant property in Florida, the South Florida Business Journal reported, citing the seller.

That said, Black Lion made some major improvements to the building since acquiring it in April 2022. Most notably, it signed Catch, a high-end seafood restaurant, as the tenant. And there’s 15 years remaining on that lease, which includes 2% annual rent increases, according to JLL, the brokerage that arranged the sale. (So the new owners paid handsomely for the right to now collect that long-term rent).

Catch Hospitality Group also made investments to enhance their 20,630-square-foot restaurant space, which has a rooftop terrace. It brought in design firm Rockwell Group to create a look that “incorporates 1920s-inspired elements, reflecting Miami Beach's glamorous past,” JLL said.

Here’s a pic of the bar inside:

The Real Estate Professional’s Secret Weapon - Land id™

Discover extensive nationwide private parcel data, create & showcase powerful, shareable, interactive maps of any property: Fast, Easy and Mobile, with Land id™.

With the brand new streamlined Property Info Cards, Land id™ brings industry leading data and contextual layers to the forefront in a single tap or swipe.

Try Free For 7 Days Today

Tom Brady Attempts a (Real Estate) Record

Is Tom Brady punting on paradise?

The retired NFL quarterback is reportedly looking to sell his waterfront estate on the ultra-exclusive Indian Creek Island, a Miami-area neighborhood known as the ‘Billionaire Bunker,’ where Jeff Bezos and Ivanka Trump own homes.

Brady is quietly shopping his brand-new mansion to a select group of buyers, and offers have already soared past $150 million, Bloomberg News reported. If a deal goes through at that figure, it would smash the record for Miami's highest-priced home sale, (previously set in 2022 when billionaire Ken Griffin dropped $107 million on a Coconut Grove compound).

Brady with his ex-wife, supermodel Gisele Bündchen, bought the lot on the island in 2020 for $17 million. Brady has since built a two-story bachelor pad there, with a private gym and a cabana.

It’s probably not the gym driving those $150 million offers. More likely, it’s the newfound fame of the island—now in the spotlight thanks to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who owns three properties there. The empty lot next to one of Bezos’s homes is currently being marketed for an eye-popping $200 million. (That news was reported first by Highest & Best).

Indian Creek Island, a horseshoe-shaped enclave of sprawling waterfront estates, features lush putting greens at its core and 24/7 police patrols on land and water. Access is limited to a single guarded bridge.

Lenders Still Crushing on Miami Condos

If you asked the universe whether lenders are still sweet on Miami’s luxury condo market, this month’s answer would be a wink and a checkbook:

🏖 The Perigon Miami Beach, a planned luxury condo where home prices start above $10 million, secured a $390 million loan to move construction forward. The project, by developers Mast Capital and Starwood Capital Group, broke ground last April and is expected to be complete in 2027.

The not-yet-built oceanfront condo, at 5333 Collins Ave., already has buyer commitments for 75% of its 73 residences, which range in size from 2,100 to 6,700 square feet, developers said in a statement. (Those pre-sales likely made a convincing case for the lender, Eldridge Real Estate Credit, to approve that $390 million loan).

🏝 New York developer Naftali Group secured a $40 million loan for its JEM Private Residences, a 67-story condo tower in Downtown Miami. The financing, provided by Nuveen Green Capital through its clean energy loan program, will support the completion of the high-rise at 1016 Northeast Second Avenue.

🏖 And in late December: developers of Villa Miami, a 650-foot tall waterfront condo in Miami’s Edgewater neighborhood, secured a $285 million loan to build their copper-colored residential tower, to be branded by the restaurant firm Major Food Group. The project, by One Thousand Group and Terra, will have 70 residences, a helipad, and prices that start at $5 million.

A Century-Old Home In Miami is Seeking a Buyer

It’s not often you hear about a 100-year-old home in Miami, a place where "historic" structures are often just those that survived the '70s. But here’s a rare find: one of Miami’s oldest homes, in the historic Spring Garden neighborhood, is up for sale.

Listed this week for $2.75 million, the two-story property at 752 NW Seventh Street Rd. was built in 1920 and stayed within the same family for over a century, the Miami Herald reported.

The five-bedroom home, nestled between tall shade trees, was once owned by Ruth Greenfield, a Miami musician and civil rights activist. It had enough architectural significance to help the Spring Garden neighborhood earn a historic designation in 1997.

Greenfield’s grandparents bought the home in 1923, and the family has been tied to it ever since. After Greenfield passed away in 2023 at age 99, her four adult children decided it was time to part ways with the family’s real estate heirloom.

“It’s time for someone to put new energy into it,” Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, Greenfield’s son, told the Herald.

That’s it for today!

Like what you’re reading? Send it to a friend.

Or send Highest & Best directly to your inbox by subscribing here: https://highest-and-best.beehiiv.com/subscribe