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Commercial Property Sales Up 183% Across South Florida

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Commercial property purchases have shown few signs of slowing down after a banner year, according to a recent report from JLL Capital Market’s Miami office.

South Florida commercial real estate transactions rose to $25 billion in 2021. That’s a 183% increase from the $8.8 billion in transactions across Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties recorded the year before.

The momentum has spilled over into this year. In the first three months of 2022, JLL recorded $6 billion in commercial real estate transactions completed across the tri-county area industry-wide, up 51% from the first quarter of 2021. (Data from the first quarter of 2022 is preliminary and subject to change, a JLL spokeswoman told the Business Journal.) This sharp rise in deal activity could be found across the industrial, multifamily, office and retail sectors.

Danny Finkle, senior managing director of JLL’s Miami office, credits the new wave of transactions to Florida’s “business-friendly environment and excellent quality of life.”

“Institutional investors have recognized this cultural shift and are tailoring their investment criteria to target markets like South Florida,” Finkle stated in a recent JLL release.

A significant portion of the property sales centered on multifamily housing. In 2021, there were $14.69 billion in real estate transactions involving residential rentals, an increase of 277% from the previous year. In the first quarter 2022, there have been $2.75 billion in trades involving South Florida apartment buildings, a 76% hike compared to the year-ago quarter.

In the office sector, there were $5.38 billion in trades in 2021, a 235% jump from the year prior. In the first quarter of this year, there have been $1.05 billion in office sales, a year-over-year increase of 10%.

Meanwhile, retail property transactions rose 136% in 2021 year over year to $3.88 billion in South Florida. Then another $1.28 billion of retail transactions took place in the first quarter of this year, a 186% hike compared to the year-ago quarter.

As for industrial, sales volume increased 63% from the previous year to $2.3 billion in 2021. In the first quarter of 2022, a total of $908.29 million in industrial transactions took place, a 76% leap from the year-ago quarter.

Companies and well-off individuals have been migrating to South Florida in greater numbers due to the region’s popularity, weather, and lack of income taxes, brokers and developers have told theĀ Business Journal.Ā It’sa trend that’s expected continue through the rest of 2022, making South Florida a prime spot for investment. Multifamily properties likely saw the biggest increases becauseĀ rents are surging at a faster rate in the Miami area than almost any other metro in the U.S.

The migration has tipped e-commerce into overdrive, creatingĀ a shortage of warehouse and distribution spaceĀ as companies seek to fulfill the orders of a humming economy amidst a continuing supply-chain crunch.

JLL stated that its Miami office handled 121% more investment sales, debt, and equity transactions in 2021 than the year before. To accommodate that growth, JLL promotedĀ Cody Brais,Ā Kenny CutlerĀ andĀ Max La CavaĀ to director status.

Headquartered in Chicago, JLL has 3,000 capital market specialistsacross 50 nations. The data in JLL’s report was supplied from Real Capital Analytics, a New York-based real estate analysis company that has recorded $40 trillion in commercial real estate transactions since its founding in 2000.

 

Source: SFBJ