Top 10 ranking of South Florida condo stories of 2014

Aerial of Miami. Inset: Peter Zalewski
Aerial of Miami. Inset: Peter Zalewski

The historically volatile South Florida condo market is in the midst of its latest real estate cycle with local and out-of-town developers alike competing to capitalize on this current building boom that began in 2011.

Investors – mostly foreign but increasingly domestic – spent much of 2014 actively buying and selling South Florida condo units in pursuit of substantial profits as rental rates pushed to record highs amidst a challenging mortgage market for primary residents.   

The investor demand for more condo inventory has prompted developers to announce more than 300 new condo towers with more than 40,000 units east of Interstate 95 in the tricounty South Florida region of Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach since 2011, according to the preconstruction condo projects website CraneSpotters.com.

(For disclosure, my firm operates the website.).

No one can predict what will happen in the South Florida market during the rest of this real estate cycle but it is possible to identify the trends of 2014 that are most likely to impact the condo climate in the next year.

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This is a ranking of the top 10 most important columns that I wrote for The Real Deal in 2014:

  1. Miami banker ‘nervous’ about short-term residential market
  2. Out-of-town condo developers flock to South Florida
  3. Miami Beach declares rising tide ‘emergency’ as condo developers propose 21 new towers
  4. Property taxes drive efforts to upzone neighborhoods for new condo towers
  5. Some developers reduce preconstruction deposits as competition intensifies
  6. Condo construction financing spigot opens in South Florida
  7. South Florida resales suffer as new projects move forward
  8. Brickell City Centre condo launch could recalibrate pricing
  9. Downtown Miami’s new condo market faces greatest “risk of over-saturation”
  10. Turning Point: Condo boom spreads to Fort Lauderdale

The unanswered question going forward is whether the strengthening U.S. dollar, falling commodity prices and a sluggish global economy could impact the South Florida condo market in 2015 even more than the local trends of this year.

Peter Zalewski is real estate columnist for The Real Deal who founded Condo Vultures LLC, a consultancy and publishing company, as well as Condo Vultures Realty LLC and CVR Realty brokerages and the Condo Ratings Agency, an analytics firm. The Condo Ratings Agency operates CraneSpotters.com, a preconstruction condo projects website, in conjunction with the Miami Association of Realtors.