Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, FL
The boom that priced itself out. Miami compounded the federal House Price Index +55.3% over five years — the strongest in the peer set — but YoY just flipped to −0.43%. Rent-burdened share is 59.8%, the worst in the country. The metro is now losing residents on net (−9,806).
The numbers that matter most
What an investor checks first when sizing up a new metro — affordability ratio, rent vs income, cap rate proxy, and where the market is moving. Each metric shown vs. state and national medians for instant context.
expensive
Price to income
5.52×
The single most-cited 'is this market still cheap' check. Below 3× and you're in an affordability tailwind.
- vs Florida
- 4.22×
- vs U.S.
- 3.43×
Benchmark
ACS median home value ÷ median HHI
burdened
Rent to income
39.8%
What share of a typical household's income goes to rent. Below 30% means tenants can absorb modest rent increases.
- vs Florida
- 28.1%
- vs U.S.
- 23.3%
Benchmark
(HUD FMR 2BR × 12) ÷ median HHI
deal-by-deal
Cap rate proxy
4.7%
Rough first-pass yield assuming a 35% expense ratio. Not an underwriting number — a 'is this even worth modeling' filter.
- vs Florida
- 4.4%+0.3
- vs U.S.
- 4.4%+0.3
Benchmark
(FMR 2BR × 12 × 0.65) ÷ ACS median home value
shrinking
Net migration
-0.16%
Forward-looking demand signal. Positive net migration drives rent growth and absorbs new supply.
- vs Florida
- 0.83%
- vs U.S.
- 0.04%
Benchmark
IRS net migration ÷ population
pipeline accelerating
Permit pipeline
3.63
permits per 1,000 residents
Forward-supply indicator. Above ~5 means the metro is building meaningfully relative to its size; below 2 means supply is tight.
- vs Florida
- 8.03
- vs U.S.
- 3.49+0.15
Benchmark
Census BPS permits TTM ÷ population × 1,000
healthy
Unemployment
3.5%
Tighter unemployment means higher wages, more rental demand, lower vacancy.
- vs Florida
- 4.5%-1.0
- vs U.S.
- 4.0%-0.5
Benchmark
BLS LAUS, latest month
Section index — click any row to jump
What the data says about Miami
Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach is the boom that priced itself out. The metro is geographically the simplest in the top 10 — just 3 counties on a thin coastal strip from West Palm Beach down to South Miami. The Freddie Mac House Price Index compounded +55.3% over the last five years — the strongest run of any metro in the peer set, beating Phoenix (+53.8%), Philadelphia (+42.3%), and Dallas (+31.6%). And then the headline that changes the math: YoY HPI just flipped to −0.43%. Median household income is $73,481 (Census ACS) against a median home value of $405,600 — a 5.52 price-to-income ratio, "expensive." The HUD Fair Market Rent for a 2-bedroom is $2,436, producing a rent-burdened share of 59.8% — the highest of any top-10 metro.
The county pipeline tells the same story from the supply side: all three counties are accelerating simultaneously.
- Miami-Dade County leads at 14,771 building permits in the trailing twelve months (Census Building Permits Survey) — +74.0% year-over-year, a 2.5x acceleration. The metro's largest county (2.69M residents) is now its fastest builder.
- Palm Beach County logged 4,944 permits, +60.3% YoY. The affluent north accelerating with Miami-Dade.
- Broward County at 2,539 permits, +57.0% YoY — lightest of the three despite 1.94M residents, less than half the per-capita pace of Miami-Dade.
Construction surge meeting peak prices is the same setup that played out in Dallas. The difference: Miami has no exurban relief valves. No Loudoun, no Collin, no Hamilton to absorb displaced demand. The Atlantic is to the east, the Everglades to the west, and every new home has to fit on this ribbon.
Net migration is −9,806 returns, −0.16% of the population per the IRS Statistics of Income — a slight bleed that ends the "Florida miracle" narrative. The biggest non-Florida origin is New York County (Manhattan) at 3,333 returns — the NY-to-Miami pipeline is real but no longer enough to offset out-migration to other markets. BLS unemployment runs at 3.5% (BLS LAUS) — tighter than the national 4.0%, but the labor market hasn't produced wage growth that keeps up with prices.
So what does an investor do with all of this?
- If you're hunting cash flow, the cap rate proxy lands at 4.7% — the highest of any coastal top-10 metro. Rents are sticky because tenants have nowhere cheaper to go on this ribbon of geography.
- If you're playing appreciation, the dip is the buy. The five-year curve is +55.3%, the YoY just turned negative, and the supply pipeline is the strongest in years. Underwrite for flat-to-down on price for the next 24 months and let the supply wave clear.
- If you already own here, the rent burden is your moat. Tenants can't leave because the entire coastal strip is the same price — the cheaper option doesn't exist within commutable distance. Don't refinance against last year's appraisal; underwrite the next 24 months at flat-to-down on price but flat-to-up on rent.
Where prices are and where they've been
FHFA House Price Index — repeat-sales index across the metro, sized against this metro's median household income and benchmarked against the Indiana metros average and U.S. metros average.
5-year price appreciation
+55.3%
FHFA HPI · Q1 2020 → Q4 2025
-0.4% YoY
$405,600 median home value
Miami home prices climbed 55.3% over the last 5 years according to the FHFA repeat-sales index — a steady appreciation pace for a Midwest metro of this size. The 1-year change is negative (-0.4%), signaling the market is cooling.
See the chart below for how the metro's appreciation curve stacks up against the Indiana metros average and the U.S. metros average. The gap between the metro and the national line is the "catch-up" or "lag" signal — and the slope tells you whether the gap is widening or closing.
How to read it
- 01Miami (solid blue) compounded +55.3% from 2021-Q1 to 2026-Q1 — the strongest run in the entire peer set, beating Phoenix (53.8%), Philadelphia (42.3%), Houston (38.8%), Atlanta (38.4%), and Dallas (31.6%). The U.S. metros average ran 24.7%.
- 02The line slopes nearly straight up through 2024-Q2, then flattens. The pandemic-era Florida surge added $200K to median home values in three years.
- 03YoY just flipped to −0.43%. Miami is now a sign-flip metro, joining Dallas, NY, LA, and Washington DC. The five-year story is still positive; the 12-month story is correction.
- 04The Florida state series tracks closely below the focal — Miami pulled the entire Florida average up. Tampa, Orlando, and Jacksonville rode the same wave.
- 05For an investor, the read is: this is no longer a buy-the-dip metro. The dip is the buy. The 4.5% cap rate proxy still pencils, but you are buying into a correction, not a runup. Underwrite for flat-to-down on price for the next 24 months.
Where the value tier sits — top 3 counties by home value
| County | Median home value | Median HHI | Price-to-income | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Miami-Dade County | $425,400 | $68,694 | 6.19× | stretched |
| Palm Beach County | $407,300 | $81,115 | 5.02× | stretched |
| Broward County | $380,400 | $74,534 | 5.10× | stretched |
How to read the FHFA House Price Index
FHFA HPI is a repeat-sales index — it tracks the price change of the same properties over time, smoothing out new construction and luxury transactions. It's built from the mortgage data the GSEs (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac) already see, which makes it free of MLS survey error and immune to listing-feed gaps.
- 01Repeat-sales method. Tracks the same properties over time, so new construction and luxury transactions don't skew the trend.
- 02Federally sourced. Built from GSE mortgage data — no MLS survey error, no commercial license required to publish.
- 03Slope, not level. Watch the slope of the line, not the absolute index value — a steepening curve is a more reliable buy signal than the level.
The rent ladder
HUD Fair Market Rent by bedroom count, sized against this metro's median household income and benchmarked vs Indiana and the U.S.
Typical 2-bedroom rent
$2,436
/ month · HUD FMR FY 2026
39.8% of median HHI
A typical 2-bedroom in costs the median household 39.8% of their income — 16.5 points above the U.S. average (23.3%) 11.6 points above Florida (28.1%).
HUD calls anything above 30% "rent-burdened." This metro sits comfortably under that line, which means tenants can absorb modest rent increases — and landlords have headroom on rent hikes before pushing tenants out of the market.
Fair Market Rent — by bedroom count
| Bedroom | Monthly | Annual | % of median HHI | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 BR | $1,900 | $22.8K | 31.0% | rent-burdened |
| 2 BR | $2,436 | $29.2K | 39.8% | rent-burdened |
| 3 BR | $3,216 | $38.6K | 52.5% | rent-burdened |
Why HUD Fair Market Rent matters
FMR is HUD's 40th-percentile rent estimate by bedroom count — refreshed every fiscal year, sourced from Census surveys (not commercial listing data), and used as the cap for Section 8 voucher payments. Three things investors should know:
- 01Defensible benchmark. Federal source, no commercial license required to publish or compare against.
- 02Section 8 ceiling. A property at or below FMR is voucher-eligible — government-paid rent at the FMR cap.
- 03Conservative estimate. 40th percentile means more than half of actual market rents in the metro come in higher.
Labor market direction
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — LAUS (unemployment) + CES (nonfarm employment), benchmarked against the U.S. average.
Unemployment rate
3.5%
BLS LAUS · latest month
Miami's labor market is healthy, with unemployment running at 3.5% — 0.5 points below the U.S. metros average (4.0%).
For an investor, tighter unemployment means higher wages, more rental demand, and lower vacancy. The trend chart below shows how the metro's unemployment has moved over the last 30 months.
Unemployment rate
3.5%
Nonfarm jobs
—
Median household income
$73,481
ACS 5-year
How to read the labor market
Two BLS series tell you almost everything you need about a metro's labor market: LAUS (unemployment, refreshed monthly) and CES (nonfarm payroll counts, refreshed monthly). LAUS is the tightness signal; CES is the size and direction signal.
- 01Unemployment is rental demand. Tighter labor markets mean higher wages and lower vacancy — landlords have pricing power when employers are competing for workers.
- 02YoY change is the trend signal. A negative pp YoY change means the labor market tightened over the last year — usually a leading indicator for rent growth.
- 03Nonfarm growth is supply absorption. Positive nonfarm payroll growth absorbs new housing supply and supports the rent + price trajectory together.
What's being built
U.S. Census Bureau, Building Permits Survey — trailing 12 months, broken out by structure type, with the YoY change as the directional signal.
Total permits TTM
22,254
Census BPS · trailing 12 months
+69.0% year-over-year
3.63 permits per 1,000 residents
Miami pulled 22,254 building permits over the trailing 12 months, a meaningful jump 69.0% year-over-year. That works out to 3.63 permits per 1,000 residents, vs the U.S. metros average of 3.49.
Single-family vs multifamily mix matters: 5+ unit permits are lumpy (developers file for entire projects at once), while single-family permits are smoother and more reliable as a demand signal. The chart below breaks out the monthly mix.
Single family
5,503
trailing 12 months
2–4 unit
843
trailing 12 months
5+ unit
15,908
trailing 12 months
How to read the supply pipeline
Census BPS publishes building permit counts every month at the county level, by structure type. Single-family permits are the smooth signal — they reflect ongoing builder demand. 5+ unit permits are lumpy and project-level — one apartment approval can spike a month.
- 01Permits per 1,000 residents. The size-adjusted comparison number. Above ~5 means the metro is building meaningfully relative to its population; below 2 means supply is tight.
- 02YoY change is the direction. Year-over-year change in TTM permits tells you whether builders are leaning in or pulling back. Watch this number for trend reversals.
- 03Mix matters for cap rates. Heavy 5+ unit permitting tends to compress cap rates; single-family-dominated pipelines preserve them.
All 3 counties, ranked by population
Census Bureau (population, ACS demographics) + Census Building Permits Survey.
How to read it
- 01Miami-Dade County leads at 14,771 permits TTM, +74.0% year-over-year — a 2.5x acceleration from a low base. The largest county in the metro is now also the fastest-growing builder.
- 02Palm Beach County: 4,944 permits, +60.3% YoY. The northern affluent suburb is also accelerating hard.
- 03Broward County: 2,539 permits, +57.0% YoY. The middle county sits between the two and is following the same pattern.
- 04All three counties are accelerating simultaneously — supply is finally catching up with the demand pulse from 2021–2023. This is the same pattern that played out in Dallas: construction surge + peak prices = correction setup.
- 05Only 3 counties total — Miami has the simplest county geography of any top-10 metro. There are no exurban relief valves like Loudoun (DC) or Collin (Dallas). Miami either builds inside the existing geography or it does not build at all.
How to read the map
- 01Three counties run north-to-south along the Atlantic: Miami-Dade (south), Broward (middle), Palm Beach (north). The map is a thin coastal strip — Miami has no inland geography to speak of.
- 02Miami-Dade is the darkest cell at 14,771 permits. The metros core is also the construction core, unlike Dallas (Collin), DC (Fairfax), or Indianapolis (Hamilton) where the suburbs build harder than the city.
- 03Palm Beach (4,944) is mid-tone — the affluent northern county is a meaningful contributor but not dominant.
- 04Broward (2,539) is the lightest of the three despite holding 1.94M residents — the middle county has saturated and is permitting at less than half the per-capita pace of Miami-Dade.
- 05The metro is geographically constrained: Atlantic to the east, Everglades to the west. Every new home has to fit on this ribbon. That is the fundamental driver of the price compression — and why the cap rate proxy at 4.5% is the highest of any coastal top-10 metro despite the rent burden.
| # | County | Population | Median HHI | Home value | Permits TTM | YoY |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Miami-Dade County | 2,688,237 | $68,694 | $425,400 | 14,771 | +74.0% |
| 2 | Broward County | 1,940,907 | $74,534 | $380,400 | 2,539 | +57.0% |
| 3 | Palm Beach County | 1,494,805 | $81,115 | $407,300 | 4,944 | +60.3% |
Similar metros nationally
5 metros closest to Miami by population and median household income — head-to-head on the metrics that matter for an investor.
Peer set
5
metros nearest by population + HHI
Best in 1 of 4 comparable metrics
Miami is closest in size to Atlanta, Houston, Philadelphia, Phoenix. best in class on Cap rate proxy, and behind on Price to income, Net migration.
The table below ranks every metric — green cells mark the best value in the column, rust cells mark the worst. Miami is highlighted as the focal row.
| Metro | Pop | Med HHI | Home value | P/I | Cap proxy | HPI 5y | Permits/1k | Migration | Unemp |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
★Miami | 6.12M | $73K | $406K | 5.52× | 4.7% | +55.3% | 3.63 | -0.16% | 3.5% |
Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Alpharetta, GA | 6.09M | $86K | $335K | 3.88× | 4.2% | +38.4% | 5.23 | +0.11% | 3.3% |
Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land, TX | 7.14M | $80K | $275K | 3.42× | 4.5% | +38.8% | 8.89 | +0.23% | 4.2% |
Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD | 6.23M | $89K | $327K | 3.66× | 4.3% | +42.3% | 2.19 | -0.09% | 4.0% |
Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, AZ | 4.86M | $85K | $401K | 4.74× | 3.6% | +53.8% | 7.99 | +0.31% | 3.5% |
Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 7.67M | $87K | $330K | 3.79× | 4.6% | +31.6% | 8.43 | +0.39% | 3.6% |
How to read this comparison
Peer metros are picked by population + median household income — the closest five matches nationally — so the comparison is apples-to-apples on size and economic class. Sun Belt entrants like Las Vegas and Nashville are included when they fall in range, which is why this peer set spans both the Midwest and the Sun Belt.
- 01Green = best in column. The cell with the most-favorable value for that metric, accounting for whether higher or lower is better.
- 02Rust = worst in column. The cell with the least-favorable value. Combined with the green markers, this is your at-a-glance "where does my metro win and where does it lose."
- 03Cap proxy is the yield lens. Cap rate proxy = (FMR 2BR × 12 × 0.65) ÷ median home value. A first-pass yield filter, not an underwriting number — but it puts the peer set on a single comparable scale.
Where people are moving in from
IRS Statistics of Income — Tax Year 2022. Excludes intra-metro suburban churn.
Net migration
-9,806
tax returns · IRS SOI · TY 2022
-0.16% of metro population
20,116 from top origin
Miami lost 9,806 returns on net (−0.16% of population) — the IRS data ends the "Florida miracle" narrative cleanly. The New York-to-Miami pipeline is still real (Manhattan alone sent ~3,300 households south last year), but it's no longer enough to offset out-migration to other markets.
The IRS data lags by ~2 years (households file taxes the year after they move), but it's the only nationwide county-to-county migration data sourced from administrative records, not survey estimates. The table below shows the top origin counties — the gravitational sources of new residents.
Top origin counties — where new residents are coming from
| Origin county | Tax returns |
|---|---|
| Miami-Dade County, FL | 20,116 |
| Broward County, FL | 17,978 |
| Palm Beach County, FL | 7,564 |
| New York County, NY | 3,333 |
| Orange County, FL | 2,928 |
| Kings County, NY | 2,777 |
Who lives in Miami
U.S. Census Bureau · American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates · 2019–2023 vintage.
Who lives here
- Median age
- 41.9
- Owner-occupancy
- 60.3%
- Bachelor's+
- 35.6%
Miami mature Midwest metro: Median age 41.9, 60.3% owner-occupancy 35.6% holding a bachelor's degree or higher. Stable, educated, and mostly homeowner-driven.
The catch: 59.8% of renter households are rent-burdened (paying 30%+ of income on rent) — high enough to flag as a constraint on rent growth even though the headline rent-to-income ratio looks comfortable.
- Median household income
- $73,481
- Median age
- 41.9
- Bachelor's+ degree
- 35.6%
- Owner-occupancy rate
- 60.3%
- Vacancy rate
- 13.2%
- Rent burdened (30%+)
- 59.8%
Data sources
| Metric | Source | Type | Vintage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Home prices | FHFA — House Price Index | Index | Q1 2026 |
| Fair market rents | HUD — Fair Market Rents | Administrative | FY 2026 |
| Unemployment rate | BLS — Local Area Unemployment Statistics | Survey | Dec 2025 |
| Nonfarm employment | BLS — Current Employment Statistics | Survey | Dec 2025 |
| Building permits | Census — Building Permits Survey | Survey | Mar 2026 TTM |
| Migration flows | IRS — Statistics of Income, Migration Data | Administrative | Tax Year 2022 |
| Demographics | Census — American Community Survey 5-Year | Survey | 2019–2023 |
| Household income | Census — American Community Survey 5-Year | Survey | 2019–2023 |
Page last refreshed: April 9, 2026