Miami-Dade County recorded one of the highest increases in office rent prices in the country over the last year, according to a new report.
The average asking rent rose by 5.8% in Miami from June 2020 to June 2021, the third-highest growth rate in the nation, according to CommercialEdge, a division of the Santa Barbara-based tech company Yardi Systems. Only three other U.S. metros had higher increases during that time period — Los Angeles at 8.1%, and the Bay Area and Tampa, which tied at 6.2%.
Miami has an average asking rent of $43.43 per square foot, higher than D.C. ($42.01), Los Angeles ($41.62) and Atlanta ($27.64). It falls behind Manhattan ($83.52), San Francisco ($69.18) and the Bay Area ($55.79), which had the highest asking rents in the U.S.
CommercialEdge compared average listing prices for its 250,000 office listings from June 2020 to June 2021 for 50 metro areas with the highest amounts of office square footage. It defined the Miami metro area as Miami-Dade County.
Thank financial and tech firms expanding or relocating to Miami for boosting demand and rates, said Doug Ressler, manager of business intelligence at Yardi Matrix.
“Florida’s strong employment base, pro-business environment, deep talent pool, enviable quality of life, and expansive growth in the tech, health, and finance sectors continues to attract the kind of strong in-migration fueling office growth,” Ressler said in an email. “Miami has been quoted as being the ‘Wall Street of the South’ with major financial firms setting up major operations and relocating hundreds of employees.”
The number of investment advisory firms rose by about 35% between 2018 and 2020 in downtown Miami alone, to 111 from 82. But companies are locating in a variety of places across Miami, including Thoma Bravo in Brickell, Purple in Edgewater and SwagUp in Little River.
Population growth will continue to push more companies to secure office space, said Jake Weiss, senior associate at the Doral-based brokerage firm the Easton Group.
Miami-Dade County experienced an 8% increase in population between 2010 and 2020, from about 2.5 million people to 2.7 million people.
Some longtime residents and newcomers still work from home, Weiss said, but many employers are looking to change that.
“Most of these companies,” Weiss said, “are still trying to get people back to the office. Productivity goes up, collaboration goes up, efficiency goes up.”
