When you think of Miami, your mind probably goes straight to iconic images of South Beach, with white sand beaches and palm trees under the Floridian sun. But what if we said there was more to Miami? Wynwood, Design District, Little Havana, Little Haiti and Allapattah are all neighbourhoods you should get to know about.
In recent years, Wynwood has become an artistic hotbed of up-and-coming creatives. Utilising an artistic expression and perhaps unintentionally enticing youthful commercial and residential projects, Wynwood with its colourful murals has become a lucrative investment for developers. Miami is still growing. With a new football team founded by global superstar David Beckham in its inaugural season, the global attractiveness of Miami for investment is evidently still on the rise.
Located just north of the boho-chic Wynwood neighbourhood is Little Haiti, the latest district to receive significant development. Magic City, the development in Little Haiti, is set to inject a $1 billion commercial and residential upgrade to cater for the growing start-up and entrepreneurial culture in Miami. Cleared by the Miami Mayoral Office and relevant planning boards in June 2019, the area of Little Haiti has already seen rising commercial rents and increased house prices.
The Magic City rejuvenation project has already signposted the area to other real estate developers looking to take advantage of an expanding Miami. The strong demand for property, amenities, and entertainment for a broader demographic of residents in these areas has driven up the potential rent prices for future tenants, thereby marketing the properties to those wealthier individuals.
In tandem with a growing technology scene in Miami, ever since the city featured as a finalist in Amazon’s HQ2 competition, it has attracted increasing numbers of young professionals who look to both rent and buy properties in these up-and-coming neighbourhoods. Magic City’s developers have marketed their project as “campus-like”, thereby marketing their project to Silicon-Valley-types and projecting a futuristic living vision onto an area of Miami that had been thus far devoid of a level of development compared to the Wynwood, Central or South Beach areas.
In a study conducted by the University of Miami Office of Civic and Community Engagement, researchers concluded that investors are looking to Miami, particularly its largely immigrant districts like Little Haiti and Little Havana. Senior Program Manager, Jorge Damian de la Paz, 1 in every 5 residential properties in Little Haiti is owned by investors via LLCs.
The gentrification of Miami and therefore an expansion of its built-up, modern areas as seen by Wynwood over the past two decades, demonstrates an intent to diversify and modernise Miami from its South Beach fame. For architects on these gentrification projects, maintaining the mix of high-rise and art-deco architecture is an endeavour that will ensure Miami retains its traditional, affluent appeal. This is exactly what has happened in the Allapattah district with the renovation of the Allapattah Produce Centre. Designed by the renowned Bjarke Ingels Group, who have been behind the innovative design of co-working spaces, WeWork, in Europe and North America, the design has been hailed by Miami Commissioner Willy Gort as “transformative” for the historically low-income area.
Despite the excitement about real estate investment across Miami’s up-and-coming neighbourhoods, the market for waterfront properties remains strong and is forecast to continue in this vein. As of December 2019, sales of waterfront condos of value in excess of $1 million across Miami have increased by 48% month over month. This is a sign of a healthy property market in Miami’s mid-to-high residential market, and when considered in conjunction with the booming investment in Miami’s historically immigrant neighbourhoods to create a more encompassing downtown area, it signifies that Miami is ripe for investment.
To find out more about our property investment opportunities in Miami, contact us at Propeterra today.