Property values are up 12% in Miami-Dade, but some markets surged more. Read the data
Miami-Dade County saw a double-digit spike in property values this year, approaching the kind of growth last seen before inflated housing prices hit their last peak ahead of the Great Recession.
Taxable property values grew 12.3% in Miami-Dade as 2023 began, according to a county report released Thursday by the Miami-Dade Property Appraiser’s Office, marking the second straight year of double-digit growth in Florida’s largest housing market.
That’s also double the 6% average growth rate between 2012 and 2021, leading some market watchers to predict over-heated prices are due for a retreat.
“I think we’re probably at the peak of the hill and about to go down,” said Jack McCabe, a real estate analyst and owner of Jack McCabe Expert Services in Deerfield Beach. “We’re going to see a switch from a sellers market, to a more evenly balanced one, to a market that favors buyers and renters.”
While nearly $6 billion in new construction in 2022 boosted growth, most of the spike in taxable values came from existing homes, offices, hotels and other properties across Miami-Dade. Without new construction, values increased an average of 10.7%, according to the report.
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Miami, the largest city in the county, exceeded the average, with 14.2% growth. With nearly $1.4 billion in new buildings, the city also accounted for almost a quarter of Miami-Dade’s construction in 2022. Other large cities also reported booming values: Hialeah, up 13.9%; Miami Gardens, up 13.6% and Miami Beach, up 10.4%.
A massive move up for little Medley
Annexation of commercial property meant a 50% spike in values for Medley. That annexation came from Miami-Dade’s unincorporated area, which relies on county government for municipal services and saw its taxable values increase 10%.
The annual report on real estate values used in tax bills offers a preview of the budget season ahead for local office holders. Miami-Dade’s budget predicted an 8% increase in property-tax revenues for the 2024 budget year.
Pedro Garcia, the county’s elected property appraiser, is urging local governments to give back some of the budgetary windfalls that come from higher values and reduce property-tax rates by 3% in 2024.
“The steep increase in values, driven by a heated real estate market, will force many property owners to pay higher property taxes, which many cannot afford,” Garcia said. Florida caps taxable value increases at 3% a year for primary residences, so the lower rates would mean flat tax bills for most homeowners.
He made the same request last year when countywide taxable values grew 11.9%, but Miami-Dade commissioners backed Mayor Daniella Levine Cava’s recommendation for a 1% decrease in county property-tax rates. At the time, Levine Cava warned the county needed to be wary of a real estate downturn like that one that hit Miami-Dade as housing values peaked in 2007.
Housing sales are down in Miami-Dade, though prices remain above where they were in 2022.
Demand is still strong enough to hit records: Longstead, part of the Corcoran Group, said a buyer recently paid $900 a square foot for a Buena Vista house sold for $2.2 million by Noa Figari and Cyril Bijaoui , a high-water mark for that Miami neighborhood.
But with interest rates more than doubled since 2020, Figari said she’s no longer seeing the red-hot market that came with the rush of people moving into South Florida at the start of the COVID pandemic.
“Two years ago, if you were priced high, you’d sell regardless,” Figari said. “Now, if you’re priced well, you sell. “
Fastest growth since Great Recession
The Miami-Dade report shows the fastest growth in taxable property values since 2007, when they spiked 15.4%. That was the last boom year for Miami-Dade real estate before the Great Recession tanked property values across the country, and sent prices plunging by roughly 50% in the Miami area.
McCabe, the real estate analyst, said he doesn’t think property values could see that kind of steep decline this time because investors aren’t flooding the market like they were in 2007.
Lazaro Solis, deputy property appraiser under Garcia, said the popularity of Miami with deep-pocketed buyers from out of state and a steady supply of new construction should support stable values in future years.
“People keep asking me when the bottom is going to fall out,” Solis said. “We see no signs of that.”
