Posted on Monday, 8.2.2010

Downtown Miami Apartments - Miami Real Estate

The 7,000 unsold downtown Miami apartments have been reduced in price and are attracting renters from college students to young professionals.

A report by Business Week says that many of these unsold downtown Miami apartments have attracted a younger crowd of renters wanting to take advantage of lower rents for these newer upscale apartments. They are also benefiting from the convenience of living in an area where everything is within walking distance, therefore saving on gas and parking expenses.

These new renters are accountants, bankers and young professionals that can now walk from their downtown Miami apartments across the street from Biscayne Bay to their offices in Downtown or Brickell. They hang by the pool on weekends and share a cab to a local bar or pub.

They live in downtown Miami, a neighborhood just north of the Miami River and 5 minutes from South Beach. These young people are renting condos in Miami that were built during the 2004 to 2008 boom to attract affluent second-home buyers. Thanks to the developers and banks seeking to recover some of the losses on these Miami real estate properties, the newcomers are now able to afford and enjoy a great lifestyle. Brandon Klein, a 26-year-old tax accountant that works at Deloitte says, "Five years ago you wouldn't have kids fresh out of college living in luxury like this." Klein lives at 50 Biscayne, a luxury condominium building, with two roommates and pays less than $2,800 a month for a three-bedroom unit with a view of Biscayne Bay and a wraparound balcony. According to a principal at Condo Vultures, a consulting firm in Bal Harbour, similar apartments sold for as much as $809,000 during the boom.

Klein has many friends nearby that live in the Met I, which has 447 luxury Miami apartments downtown and a steakhouse on the first floor. They refer to the Met I as the "Deloitte Dorm" because so many employees of the accounting and consulting firm rent units there.

Downtown Miami, an area known for its courthouses, warehouses, homeless shelters, and the American Airlines Arena, is beginning to come to life again as the 7,000 unsold Miami real estate properties start to fill up. The rebirth is even more apparent in Brickell, an adjacent neighborhood just south of the Miami River.

The new liveliness can be seen as downtown Miami restaurants expanded their seating capacity and as the lines form on weekends regardless of a $10 valet fee and limited parking. Compared with two or three a few years ago, diners can choose from more than a dozen restaurants north of the Miami River that stay open after 7 p.m.

About 18 months ago, when the banks that financed the condo projects agreed to let developers slash sales prices by as much as 40 percent, this flood of renters increase.  This also attracted foreign buyers and all-cash investors, many of whom are waiting for prices to rebound and are renting out their units.

Since the 2000 Census, the Miami Downtown Development Authority estimates that the population of the city's core jumped from 40,000 to about 70,000 with much of that increase coming with in the past few years. According to Ronald G. Johnsey, president of Axiometrics, a research firm in Dallas, the Miami real estate rental market is one of the strongest in the country. That's true even despite the fact that unemployment is more than 11 percent, compared with 9.5 percent nationally, and developers are adding to supply by leasing units built for purchase.

Builders haven't given up on finding buyers. At the Axis on Brickell about 85 percent of the 718 units are rented. One-bedrooms go for about $1,400 to $1,600 a month and two-bedrooms cost $1,800 to $2,200. The firm has sold about 239 Brickell condos and lets tenants put half their rent toward purchase.