Florida’s Housing Needs This Decade
Bottom Line: Earlier this week the Florida Apartment Association completed a statewide study of the states’ future housing needs for the rest of the decade. The study specifically looked into the need for affordable housing with a focus on the additional apartments needed to keep up with projected population growth in each county across the state. The project called BuildFlorida2030, shows the state must build 570,000 additional apartment units to keep up with projected future population growth over the next six years. The point is pretty simple. There’s a lot of conversation about the need for more affordable housing across our state and specifically in South Florida and the analysis is pretty straightforward. If we deliver on the needed additional inventory as outlined in the study, affordability will at least be stable relative to population growth. If we do more, affordability improves, if we do less – it'll get worse from here. But of course, Florida is anything but static in terms of needs. The report showed far and away South Florida is where the biggest needs are over the next six years.
In South Florida, Miami-Dade is shown as needing 170,000 new units – by far the highest in the state, Broward – 59,000 units and Palm Beach County needs an additional 33,000 apartments over the next six years to meet demand. Currently the TriCounty represents about 28% of Florida’s total population, however it represents 46% of the need for additional rental units for the rest of the decade. What’s interesting in the analysis is that there are actually several counties across the state which are already pacing ahead of what’s needed. In other words, counties where affordability on a relative basis should improve going forward. We see a lot of it on the west coast of Florida where the population has exploded over the past decade. Lee, Sarasota and Manatee counties are among those currently building more new units than projected population growth. On our coast, Martin County is in a similar position.
For several years there’s been a rotation of South Floridians moving north and west within our state out of affordability considerations. It looks like that theme will not only continue but could exacerbate based upon this study. At a minimum, affordability in counties like Martin and Lee look to remain far more affordable than the Tri Counties on this coast and Collier on Florida’s west coast.