NEWS FRONT
Why New York Buyers Are Flocking to Miami
MIAMI—For all the talk of foreign buyers
flocking to Miami to snap up condos, there’s
another demographic migrating south: New
Yorkers. Multiple developers and sales teams
are reporting a marked uptick in Big Apple
condo buyers returning to Miami.
At Palau in Sunset Harbour, a boutique
condo by SMG Management, developers
report nearly 40% of buyers are from the
US. A large number of those are from the
Northeast, and New York in particular.
Meanwhile, Edgardo Defortuna, CEO of
Fortune International, which is most
recently developing Jade Signature in
Sunny Isles Beach, reports a 15% increase
in New York buyers this year. And at the
Ritz-Carlton Residences in Singer Island,
where the developer recently announced
80% sales, the sales team saw 12 Northeast
buyers in the past six months alone.
Craig Studnicky of Related ISG, who is
handling sales for the Related Group’s Casa
Costa, says nearly one-third of the recent 65
sales are from the Northeast.
Local Government, Developers Must Work Together
Florida has a long history of wrestling with the competing interests of
growth management, economic development and the protection of
natural resources. As an attorney practicing land use and environmental law for the past 22 years, I read with great interest the Florida
Department of Economic Opportunity’s 2012 Annual Report.
While this report makes strides in attempting
to reconcile competing interests, unfortunately,
by failing to bring the correct players to the
table, the state
once again misses
its mark.
Florida’s history with infrastructure and natural resource issues serves as a guidepost for
determining the development potential of property. Some of our country’s most widely recognized carrying capacity models derive from Florida, including the
Amelia Island, Alafia River Basin and Florida Keys carrying capacity
models. Regulators have long understood the need to ensure adequate provision of infrastructure such as roads, schools and potable
water, while protecting potentially valuable natural resources.
These concerns evolved into the complex regulatory frameworks
embodied in the Florida Environmental, Land & Water Management
Act of 1972 and all of its progeny, including Florida’s Area of Critical
State Concern Program and the concurrency requirements of
Florida’s Growth Management Laws. One of the latest incarnations
of government-mandated carrying capacity was the adoption of the
Central Florida Coordination Area.
The key problem with these programs is their lack of interaction
with landowners and the development community. These programs
were designed as, and remain, internal conversations between regulatory agencies and advisory groups that fail to include a critical
By Howard E. Nelson
group of stakeholders: land owners and developers.
Few, if any, developers would attempt to pursue a development
opportunity without access to adequate potable water or where natural resource issues are insurmountable. Not only is the consideration
of these elements necessary for regulatory approval but, in today’s
market, they are also necessary to make a development viable.
This is not to say developers and landowners should be unilaterally in charge of natural resource protection or infrastructure creation. We all remember the early days of Florida’s past of swampland
sales and roads to nowhere. However, the private sector deserves a
meaningful place in the conversation about Florida’s future.
What many developers, local governments and state regulators
have come to realize is the only way to adequately resolve the competing interests of continued orderly growth and protection of infrastructure and natural resources is a cooperative approach, where
regulators, citizens’ groups, land owners and developers mutually
work out the resolution of these issues.
A workable example of this type of cooperation can be found in
the development of the St. John’s Heritage/Palm Bay Parkway, a
connector road proposed to alleviate interstate and local traffic
between Melbourne and Palm Bay in Brevard County.
While this type of strategic coordination appears in several points
of the DEO’s annual report, a coordinated approach is still amiss. We
need to move beyond regulators, advocacy groups and developers
operating in their own individual silos and instead work together
toward what is surely a common goal—smart development that preserves our natural resources while advancing regional growth.
Howard E. Nelson is an environmental attorney with the Florida law firm
of Bilzin Sumberg Baena Price & Axelrod, LLP. He may be contacted at
hnelson@bilzin.com. The views expressed here are the author’s own.
Vital Signs...After a 3.6% jump in ’ 12, average apartment rents in Orlando will climb 2.5% to $917 a month in 2013.—Marcus & Millichap
