South Florida is mirroring the K-shaped economy, as luxury and cash buyers prosper while interest rates hit the mid market harder, homebuilders said Tuesday at The Real Deal’s “Building the Sun Belt: Master-Planned Communities and the Future of Single-Family Housing in Florida” event.
Five of South Florida’s top single-family homebuilders — Misha Ezratti of GL Homes, Brent Baker of PulteGroup, Bobby Julien of Kolter Urban, Noah Breakstone of BTI Partners and Don Whetro of AR Homes — sat down Tuesday night at the Turnberry Isle Country Club in Aventura to talk about the industry. TRD’s South Florida bureau chief Katherine Kallergis moderated the conversation.
The experts discussed the influence of ICE raids and tariffs on rising construction costs, as well as where they’re looking for development sites and why paying attention to local politics matters.
High-end and cash buying remained strong through the summer. GL’s home prices start in the million-dollar range, and Ezratti said the firm’s Lotus Edge in Boca Raton and Apex at Avenir in Palm Beach Gardens are more than 90 percent sold.
Meanwhile, mid-priced buyers are more affected by higher interest rates and concerned with affordability, PulteGroup’s Baker and BTI’s Breakstone said.
“It’s the tale of two cities here,” Breakstone said. “The luxury market is very strong, and they have the wherewithal. In housing affordability, confidence is low … purchasing power is obviously hit with high interest rates, and they’re struggling.”
The homebuilders broadly agreed that the Miami-Broward-Palm Beach metro area and the Naples area are strong markets, trailed by St. Lucie County, and for some, Orlando, Tampa and Jacksonville.
Baker said Pulte is looking at all of Broward and Palm Beach for land to snap up, as open and undeveloped parcels are scarce. He said the company can be “more selective” in its purchases just north, near St. Lucie and Vero Beach. Pulte this summer bought a 50-acre site in Fort Pierce for $16.3 million where it plans a single-family community of 239 homes.
Good deals on South Florida land are rare, Kolter’s Julien said. Kolter is expanding to Alabama and Texas as new markets. (Breakstone and Ezratti said they’ve also looked outside Florida, sticking to business-friendly Republican states.)
“Most land is sold by people who’ve owned it for a long time, especially large tracts,” Julien said. “They get a number in their mind of what they want for their property, and they wait for it.”
GL holds an inventory of land, Ezratti said, which lets the company be more selective about its developments. But the market is still “more competitive than ever,” he said.
“Everybody’s looking at golf courses, farmland, old shopping centers — anything that can be repositioned into something else,” he said. “It feels like competition is much broader than it used to be.”
Labor and fuel costs are affecting homebuilding.
Increased immigration enforcement under the Trump administration has squeezed the construction workforce, driving labor costs up. The Iran war has sharply driven up oil prices, and the threat of tariffs caused rising material costs.
GL has passed those cost increases onto buyers in some areas, Ezratti said.
Though national politics have a downstream effect on the homebuilders, the business relies heavily on local government and requires close relationships with city and county officials. Of the levels of government, local elections have the highest impact on the business, Baker said.
Ezratti agreed, saying local politicians “can make or break your lives.”
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