Developer Raimundo Onetto has been weaning leasing incentives for new tenants at his 296-unit Crest apartment building.
“We saw a shift in the market since the end of last year,” said Onetto, who leads Coconut Grove-based Alta Developers. The building is 95 percent leased, he said. “We have been trying to recapture higher rents and get rid of all the concessions.”
He isn’t the only one. Over the past six months, South Florida multifamily landlords noticed demand has slowly chipped away at the oversupply that stubbornly lingered over the multifamily market in 2024 and 2025. It’s given many an opening to pull back on move-in concessions they’d used to entice tenants.
This is where South Florida multifamily has landed after a few wild years. It was a landlords’ market during the height of the pandemic boom. As developers jumped on the bonanza, it turned into a renters’ market once the oversupply hit. And now, it’s edging back in favor of landlords.
But experts warn it’s too early to get excited.
Leasing has finally ticked up, but the vacancy rate hasn’t budged much and is higher than what analysts and property managers want. Some submarkets still are crippled by oversupply and slower leasing, and any recent gains across the region could still be wiped out by a hefty pipeline of nearly 28,000 units under construction.
“The worst is past us, but the supply overhang is not done yet. Right now the market is seeing a little bit of a reprieve and solid demand,” said Juan Arias of CoStar Group. “If the pipeline stays its course, this could change.”
In the 12 months ending in the second quarter, new leasing reached 13,774 units, edging past the 12,751 units completed — the first time in three years that demand outpaced supply, according to CoStar.
It’s been a slow climb back. A year ago, new leases trailed completions by 15 percent. Two years before, leases were 26 percent behind completions. At the depths of the oversupply, in the 12 months ending in mid 2023, new leases trailed completions by 56 percent, according to CoStar.
After developers jumped on the unprecedented demand and record rent growth of 2021 and 2022, their hefty completions –– including a record 18,600 apartments in 2024, according to CoStar –– came just as the influx of out-of-staters slowed, prompting the concessions and steady rent declines.
South Florida’s median rent settled at $2,277 last month, 20 percent less than in June 2022, the height of the pandemic boom, when it was $2,850, according to Realtor.com.
Across all apartment classes, South Florida’s vacancy rate hovered around 7 percent in the first half of this year, about where it was during the same time last year, CoStar shows.
That figure masks a divide: Affordable and workforce housing, as well as older properties at more attainable rents, tend to lease quickly. But the construction flurry has focused on market-rate and luxury apartments, the types most affected by the oversupply and resulting slower lease-ups.
For these apartments, the vacancy rate landed at over 9 percent, an improvement from last year, when it topped 10 percent for months on end.
It’s still considered high vacancy, said Andrew Rahman, vice president of marketing at property manager TRG Management.
“The benchmark we like to have is 95 percent occupied. That is conventional,” he said.
Palm Beach County is South Florida’s strongest market with 6.4 percent vacancy for market-rate and luxury units. Broward County’s rate is at 9.7 percent. And Miami-Dade County has it the worst, with market-rate and luxury vacancy at 10.5 percent, according to CoStar.
Not all landlords have been able to end concessions, especially at recently finished projects in neighborhoods such as downtown Miami or growing suburbs, areas that hosted much of the pandemic-era construction spree.
At the 43-story, 680-unit CMPND Miami, completed last year by Great Neck, New York-based Namdar Group, prospective residents may get up to two months rent-free, plus a $500 gift card for anyone who signs a studio lease within 24 hours, the property’s website shows. Advertised rents are $2,107 to $4,425
Pompano Beach, a Broward County city that stretches west from the coast past Interstate 95, became a magnet for developers during the boom, and is now feeling the resulting pressure.
“It’s really tough over there,” Rahman said.
Cavache Properties completed the 10-story, 281-unit Old Town Square I in late 2024, amid a softer market.
Leasing has fluctuated over the past year and settled most recently at about 85 percent to 87 percent, said Adam Adache, managing partner at Pompano Beach-based Cavache. On some units, it’s offering two months of free rent on 14-month leases and a month of free rent on 12-month leases, he said. After completing the building, Cavache was doing standard marketing and then expanded to spend on community events like pool parties, movie nights and food trucks to retain tenants.
“Even if someone is happy somewhere, with all of these concessions in the market, tenants are trying to decide if it’s cheaper to move than it is to stay,” Adache said. “It’s a market where people are looking at those options and weighing every dollar.”
Most landlords prefer to give concessions than decrease monthly rent payments, but the math ultimately works out the same. Even if the sticker rent hasn’t budged, two free months means rent collections drop. Add in the extra costs for online marketing to fill these buildings — a necessary expense in competitive submarkets — and developers’ profit margins are taking a hit.
Landlords are not getting the rents they anticipated, and the net operating income is not there, Rahman said.
“If they expected $4.2 million, but their marketing expenses are higher, they are netting much less than the $4.2 million, for example,” Rahman said, adding that developers still are able to refinance construction debt to permanent loans. “They are just not getting what they thought they would. It doesn’t help that more properties are being developed.”
Developers still building say they’re carefully picking their submarkets: Areas in the line of growth without too much new supply.
In Miami’s Wynwood Norte, ABH Developer Group finished the 25-unit Wyn 05 building in December, leasing it up in about two months with no concessions, according to ABH’s Alexis Bogomolni.
It’s one of the first new buildings in the neighborhood since it was rezoned for denser development in 2021. ABH is betting on Wynwood Norte’s location immediately north of booming Wynwood and near prime areas such as Midtown Miami and Design District.
“We definitely see a lot of locals … people who need to be in that area and are tired of the 45-minute commute, or people simply looking for the best deal,” Bogomolni said.
Wyn 05’s studios went for about $1,900, and one-bedrooms for $2,300. That’s a reprieve from Wynwood’s average studio rent this month at $2,647 and one-bedroom rent at $3,068, as reported by RentCafe.
“We capitalized on that” price discrepancy, Bogomolni said.
ABH is wrapping up construction of a 50-unit building and plans to start on two more with a combined 100 units next year.
Onetto, of Alta, also is picking his neighborhoods carefully. He’s developing the 10-story, 316-unit Edge at Sunset in South Miami, a supply-constrained city. Only one new building with 275 units was delivered there last year.
CoStar shows 27,991 units are under construction across South Florida.
Will there be enough demand to fill those units and continue the market’s trajectory leaning in landlords’ favor?
That depends on economic factors, including population and labor force growth, as well as the homebuying market.
Miami-Dade, which has long been a pull for immigrants, experienced a decline in population by 10,115 people from July 2024 to July 2025, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach’s unemployment rate was 3.9 percent last month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. While that’s strong, it’s also due to the flat labor force, Arias said.
Boding well for apartment landlords is that homebuying remains out of reach. South Florida’s median listing price for homes hit $499,000 in the second quarter, down 2.2 percent from a year earlier, according to Realtor.com. That’s still out of reach for many, with mortgage rates hovering around 6 percent, pricing them out and driving them to continue renting.
Arias expects supply to outpace demand again for market-rate properties in the second half or next year.
“Demand has remained strong,” Arias said. “But the jury is still out on the impacts of immigration policy and economic growth.”
