“It will be a different society,” skyrocket real estate prices in Miami will result in shift to micro-units, more development | Real Estate

The stampede for property in Miami – coupled with rising prices and insufficient supply, both for purchase or rent – have created a crisis in the city’s housing sector. And few real estate experts can predict where it will lead.

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Antonio Prado, president and CEO at The Hamilton Group and an academic at the University of Miami, said the entire real estate sector, with its related industries, is working to adapt to these challenges – an effort that will, in turn, force new development models that will spur social changes in the city.

Prado, a former Director at Pacific National Bank and an expert in affordable housing, said most real estate experts agree there is “great pressure to provide a solution quickly.”

“But it is not easy because there is not enough space in central areas,” he said. “That is why there is a construction boom in places like Homestead and Florida City, despite the distance, and projects in places like Liberty City or Overtown, poor areas of the city.

“Things that seemed so radical a few years ago, now, with the crisis, they don’t look like that.”

Prado discussed the situation with Islander News.

IN: So what is coming?

Prado: Vertical solutions are coming. A combination of products with higher densities and smaller units. That’s where we’re going. In the future, single-family homes will be for people with money, as one sees in Latin America.

Lower and middle-class people will go to smaller and smaller apartments. In places like Wynwood, buildings with micro-units, one bedroom, and one bathroom, between 350 and 575 square feet, are already being built.

Even living spaces, which are almost like college dorms.

These changes towards new constructions are going to have very great social and cultural consequences because this is a hyper-individualistic society and culture. When people are forced to live closer together, to have less space in smaller units, they will be forced into an interrelationship that has never existed before. That is why the social changes are coming.

It will be a different society.

But there are no other solutions because there is no space. With new construction models, we’re also going to start seeing big employers, like Publix, getting into the housing business.

IN. Will all developments be smaller?

Prado. In today’s market, there is nothing homogeneous. In the luxury segment, smaller apartments are not being built, but with the impact of the pandemic and distancing, even larger apartments are being built.

But at the same time there is also a return to a model that was used in the past and now returns: apartments as intergenerational housing, that is, with two complete masters, for young people who stay with their parents because they cannot buy, or older adults who cannot live on their own or rent and stay at home with family.

Those of us who have been in Miami for so long have seen the city grow day by day (just) as we see a child grow, almost without realizing it. And today we wonder what so many people come here to look for. In recent years, especially during the pandemic, even companies from California or New York that were not normally interested in Miami have arrived.

Everybody wants to be here now.

IN. Will prices continue to rise?

Prado. We know that there are always risks in the market, and this is seen now with the international situation in Ukraine. Prices are not necessarily going to continue to rise. Sooner or later the market tends to regulate itself.

But even if prices do not continue to rise, if they remain at this level they will not be accessible to many people and that is why the county, together with organizations in the sector, are working to find solutions.