The problem, notes the Herald, is that rental rates in South Florida, although cooling, remain stubbornly higher than they were in 2019. All along the Gold Coast, July’s median monthly price for a one-bedroom apartment was $2,052, up from $1,491 (nearly 38%) four years earlier.

A salve for that staggering rise seems already to be in the works, which the Herald acknowledges, but quickly dismisses in pursuit of an economic sugar high (more about which in a moment).

The relocation of corporations during the pandemic was one of the drivers behind the building boom of the past few years. There’s so much competition in the rental real estate market that some apartments are offering a month or two of free rent to qualified renters, something we haven’t seen in a very long time.

Building boom? Competition? Free rent? Something absolutely unexpected seems to be happening in South Florida, and all Adam Smith’s disciples say, “Amen.” 

During the pandemic years, people with means fled their locked-down states to flood the Free State of Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis was following the science, if not Big Medicine, and the Sunshine State thrived. (Now critics blame him for the knock-on effects of making Florida ultra-popular — property insurance rates rising to meet soaring property values, for instance — but that’s a column for another day.)

Refugees from the suburbs of New York and Chicago, in particular, flocked to South Florida. In 2021 alone, net in-migration of 128,228 households to the region from Miami to Port St. Lucie — a stretch of about 120 miles along Florida’s Atlantic Coast — boosted household income by a whopping $39.2 billion, according to MiamiRealtors.com.

All those people arriving and bringing all those Yankee dollars simply overwhelmed existing stocks of real estate. Sudden shortages of any necessary good, from eggs to gas to beachfront condos, send prices soaring, especially when there are consumers with the means to compete for scarce resources. As MiamiRealtors reports, the average income of newly arriving households was $149,200, nearly double the average Miami household income ($79,886). That sort of shock requires some adjustment time, which seems to be happening now.

Indeed, rents appear to be sliding nationwide, according to BusinessInsider.com‘s James Rodriguez.

A dramatic uptick in new supply over the next couple of years is poised to exacerbate the headaches for landlords and open up more opportunities for renters. More than 971,000 apartment units were under construction across the US at the end of 2022, the second-largest number on record. About 575,000 multifamily units are scheduled to be completed this year, RealPage reported. An additional 39,000 single-family rental homes are also under development, according to Yardi Matrix, a provider of data for commercial real estate.

So here comes supply to meet the demand. Once more, the solution to high prices has been … high prices. Opportunity knocked; developers answered.

That’s not how our friends at the Herald see it, however. The editors — Bidenomics apostles to the marrow, evidently — confidently recommend one and only one remedy for what ails the Gold Coast, demonstrating a preference for pouring gasoline on a fire.

There’s really only one solution. We need higher salaries in South Florida. So much of the job market is stuck in the days when living here was cheap. But the new companies coming into Miami should set the tone — and set a higher salary structure — if they want to keep employees from fleeing to places with more reasonable housing costs. …

Business leaders who see Miami as an attractive market to relocate their headquarters need to play a role, along with elected officials, in fixing the problem. If Miami hopes to realize all its big-league city dreams, it has to offer big-time salaries, too.

We are second to none in our enthusiasm for working folks being paid more. Moreover, we hold tight to the belief that no one in a free market system ever was overpaid … or underpaid, for that matter. But the Herald’s cure — insisting employers pay higher wages just because — is leftist populism masquerading as learned economic theory.

Landlords charge what the market will bear, rarely a dime more. Because the alternative is empty apartments, or tenants who default. And evictions are pricy business.

Signs are the South Florida market is responding as it should; that’s a good thing. However, employers who rewrite their bottom lines out of nothing more than fealty to “big-league city dreams” (and not, say, production gains) won’t make rents more affordable. In fact, recent evidence indicates they could cause them to spike anew.

This sounds mean, right? Like Scrooge on steroids. That’s yet another reason it’s not easy being a conservative. We have the better argument, but it’s a tougher sell, because following the prudent, proven course requires time and the discipline of smart choices. 

It doesn’t help when a community’s leading institutions, whose leaders ought to know better, are happy to feed the public cotton candy.

Holy moly. Where’s the Excedrin?