Fort Lauderdale could become Florida’s most-desired city for renters, even surpassing Miami, according to new data.
RentCafe recently released a report that found Fort Lauderdale’s Renter Engagement Tracker —or REnT — score is more than 70, making it the No. 1 sought-after city in the state and the No. 20 sought-after city in the nation.
The REnT score is based on a few factors: availability of apartments in the city, page views on apartments and apartments “saved” by prospective renters online. This score does not include short-term rentals on vacation rental website such as Airbnb and Vrbo.
Miami’s score is about 48, ranking No. 8 in the state and No. 134 in the nation.
Miles Alexander III, a principal for real estate development and investment firm Alexander Goshen, said he understands why this trend is occurring.
“Miami has been what it is for years,” Alexander said. “You can’t build anymore. You can’t provide a lot of more quality things as far as type of lifestyle, quality development, and also hospitality, it’s all the same thing, rinse and repeat over and over again. I think Fort Lauderdale has been trying to catch Miami for a while.”
RentCafe’s report found Fort Lauderdale experienced a 7% drop in available listings, which could indicate increased demand. Miami has seen a more than 70% increase in available listings year-over-year, but “there’s only a 3% increase in apartments added to favorites, suggesting that renters might not be finding what they are looking for among the new options,” according to the RentCafe analysis.
Keyes Company real estate agent Lauren Coloney said Fort Lauderdale is very “neighborhood-driven,” especially in contrast with Miami.
“In Fort Lauderdale, every smaller neighborhood has a mix of things, so like single-family homes, townhomes, smaller apartments, apartment complexes, every little area has that as opposed to ‘OK I want a single-family home. I have to go to a certain area of Miami to do that,” she said. “It’s more of a mixed bag in Fort Lauderdale, which I think people like.”
In the last month, Coloney estimates she’s had a few customers from Miami say they are getting “sick of it, it’s too busy, it’s too much traffic,” she said. “They want more of a neighborhood feel.”
The overall Fort Lauderdale market is different, Coloney said, consisting more of modest buyers and renters who don’t particularly care for (or can’t afford) amenities, especially the luxury ones.
“The people that are living in Fort Lauderdale are more community-based, they’re not like just, ‘I go to work, I go to home and I stay in my building,’” she said. “It’s more of, ‘I go to work, I come home, I walk my dog and then I go to the gym, or I go to my grocery store, I go to my local coffee shop.’”
Doug Ressler, the senior analyst at Yardi Matrix, the data provider behind RentCafe’s studies, said comparing Miami and Fort Lauderdale is somewhat like comparing apples and oranges, though, because Miami possesses more economic diversity while Fort Lauderdale is a “smaller community.”
There’s no cause for concern about Miami — or anywhere in Florida, for that matter — losing its appeal, Ressler said. And recent data seconds this: Miami ranked No. 4 in the world for the place with the highest number of ultra-wealthy people who have a primary or secondary home in the metropolitan area, and ranked No. 1 in the world for the most popular “second-home city,” according to a luxury real estate report by Altrata.
“Florida’s population growth is pretty strong along with the job market, and it certainly has a lifestyle appeal,” Ressler said.