Like it or not, real estate is the bread and butter of Miami’s economy. In the last four years, more than 3,000 condo units were built in town, and a whopping 11,000 are slated to finish construction by 2018. If it seems like an insane proposition to sell 14,000 new…
Perhaps the most cliche thing you can do in this town is stick your head through a hotel-room window or luxury-car sunroof and scream something dumb, like “I love Miami!” or “Here’s to the life!” into the warm night air. It’s pretty much a rite of passage in South Beach, and…
Back in the 1990s and early 2000s, the American Legion Harvey W. Seeds Post 29 on 64th and Biscayne — known informally as “the Legion” — was one of the few places in Miami where punks, oddballs, hippies, and veterans mingled regularly. Though there was a bar in the back…
Miami Beach has based its economy on the fact that strangers love to visit and get drunk there. But it wants residents to know that offering those strangers a place to stay through websites like AirBnB is not an option. In the majority of residential Miami Beach, it’s illegal to…
Sometimes, it does get tiring living in a subtropical paradise. Once the summer wall of humidity hits Miami in May, pretty much nobody enjoys being outdoors here. Breathing starts to feel like gasping for air through a wet washcloth. Thankfully, Miamians will be able to get far out of town for…
Five years ago, as a journalism student at Florida International University, Nicole Taylor-Lang started thinking of ways to flesh out her photography portfolio. She didn’t have to look far: just a block away from her home in Greenacres, she found the first subject of what would become a years-long passion…
Obviously, fewer people are going to want to live in Miami once this whole place floods under an onslaught of sea level rise, but most assume that’s going to happen decades from now. But a new study suggests that fears of Miami Beach turning into a modern Venice are already hurting…
Miami Beach’s crackdown on AirBnB and other short-term renters has been swift and brutal. In March, the city changed its rules to levy $20,000 fines on anyone who rents out a space for less than six months, and since then has handed out $1.6 million in fines. But was that…
Real-estate mogul Moishe Mana, the largest landowner in Wynwood, has huge plans for the arts district. He’s trying to convert a space he owns in the neighborhood’s southwest corner into a full arts-themed village, complete with a promenade, shops, galleries, and 24-story residential towers. Mana’s team has spent months crafting…
In Miami Beach, it’s no secret that the hotel industry is the city’s biggest economic engine. City Hall certainly knows who pays the bills. Back in March, the city voted to start fining AirBnB-type short term renters a whopping $20,000 a pop. Hoteliers say the new fines protect the tourism industry…
For the past seven years, Stephanie Coats and her four children have lived in a one-bedroom apartment on Hibiscus Street in West Grove, just four blocks east of bustling CocoWalk. But their building, built in 1948, stands in stark contrast to the Starbucks and Gap stores inside the upscale shopping…
In Miami’s tourism-centered economy, any crisis that might lead to visitors intentionally avoiding the metro area could quickly snowball into a full-scale economic catastrophe. Thankfully — so far at least — the zika virus outbreak doesn’t seem to be having that effect. A study released yesterday by the University of Florida…
Contrary to the crotchety reporters who say millennials are immature slouches who hate responsibility, plenty of youngsters want to own homes — they simply can’t afford them. Especially in Miami. Case in point: A study released yesterday by the housing-research website Zumper found that 93 percent of Miamians say they’d…
It’s no secret that Miami’s high cost of living is one of the biggest problems in the metro area. With median rent for a one-bedroom apartment at nearly $2,000, the county’s millennial population has largely fled. A 2012 study found that Miami is the least affordable city in the entire country…
Since the 1980s, Miami residents have been able to judge their city’s relative economic health just by counting the number of cranes in the sky. More than 10? Congrats, the city’s in the midst of a housing bubble. Zero? Recession. Right now, the downtown Miami skyline is absolutely flooded with…
Do you have cash to burn and no conscience about gentrifying historically poor, majority-minority areas of town? Good news! The website RealtyTrac has just finished a study on where to start buying up property. The site found that the zip code 33150, which encompasses parts of Little River, Little Haiti, and…
The conflict over this neighborhood’s name remains tense and loaded with complicated issues of race and poverty.
There are three stages in the life cycle of every “hip” urban neighborhood. First, broke artists move into an economically depressed area of town, setting up studios and slowly making it cool — and often pushing out longtime residents as rents climb. In stage two, the full-on explosion arrives. The…
The real-estate tracking website Zumper today released a map of what an average one-bedroom apartment will run you in every Miami-Dade County neighborhood this summer. And — surprise! — You basically can’t afford to live anywhere. Granted, Zumper’s map shows median prices, which means half of the apartments in every ‘hood…
Today, the Miami City Commission will finally decide whether to allow the RCI Group, a prominent development firm based in Miami Beach, to raze Miami’s historic marina on Virginia Key, formerly the county’s only “black” beach during segregation, and build a gleaming, $100 million facility in its place, complete with…
The American Dream is alive and well in Miami — provided that you aren’t actually trying to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. In that case, this city is most certainly not for you. Please find the nearest exit. Not only are rents astronomically high all over the place, but it’s almost…
When the City of Miami changed Wynwood’s zoning codes last year to make it easier for people to live in the area, everyone knew it was just a matter of time before a huge condo complex landed in the heart of the uber-hip neighborhood. That time is now, if developer East…
