Nearly 4,700 Broward County Rental Properties Listed For Lease In South Florida Amidst COVID-19 Pandemic

Broward County Tenants Paid $1.52 PSF Monthly For New Residential Rentals In Q1 2020

(This Report Is Powered By The Condo Vultures® Podcast Series Featuring Expert Peter Zalewski

DOWNTOWN MIAMI (June 29, 2020) - Nearly 4,700 residential rental properties are formally listed for lease in the South Florida county of Broward amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new report from Condo Vultures® Realty LLC. 

Based on completed leases of nearly 1,595 residential properties monthly in the first three months of 2020, Broward County now has nearly a three-month supply of rentals - apartments, condos, efficiencies, multifamily and townhouses - available in the tricounty South Florida region of Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach at the traditional start of the Summer Buying Season, according to the report based on data from the Southeast Florida MLS Matrix. 

A balanced market is generally considered to have about six months of supply. More months of supply listed for lease suggests a tenant’s advantage and less months typically indicates a landlord’s advantage in the market. 

In this new COVID-19 pandemic era, numerous questions exist about how the South Florida residential real estate market will perform going forward, both in the short- and medium-term periods. After a typical start to the new year, the South Florida residential real estate market began to change dramatically at the end of the first quarter of 2020. 

When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis declared a "state of emergency to create a pathway to obtain funding and resources to stop the spread of COVID-19" on March 9, 2020, the South Florida residential real estate market continued to function, albeit with changes for safety that included social distancing and a push for virtual tours instead of buyer actually visiting properties.  

Nearly a month later on April 3, 2020, DeSantis instituted a 30-day "statewide stay-at-home order" that effectively shut down the Florida economy but in doing so deemed residential and commercial real estate businesses "essential services," according to an industry press report.

Despite the ability to transact real estate during the "stay-at-home order," it is unclear how many buyers have been willing to view properties - either in person or virtually - in hopes of purchasing residences. It is also unclear how many sellers have opened their properties to potential buyers given the contagiousness of the COVID-19 virus. 

Once the "stay-at-home order" was finally lifted on May 4, 2020 for nearly all of the state - excluding the tricounty South Florida region of Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach - the Florida economy was thought to be in recession like much of the United States. Palm Beach County eventually opened its economy on May 11, 2020, and a week later both Miami-Dade and Broward counties opened for business on a limited basis on May 18, 2020.

A month later during the week of June 22, 2020, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties instituted mandatory mask wearing in public areas in response to a "spike" in the number of COVID-19 cases in the South Florida region, according to the Palm Beach Post. 

Broward County - located between Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties - has not mandated masks in public areas at this time.   

This being said, nearly 1,935 rental properties are currently under contract - or pending - and waiting to transact at a median monthly asking price of about $1,490 per unit or about $1.47 per square foot in Broward County.

The median asking price of a Broward County residential rental property currently listed for lease is about $1,850 per property monthly. This works out to a median asking price of $1.83 per square foot monthly, according to the data compiled by CondoVulturesRealty.com. 

In the first three months of 2020, the median transaction price of a Broward County residential rental property was about $1,500 or about $1.52 per square foot monthly, according to the data. 

This means the current asking price of a Broward County residential rental property listed for lease is more than 23 percent higher than the median transaction price achieved on a monthly per-property basis and about 20 percent higher than the median transaction price achieved on a monthly per-square-foot basis between January and March of this year. 

In the first quarter of 2020, a landlord needed 45 days - on a median basis - to lease a Broward County residential rental. The current median Days-On-The-Market rate for a Broward County residential rental property listed for lease is about 48, according to the statistics. 

The number of Days-On-The-Market for the residential rental properties currently under contract is about 33 in Broward County, according to the statistics.

CondoVulturesRealty.com is a licensed Florida brokerage that specializes in assisting buyers and tenants in value-oriented acquisitions of condos in the tricounty region of Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach.

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