Miami Beach Luxury Real Estate Market Update by The Nelson Gonzalez Team

Greetings from Miami Beach and welcome to our luxury real estate update. I’m Nelson Gonzalez, Senior Vice President of Berkshire Hathaway EWM Realty.

Today, I want to give you an insight into the Miami Beach ultra-luxury single-family home market over the past 4 years, particularly homes sold in excess of $10 million.

I’m going to discuss one major event that impacted the market each year — and put the performance of each year in numbers to specifically measure how the market has been growing. Lastly, we’re going to discuss why 2019 was so outstanding, and how it compares to the previous 3 years.

In 2016, Miami Beach recorded only 7 single-family homes sold with a selling price of over $10 million. What is easy tosee today, but was not yet fully apparent in 2016, was the impact of the growing increases in the value of the U.S. dollar during that period against virtually every other world currency — especially South American currencies. Many of our foreign buyers from over the prior 4 decades have been seriously impacted financially over these past 4 years, which have slowed our sales in the United States to foreign buyers since the fall of 2015.

Moving forward, in 2017, Miami Beach recorded 12 sold homes with a selling price of over $10 million, which reflected a 71% increase in sales over 2016 sales. This year, Hurricane Irma cost the market some deals, including one of mine, but sales were still significantly better than the previous year.

In 2018, there were 13 single-family sold homes in Miami Beach over $10 million, an increase of 8% when compared to2017, and an 86% increase when compared to 2016. This is the year that the U.S. Tax Reform Bill went into effect, costing many Americans more state income taxes. Therefore, Miami started seeing the influx of high net-worth buyers from the northern states moving here for tax-relief purposes — many moving their entire businesses here. And, although we saw the market stabilizing and improving, we had yet to see the incredible sales numbers that were coming in 2019!

A few days ago, we closed 2019 with a tremendous number of closed deals. 22 single-family homes sold last year through our Multiple Listing Service, each with a selling price of over $10 million, which yielded an impressive 69% increase in closed sales when compared to the previous year, 2018.

Even more extraordinary is the 214% increase in closed sales of homes over $10 million in 2019 when compared toyear 2016… the highest number of single-family home sales annually in Miami Beach history!

That’s a number that needs to be celebrated and talked about. That’s a number that puts Miami Beach is permanently on the world-map for ultra-luxury real estate!

It’s a number that I am very proud of, not only because I personally sold 8 single-family homes in excess of $10 million across Miami-Dade County in 2019,  but because 6 of them were in Miami Beach, which is where my home is located and where my area of expertise has been for the past 30 years. To see the incredible growth and evolution of Miami Beach is remarkable, and I am truly honored to be a part of it.

2020 is poised to be another record-breaking year, as the entire world is focused on the excitement of what is happening on Miami Beach!

We hope this update was educational. This Market Update was prepared by Nelson Gonzalez and Julijana Rose from The Nelson Gonzalez Team. Thank you.