Boom or Bust: Miami

The Miami Herald has reported that “real estate giant” Tishman Speyer has bought Courvoisier Centre for $150 million. Tishman Speyer owns the landmark Rockefeller Center and Chrysler Building in NYC, and according to the Herald, the New York firm recently closed on the biggest real estate deal in U.S. history by acquiring an 80 acre apartment complex in Manhattan for $5.4 billion. Tishman Speyer’s reemergence into the Miami office market is not the only exciting news. Chicago-based Equity Office Properties recently acquired stakes in two Miami office buildings. Transwestern Investments, another Chicago-based company, bought a large office complex in the Gables. In the CBD, office vacancies have gone from 14.4% in the year 2005 to %10.2 in the present. On Brickell office vacancies have gone from 15% in 2005 to 7.7% in the present.

The boom in high rise construction in Miami has been mostly residential. This unprecedented vertical growth in the residential sector is highly unusual. Historically, high density booms throughout the globe, for the most part, have been composed of office buildings. Even today, in the major urban centers of the world (Shanghai, Hong Kong, Moscow, New York, Chicago, etc.) the most impressive high rises are commercial. This is not the case in Miami where there are plans for three 1,000ft towers, all residential, along with dozens of other residential skyscrapers taller than 400 ft.

With the economic growth and trade surplus of Miami, the city is primed for office growth. As mentioned here before, an increase in office development in Miami is inevitable and may eventually evolve into a boom.