Wealthy Americans moving to Florida at 4 times the rate of other states
fortune.com
fortune.com
I can tell you the natives are absolutely panicking. Family and social groups are being disrupted because property and rental prices have outpaced income by large margins. There wasn't much in Miami prior to COVID except tourism and service industry jobs. These are some of the lowest paying vocations in this country. The city and county are facing an affordability crisis.
And contrary to popular belief Miami is losing population because of the affordability crisis. For every cryptobro that moves here, a family of 4 migrates to Orlando or further north.
It's not all bad, though. New faces are highly receptive to making new friends and follow through. Traditional LatAm families are very insular and skeptical to newcomers. Local politicians are dynastic and blatantly corrupt. They don't have the same name recognition with new, younger voters so some are finding it harder to skate on winning by a few dozen votes. The Downtown/Brickell area is opening more new schools. Ironic the schoolboard is downtown but there were no neighborhood schools except a few highly selective magnet schools. All these new condos and apartments downtown have families scrambling to enroll nearby and finding out none were planned. So glad that is being fixed.
Since then housing prices have been absolutely bananas, I was fortunate to buy a house relatively cheap in Oct 2021 but now the same houses are going for $100k+ more what I paid. If you want to buy anything that is 2 bedroom you better be prepared to pay +300k starting price and probably 20% down + HOA fee and increasing interest rates are going for %5+. Yet houses are flying off the market, mostly due to institutional investors putting 100% down in cash so you can't compete or have a total of one weekend to make an offer.
So far this year alone 3 people I know have moved out of Miami all due to housing affordibility. One moved to Tampa (which used to be pricier than Miami), another to South Carolina, and another to Ft Lauderdale.
My wife wants us to stay here to raise kids but whenever she talks about buying a new house I get queesy thinking how expensive it's going to be to get a large enough place. I love the Hollywood / Ft Luaderdale area but it's only a matter of time that prices catch up.
Also, migration seems so popular in the tech community until it is into one's own.
> Economic opportunity is being brought in and it is a pro-building area
Money, jobs, and workers are being imported. This does very little for the local employment market because companies that move here also want to move their workforce as well. A lot of new construction is luxury apartments. Not something that a waitress or tour operator will be able to afford.
Only 4 out of 10 had no income tax, and there is no information on why people moved to these locations, so it is not clear if income tax was or was not a factor.
> But the pandemic accelerated migration patterns that were already underway in the 2010s. The rise of remote work unshackled employees from the office, enabling them to move away from big cities to more affordable midsize cities. As of March 2022, nearly 5 million Americans have relocated owing to remote work, according to an Upwork survey.
There is no information here on whether the high income people who moved to florida are working remotely in the sense of having an existing normal, full time job that they kept when they moved to Florida, so it is not clear whether or not remote work actually is relevant or not.
In the case of florida it's quite possible that a lot of the people with household incomes of 200k+ moving there are actually wealthy retirees making substantial incomes off of investments rather than "remote workers" in the normal sense.
understatement in the extreme?
Make $10M/year living in income in NYC and one owes nearly $1M/year to the state. California is roughly the same ballpark and they chase RSUs received in California even if you leave. It's possible to pay millions in state taxes as far less than a billionaire.
Meanwhile, the Fortune article seems to say that the 'smartest' and wealthiest of the migrants are flocking to that part of Florida...
> Real estate prices in Miami already reflect the increase in prices for real estate at a higher elevation within the city compared to real estate at a lower elevation
It's usually the existing poorer population that already owns property next to low lying areas next to the water that will get caught holding the bag when asset prices drop.
Besides FL migrants are typically older people retiring, not making longer-term plans.
People want quality public infra, but don't want to pay taxes. Sounds like a losing battle to me.
What usually happens is taxes are shoved into other areas of your life (property, sales).
Yeah, but Florida doesn't, really.
Miami is a basket case. The city commission held a vote to remove mangroves from the park because they were blocking the view. LOL. Just massive political incompetence.
However, the downside of those glorious Florida roads is that, well, you need them at all. Everything is sooooooo spread out and flat. I forget until I go back and visit just how far away everything is from everything else. Going to something "just up the road" is a 15-20 minute drive.
I'm so tired of this "I got mine, so fuck you" attitude many people have. If you're wealthy, you probably got there via inheritance, luck, or on the backs and shoulders of the hard work of others. And yet "I won't do my part to pay for basic infrastructure where I live" is the attitude.
> A regressive tax is a tax applied uniformly, taking a larger percentage of income from low-income earners than from high-income earners.
This is a tangent, but I want to note the irony of listing this as a "pro": when the topic of public transport comes up on HN, a standard observation is that exactly this model failed and left local governments saddled with expensive, debt-laden streetcars and subways. The end result: we spent 50 years tearing up useful pieces of civic infrastructure because the root financing was fundamentally unsound.
Private financing schemes have an uncanny ability to sniff out the government's ability and willingness to catch the falling knife.
Note: I'm linking this not to claim that the conspiracy is real, only because it has useful references.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp...
Public libraries and schools would not benefit from this as more affluent areas can support better education. This is already the case in many places in the US. Local property taxes support school funding.
A lot of people don't really want quality public infra. If they can pay for their own needs themselves, in their gated communities etc., they would rather do that than pay taxes. The people described in this article are wealthy. They want quality private infra.
That kind of sounds like California. Crime is so rampant that when I was searching for apartments, these large complexes resemble castles. Heavily fortified and there is a courtyard inside where children can play and families can hang out.
When I was searching for a place, basically every single apartment complex felt like a castle.
Not being nefarious, have no interest in it. You’re more than welcome to check for yourself.
Most apartments in the Bay Area have no outdoor space other than a balcony or a small piece of land on the ground floor about the size of the balconies above. Many don't even have that.
https://infrastructurereportcard.org/state-by-state-infrastr...
They seem to be a lobby group for more infrastructure investment, but they don't see Florida as worse than other states.
I don't particularly like cryptocurrencies, but I found that thought-provoking.
This is to say, in case it's not clear, that being "friendly" just isn't enough for them; they want everyone around them to acknowledge just how great and special tech is. If you're not kissing their ass, you're not being friendly.
I do think they have a somewhat myopic view of their own work, however.
Really? Compared to what? Is there some place there is cheap housing?
Not saying it’s not bad here — it’s just less worse than some places.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-05/odd-lots-...
A few years ago a bunch of the more libertarian among them sold out fearing an inevitable civil war after a recent election and they took their asses and assets to Puerto Rico where they could keep their citizenship and passports but dodge even more tax liability. Funny enough it was just in time for Hurricane Maria to hose the island. Now they live in their gated enclaves and wander out long enough to sample the excellent local food before going back inside so they don't have to deal with the people they can't converse with since they don't understand Spanish.
As a geoscientist I am disappointed that some geological processes take so long. The inundation of Florida should be turned up to 11. Let the rats surf some driftwood while they search for a new dry spot to shit on.
Not only wealthy Americans, but Florida has been seeing regular middle class influx as well, out of all, from California. IMO, from what I can tell, Florida has better policies that will be conducive to higher quality of life and ease of business in the future. It is improving at a rapid rate.
As someone who lives in California, we have some homework to do across many areas. I'd want California to improve and become more competitive, especially in terms of regulations, crime and QoL. It is such a beautiful state. One can quote current statistics of this or that, but it is the rate of improvement/degeneration that's important. Instead, we spend too much time defending what's not working.
More stats here that doesn't just gloss over with undertones of "rich moving to florida": https://www.floridadaily.com/people-from-new-york-california...
A government should be oriented towards the needs of the people who live under and depend on it. Many people have effectively no choice to make in what state they live in, and their needs and preferences matter more than those of someone who doesn't even live there but might move there. The "competition for citizens" model doesn't really account for that in any way I can respect.
You cannot eliminate incentives from top-down. In a free society where interstate commerce is protected by the constitution, posing limits on incentives would be pretty much the death of this republic.
It's easy to imagine scenarios where the economic desires of high-wealth outsiders who could move to a state are directly opposed to the needs of low-wealth people currently living there. A competition-based model would find it easy to make the wrong choice.
Can you cite such examples?
Melbourne, Switzerland, Singapore, HK and 20th century examples of SF, NYC, London were all attractive hyper capitalistic cities.
There's probably some amount of unavoidable tension between these things but viewing gov policy mainly as a means to compete for wealth holders does not seem likely to lead to balanced outcomes.
The florida leadership sent a strong signal during and since covid that they will protect civil liberties. people are expecting the next “crisis” to add more restrictions
it’s a defensive measure to preserve your way of life
That’s one way to look at it. Another way is that they put religious dogma over civil liberties and personal freedom over community.
Either way, the influx of people moving to Florida would seem to indicate that a lot of people either agree with their decision or don't really care.
The rich who are buying coastal properties aren’t buying with 2100 in mind, they are buying with 2022 in mind.
The money they save on housing in the meantime perhaps can buy their descendants property in less climate-change-threatened places.
Building long term habitations in low lying coastal areas (absent massive engineering to prevent flooding like the Netherlands has done) seems dubious though.
Also, it’s pretty wildly understood that areas closer to the equator will tend to have less climate variation than northern and more southern climates.
That leaves the “old hurricanes will get worse” bullet point…except so far…they haven’t.
There's even a name for all the people that move to Florida from northern states and realize they don't care for it: Halfbacks (halfway back to New York, MA, anywhere NE).
Miami Says It Can Adapt to Rising Seas. Not Everyone Is Convinced.
Officials have a new plan to manage rising water. Succeed or fail, it will very likely become a case study for other cities facing climate threats.
I realize the U.S is all about taking care of the wealthy, but maybe these people aren't wealthy - just rich. In which case hey you can always allow a few of the rich to lose their shirts as long as the class as a whole is protected.
requisite Chris Rock video on difference between rich and wealth https://youtu.be/bZWeFtgEAEk?t=41
Forest fires in California, freezes in Texas, hurricanes in Florida, even hurricanes (Sandy) in the North East. Natural disasters happen in both (typically) democrat and republican states.
Are you sick and tired of the government allowing us to eat fast food, smoke cigarettes, and drink alcohol too? After all a large percentage of your tax dollars are going towards medicare and health.