Unlocking Miami-Dade’s Housing Potential: Existing Vacant Land Could Provide Affordable Housing for 192,000 Renters

Miami-Dade County is dealing with an affordable housing challenge: Through a combination of nationwide rising housing costs and a development pace struggling to keep up with the demand for rentals, the area finds itself in urgent need of new ways to bridge the gap.

In fact, half of all households here spend more than 30% of their income on housing costs. While the situation isn’t new, the recent COVID-19 pandemic only added to the issue. Additionally, the influx of new residents drawn to Miami-Dade by job opportunities, sunny skies and a favorable tax climate, puts even more pressure on the area’s rental market.

Housing shortages are common in many big cities, not just in Miami-Dade County. This is the third article in a RentCafe series that explores vacant land and housing potential in places across the country. Our other pieces focused on Dallas and Phoenix.

How could Miami-Dade turn things around? By making use of its 604 vacant plots, where it could build up to 77,000 apartments that would allow for more affordable housing options for residents and newcomers alike. This would especially benefit blue-collar workers or low-income families struggling with the county’s competitive real estate market.

To get a clear perspective on the situation and identify Miami-Dade’s full potential, we used data from our sister company PropertyShark. This allowed us to get a full picture of the vacant lots that the county could make use of, along with the zip codes that would provide enough space for new rental units.

Specifically, this would mean that around 59 million square feet could be turned into rental communities for approximately 192,000 potential renters. Another powerful incentive to do so is that the construction of 77,000 new units would ultimately help moderate rent growth in Miami-Dade, which is the nation’s most competitive rental spot.

In fact, speeding up the pace of construction would mean slowing down rent growth from 90% (with the current rate of apartment construction) to 74% in 10 years.

But first, let’s take a look at the most promising areas in Miami-Dade for affordable housing.

These top 5 zip codes have 15 million square feet of land for nearly 32,000 potential new apartments   

Scattered across the coast, the first five zip codes on our list could provide affordable housing options in the form of approximately 32,000 apartments. Notably, with 151 parcels of land available, the county has great potential to build a robust number of new, budget-friendly units.

First, with 20 vacant lots available for new construction projects, zip code 33136 is Miami-Dade’s most promising area. Thanks to around 1 million square feet of vacant land, 33136 could easily allow for nearly 9,600 new apartments. Encompassing neighborhoods like Southeast and Northeast Overton, as well as part of Town Park, this zip code’s close proximity to the University of Miami would make it especially attractive to renting students and teaching staff.

The next zip code that shows a lot of promise is 33125, just west of 33136. With 18 vacant parcels available, this area has just enough room for around 7,700 new rentals. With almost 930,000 square feet of vacant land, the zip code covers various neighborhoods such as North Sewell Park, South Grapeland Heights and Alameda-West Flagler, thereby offering potential renters easy access to the heart of Miami.

 

 

A bit up north, we have zip code 33138, where the approximately 708,000 square feet of vacant land could be turned into 5,300 new apartments. Moreover, with 33138 spanning the area from Miami Shores down to the Belle Meade neighborhood, the 16 parcels have a lot of untapped potential: Between 2014 and 2023, only around 890 new units were built in this area, which leaves room for plenty of new rentals.

To the south, zip code 33032 ranks fourth on our list, showing significant prospects for affordable housing. More precisely, the area offers 85 parcels — the highest number out of the top 20 zip codes — on which around 4,900 new units could be built. This zip code is also one of the county’s most active when it comes to rental housing construction (right next to 33137 and 33132) with almost 3,500 new units completed in the last decade. The sprawling area spans Princeton, Naranja and South Allapattah, making it the largest perimeter out of all 20 zip codes on our list.

Miami-Dade’s fifth-most promising zip code is 33142, where around 4,700 new units could be built on the 12 available parcels in this area. Situated just north of zip code 33125, the nearly 480,000 square feet of land here covers part of Allapattah and most of Brownville, whose continued population growth in the last two decades has brought many new residents to the area and made it a promising, untapped market.

How will the increase in apartments affect rent growth in Miami-Dade?

Rents in Miami-Dade are expected to rise in the next decade as the city’s economy and housing market continues to develop at a steady pace. Keeping this in mind, we considered three scenarios for rent growth that take into consideration population changes, as well as the pace at which new apartments are completed.

In the first scenario, we considered how rents would be affected if the rate of apartment construction in the county remained the same — 5,500 units per year for the next decade. What we found was that, in this case, rents in Miami-Dade were likely to increase by 90%, going from the current average rent of $1,841 to $3,498.

 

 

The second scenario considered the effects that a faster pace of apartment build-out would have on the rent evolution in Miami-Dade: If 7,700 new units were built annually in the next decade, rents would only be expected to rise by 74% to a maximum of $3,200 per month.

Meanwhile, the third scenario considered the possibility that apartment construction would slow down in the next decade. This would mean that, with only 3,300 new units built annually, the rents would increase by 140% up to $3,949 per month. That would be more than double the current average rent.

Experts call for zoning reform and targeted funding to address Miami-Dade's housing crisis

Yonah Freemark, research director at the Urban Institute, recognizes the Miami area's fast growth in the last two decades and sees its potential.

“The region still has plenty of space for new homes, particularly on vacant and underused land,”  he said.

In particular, vacant plots across the city that are close to transit stations have more chances to welcome new housing units, Freemark observed in a recent analysis. According to the data, housing growth in neighborhoods with transit access points that opened between 2000 and 2009 were approximately 8% higher compared to neighborhoods that weren’t near stations.

“The Civic Center and Santa Clara Metrorail stations, for example, are each located near dozens of surface parking lots that could be easily redeveloped into dense housing options with excellent public transit access,” Freemark told RentCafe.com. “There are similar opportunities around the School Board Metromover station. Local governments in the Miami region can work to ensure that this land can be redeveloped to house more residents, either by maximizing the use of existing publicly owned land or by purchasing land for redevelopment.”

While Miami-Dade clearly offers many opportunities for more affordable units to be built, the challenges are comparable in variety. One of the most stringent relates to costs. In his new analysis for the Urban Institute, Freemark found that local  governments had difficulties funding transit-oriented development projects that involved subsidized affordable housing. For this reason, he proposes a more targeted federal effort to fix this.

“If the federal government hopes to spur further transit-oriented development, it could invest in a dedicated land acquisition program. This program’s funds could be used specifically to buy vacant or underused land, such as surface parking lots or one-story strip malls primed for redevelopment.”

Locally, pro-housing legislature passed in March last year seeks to address the housing shortage that affects large parts of Florida. The Live Local Act plans to increase the supply of affordable homes, which has been steadily dwindling, through a combination of tax breaks and massive funding toward development projects. However, the initiative was met with mixed reactions that led to a 2024 update of the act to offer more protection to single-family neighborhoods.

Speaking of single-family units, zoning policies are also a pressing issue on the road to more affordable rentals in the Miami-Dade area.

"Restrictive zoning policies and push back from established single family neighborhoods have continued to be a major obstacle to meaningful increases in Miami's housing supply," said Steven J. Wernick, Miami land use attorney.

Wernick gave Wynwood Norte — an initiative meant to create market rate housing in an area near transit — as an example of how calibrating zoning restrictions could increase affordable housing in the area.

"Responding to specific needs of working families, the Wynwood Norte NRD-2 aims to spur construction of new housing by removing density restrictions and parking minimums for small apartment buildings," Wernick said. "Additionally, in the T4 interior zone, developers can achieve a 4th story by providing 20% of units as workforce housing for households earning less than 100% AMI."

In any case, zoning policies and funding shortages need to be addressed for a more rapid pace of affordable housing development in Miami-Dade County.

Methodology

RentCafe.com is a nationwide apartment search website that enables renters to easily find apartments and houses for rent throughout the U.S.

To identify suitable vacant land for potential development, we first extracted parcels larger than 0.5 acres or 21,780 square feet from public records. These parcels were then manually vetted to ensure they were truly vacant. We excluded parcels classified as cemeteries, parks, forests, floodplain areas and others.

Data on average rent, completed apartments, median income, median home prices, occupancy, multi-family inventory, and renter population was obtained from Yardi Matrix and Census ACS 2022 one-year estimates covering a 10-year period. This data was used to conduct regression analysis and forecast future rent trends.

To determine the maximum number of rental apartments that could be built on each parcel, we evaluated the zoning restrictions and metrics outlined in official zoning codes for Miami-Dade County. The number of estimated apartments was then rounded up to provide a conservative estimate.

To calculate the number of renters these estimated units could house, we determined the average household size of renter-occupied unit in Miami-Dade County and multiplied it by the estimated multifamily units that could be built here.

The maximum number of dwellings per acre was calculated and multiplied by the total land area of each parcel to determine the maximum permissible number of rental units for each site.

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