Miami Real Estate Strategy | Key Lessons & Trends for 2026

Moshe Popack (0:00)

I've watched South Florida transform in ways that I don't think many of us could have imagined for 15 or 20 years. People moved here, companies moved here, capital moved here, developers built here, entrepreneurs came here, and Florida became one of the places people around the country looked at and said, I want to be there. But success creates its own challenge. The question isn't simply, how do we keep growing? I think the better question is, how do we grow well? How do we make sure Florida remains a place where people want to build businesses and invest, but also a place where teachers, nurses, police officers, young professionals, and families can afford to live? And I think Florida's biggest challenge over the next decade may actually be managing its own success. We spent years asking, how do we get people and businesses to come to Florida? It worked. Now we need to ask, how do we make sure they can stay?

We just had the Florida Governor primary election, and it's obviously there's going to be a lot of conversation over the next few months about candidates, parties, endorsements, polls, all of that.

Where does Florida go from here?

I've been building businesses and investing in real estate in Florida for a long time. I'm raising my family here. I believe in this state. I've watched South Florida transform in ways that I don't think many of us could have imagined 15 or 20 years ago. People moved here. Companies moved here. Capital moved here. Developers built here. Entrepreneurs came here. And Florida became one of the places people around the country looked at and said, I want to be there. That's an incredible success story. But success creates its own challenges. And I think Florida is at a really interesting point right now. The question isn't simply, how do we keep growing? I think the better question is, how do we grow well? How do we make sure Florida remains a place where people want to build businesses and invest, but also a place where teachers, nurses, police officers, young professionals and families can afford to live? How do we continue building without overwhelming infrastructure?

How do we deal with insurance? How do we create enough housing? How do we keep the things that attracted people to Florida in the first place? Those aren't Republican questions. They're not Democrat questions. They're Florida questions, and they're also real estate questions. Because one of the interesting things about real estate is that you see economic policy show up in the numbers very quickly. Let me explain what I mean. When people talk about housing affordability, the conversation usually starts with, rent is too expensive or homes are too expensive. Okay, but why?

That's where I think the conversation gets more useful. Because if you spent your career owning and operating real estate, you understand that the rent somebody pays at the end of the process is influenced by dozens of things that happened before they ever walked into the building. What's the land cost? What's the construction cost?

How much does labor cost? How much does insurance cost? What are the property taxes? What's the interest rate? How expensive is the debt? How long did permitting take? What does it cost to maintain the property? Those numbers matter, because somebody eventually has to pay for them. And that's one of the things I wish more people understood about housing. You can't really talk about affordability without talking about the cost of creating and operating housing. Let's say I'm developing an apartment building. If my land costs more, construction costs more, insurance costs more, financing costs more, and operating costs more, I can't just pretend those expenses don't exist. They eventually affect the economics of the building. That's why housing affordability is much more complicated than saying rent should be cheaper. Of course, we'd all like housing to be more affordable. The better question is, what is making housing expensive in the first place? And which of those costs can we actually do something about? That's the conversation I think Florida needs to have. And one of the biggest pieces of the conversation is insurance. If you don't own real estate in Florida, you may not realize how important insurance has become. Believe me, if you own it, you know.

Insurance isn't some tiny line item buried on page 37 of the spreadsheet anymore. It can determine whether a deal works, and this doesn't only affect large real estate companies. It affects homeowners, it affects condo owners, it affects apartment owners, it affects developers, it affects small businesses, and ultimately, it affects affordability. If it becomes significantly more expensive to own and operate housing, those costs have consequences. So I think whoever is leading Florida over the next decade has to take insurance seriously, not as some technical real estate issue, but as an economic issue. Because here's something people forget.